Dragonflier 2009

Sun riven crystals
splinter
and dazzle away …
a kind of brazen aching
into effortless blue.
But it is the diaphanous moon,
voluptuous with promise
yet gauzier than light
that charms the sky
on this frozen day

IT’S MID-JANUARY AS I BEGIN: Today buddha sits up to his eyeballs in a mound of snow. He looks totally non-plussed by this event. Two days ago snowflakes began floating down in lazy drifts & when it finally stopped he was buried. i’m just now in from a slow shuffle along the ridge to the pond & a dilly-dally back. It was kind of a slog really, breaking trail through all that, but old sol’s finally cracked a month of gloomy grey & it’s all glory hallelujah out there. And, in spite of the over zealous sun, still quite snap, crackle & pop cold. Kinda’ rousing really! But it was Deb who saved us from the woodstove lethargy that threatened to kidnap our day … calling with the happy news that R’d uncovered the rink with his snow-blowing tool! So George, barely home from his usual Saturday night G.S.I. hockey in Toronto … gulped his lunch, grabbed his skates & bolted out the door! i forced myself out into the frigid air behind him & trailed along. i’m so glad i did! From the crest of the hill over-looking the pond, R’s methodical spiral of ice & blue-hued snow was a mandala.

Such simple beauty … & no doubt the skaters have already swept it away. But it has only been transformed. A new mandala, created by shovels & blades & the quivering sun, has already appeared. By daybreak tomorrow, it too will be gone. Transmogrified. That’s the lesson of the pond. It’s the epitome of zen. Becoming. And becoming. And becoming. And it’s made an accidental buddhist out of George. So i left him & Dooze to meditate the rink & loitered my way back home through the altered terrain. In three other seasons, the little brook running into the swamp, babbles incessantly: weaving through the shady granite gorge, laughing around the boulder tumbled eons ago from the ridge above, & languishing briefly among the trees before spilling into sunshine. But under this shroud of winter white, all that babble & gab is barely a murmur. The boulder: an immutable mound. Dreaming of spring when her crown of ruby columbines will certainly unfurl. The only signs of activity out there today, were the puckered o’s of beaver holes & the intricate runes of birds. So i stood in the dappled play of light & listened to stillness. Not even a riffle of wind … just the faint chatter of frozen molecules & woody woodpecker’s distant drumming. That sort of chapel quiet is rare in the woods. i mosied slow. Aweing up into the stoic oaks, the towering pines & the low tangle of tenacious alders. Struck mute by the muscular shadows undulating over the pristine snow. i waded through a drift, over to the bench, for the long view. Now the swamp is a tufted tableau: tawny grasses & twiggy stars bursting up … through a scruffy bustle of white chiffon … into the rarefied air. A festive spray of orange berries clamours off into the surprised distance & i just sat there conjuring the sort of world that’s hidden in those luxurious folds. Things that scurry & slink & swim. Things that freeze solid & thaw to life at the equinox. But even in that astute silence, they kept their secrets. So i just sat there: watching my steamy breath vapour out & swim up. Into the blue yonder & beyond.

THAT WAS A MONTH AGO: Apparently .. & as usual, this missive is going to take a while to write. Deb & R hosted a skating party & a rowdy game of cranium .. Geo roused out a shinny game & couple spontaneous skates .. then some evil virus crept in & blasted our collective socks off. And it sure took a long time & some serious meds to get back up. We were pathetic in unison: moaning, groaning, slurping soup & tea .. sucking oranges. Sleeping: waiting for the fog to lift. Our brains hurt, though i did manage to read a stack of books & napped through a few movies. George started loading the megaton i-pod i gifted him for Christmas & we danced .. well, more like, shuffled .. through our musical scrapbook. And he hasn’t even delved past the c.d’s into the cassettes & all those albums yet .. so there’s still more dancin’ to do! SO

NOW: It’s been almost a year since we posted that enormous ‘blog’. My sister Linda printed out the whole thing: my fourteen pages plus Geo’s pics & addendums: 50 pages. Wow! That’s practically a novella. But then i amassed every newsletter from ‘84 ‘til now, in one binder, it turned out to be a tome. Wish i’d saved the earlier versions: written long hand, four at a time, on carbon paper. Nevertheless, it’s a chronicle of our lives & as i read through i watched me & my family grow. They begin when i was 32 & sometimes i cringed at my naive, impulsive, often pedantic, usually meandering & ridiculously optimistic self. Mostly i just marvelled at the journey. We’ve sure crammed a lot in. But for better or worse, i put myself out there. And made a memory map for our family trail.

PRESS REWIND: End of February ‘08, an intense deep-freeze settled in. Spoons & Mandy had to go search out new lodgings in Sault Ste. Marie, so i journeyed up to Red Rock to hang with Bob the cat, Levi the dog, Sierra the lizard & those two beautiful grandkids. And when i left at 5:00 that Thursday morning i had no idea that the scrunchy cold would eventually wreak havoc with the entire railway system & cause my train to run twelve hours late. It mightn’t have mattered, but it was Spooner’s last day at Domtar & he was being honoured at a farewell luncheon .. & Mandy had ‘Winter Carnival’ duties for the week-end. But someone still had to do the five hour round-trip to get me .. so when things got jammed up, it was Mandy who braved the inclement weather to fetch me.

HOW GRANDMA GOT HER GROOVE BACK: Right away we dashed off to the high-school for the annual ‘lip-sync’ contest. Everybody’s kids participate so practically the whole town was there. You can tell those kids work hard on their routines & it’s always fun to watch. Next morning, we were in to Thunder Bay for Sienna’s skating competition & supplies .. then once we finally jettisoned the parents, we bundled up & headed to the legion for the spaghetti dinner. It surprised me to recognize so many friendly Red Rockettes .. & since the kids knew everyone else, it took a while to get away. But those are two wonderful little people & easy to be with: curious, creative, helpful, polite & really generous with love. So we managed school & hockey & figure skating & library club. i learned the nuance of live feeding the lizard & Levi dragged me around town behind his leash a few times. i tidied up so the realtor could show the house & got to know the furnace repair dudes. We built pop-up books & sparkly things with paste. We drew & read & grandma learned new dance routines. i was totally exhausted every night but we definitely had fun! Though i must admit to panic when Nate dallied way too long at ‘reading club’ .. & a few nights in, at bedtime, they both seemed a little sad .. missing mom & dad .. so i suggested we call them up. Well they both started bawling. On the phone. Then grandma started bawling too. But apart from that & getting ratted out for yelling “oh, crap” in my fake Scottish accent .. we had a good time. And the big kids accomplished their mission & bought a very very very fine house.

WEIRD TRIPS: The day i left, George called with news the train was running late … but we had to leave early anyway. Spoons had a six hour drive to the Sault next day to start his new job, it was windy & sleety & we were too far away to gamble. So we arrived in Longlac about 11:30 p.m. & now the train was running even later. But i had snacks & a giant ‘Robin’s’ coffee & a trucker sized slab o’ pizza, so i waved to my boy & hunkered down. i’d been there before. Often. Matter of fact, George & i once did a twelve hour stint: reading graffiti, making up poems, playing cards & dozing. It’s grim: wedged between a strange maze of industry along rutted dirt roads & the paper mill. And pretty bleak: buzzing bright with fluorescent lights, bolted down rows of hard plastic chairs, a galvanized garbage can & funky washrooms. No ticket wicket, no clock, no travel posters .. just a coast to coast timetable & a pay phone to break the monotony. i’m sure i’ve said all that before. Anyhow, i called George for an update. C.N. dispatch now advised my train was stuck behind a derailment a couple miles west of town. At least another twelve hour delay. Curses! Foiled again!

MY KNIGHTS ERRANT: Feeling my plight to his core, my dear sweet man immediately telephoned the O.P.P. in Thunder Bay; who called the Jellicoe detachment; who sent along a handsome young buckaroo to save my day. i admit, i was sure it was bad news or busted, when a cop strolled into the station at 3:00 a.m., read my name from his notebook & asked if i was me. And i was, so he explained his mission, then mumbling something about regulations, he put me in back, behind the wire cage, no handles on the doors .. with my flask & all manner of things in my bag on the seat beside me . & we headed into town. i’ve gotta’ say, i did derive some perverse thrill from the notion that maybe, even at this stage of my life, i might look even slightly dangerous. But he quickly found out the staid truth, ‘cause we’d barely bounced out of the lot & i began rapping vigorously on the cage .. yelling “stop, stop!”. i couldn’t find my seatbelt & i didn’t want a ticket. But he laughed when i said that … ‘cause don’t you know, i could easily hang myself with a seatbelt … & he didn’t want me doing that. Then i wondered just how dangerous i actually looked. ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ came to mind. Out on the highway the nicer places were all shuttered & dark, despite their bleating ‘VACANCY’ signs .. but third try, we found one: a grungy, dimly lit dive, huddling behind a line of idling diesel trucks. It felt weird being escorted by ‘the law’ .. like some unsavoury woman he’d found in the night .. though i was glad he did. The place looked really sketchy, with one odd little man in neon orange rubber pants & a camouflage cap tilting on a kitchen chair in the corner of the lobby. He just kept up arguing loudly into his phone. The policeman dinged the bell & after a couple of minutes the guy sighed in exasperation & came over to see what we wanted. And ‘hell yah’ he had a room … & as i waited by the fire-door for the dude to buzz me through, i studied the remainders piled on a flimsy rack beside the door: a plaid shirt, a fine knit ladies cardigan, a couple greasy baseball caps, a busted umbrella, a kid’s pink mitt, one red high-heel shoe & a flimsy bit of lingerie laying atop the tawdry heap. Yikes. i shouId’ve climbed right back into that cop car & waited it out in the station .. but it was 3:30 a.m. & i was positively “all done in”. Though soon i wished i had! The room was an absolute nightmare: creepy, sticky, burnt out lights, matted shag rug & a rumpled bed. So i laid paper towels over the lime green swivel chair & spent the rest of the night, dozing fitfully in that. By eight in the morning i’d had enough, so i called for a cab. A rusty old van pulled up & an older woman got out & waved vaguely in my direction. She wore pink poodled p.j.’s under her parka & black rubber boots .. & when she kept waving, i shrugged & politely waved back. But when i turned away, the fellow at the desk said, “that’s Masie, there’s your ride”. So i got in, Masie & i went for coffee & she dropped me back off, in that middle of nowhere.

ON MY WAY: The train pulled into Longlac about 1:00 that afternoon & i took a long look back as i clambered aboard. We’ve had such a twisted affair with that forlorn place ever since ‘93 when Spoons went off to school. Heck i’ve practically got that timetable memorized. So it’s not likely we’ll forget the strange trips & surreal characters. Or Masie. But it was the end of an era .. & not a moment too soon! Then apart from the grumpy crew & even grumpier passengers .. i was quite relieved to finally be on my way. Usually this leg of the trip happens at night so it was different to traverse that raw country in daylight. It’s the edge of the wilding north: rock cuts just wide enough for the train, rivers roiling through canyons, streams meandering along, lakes frozen in place, trees as far as the eye can see. Animal tracks dipsy-doodled over the new fallen snow … a wolf raced us through a field then zagged across the tracks & disappeared. i saw an owl napping in a tree & ravens scratching ebony calligraphy into the clear blue sky. During the refuel in Hornepayne i strolled up the hill George tobogganed as a kid … then we clickety-clacked along .. through Oba, Neswatin, Minnipuka, Argolis, Peterbell, Elsas, Oatland, Missonga … some, just a couple shacks, or cottages around a lake, but often only a mileage marker & a trail leading off into the bush. At Felix, a small mob of families, two dozen snowmobiles & pyramids of beer greeted our arrival. We took on a carload of women & kids, dispersing south for spring break. Right away, they crowded to the windows .. hooting & waving. The men loaded their beer & drove alongside ‘til they finally waved back & veered off .. into the woods.

MEANWHILE: Back at dragonfly, R bought that snow-blower & promptly decamped for Florida with Deb & the McConnell’s, to commune with the sun & the spirits & the fish. And they barely made it away before the epic snowfall that buried Geo .. though at least now he was able to tunnel out using R’s big new tool. It’s a pretty slow go: about two & a half hours plus, to do the whole way, from the road on up to the peak .. so it becomes a sort of walking meditation: in white. But you can always count on tea with the neighbours & a snow blasted dog by your side. So by the time i finally arrived home: dazed & somewhat confused .. the whole wide world was a surreal vista of turrets & spires & hummocky mounds.

AIMING FOR EXCLAIM: i was ready for a long winter’s nap .. but things just speeded up. George’d injured his rotator cuff splitting firewood some months before & it was getting so he could barely pull his shirts on, let alone play hockey. So when he finally allowed things weren’t improving, he spent the next few weeks re-grooving at physio & soaking for hours in the tub. Basically aiming toward the 10th annual ‘Exclaim Hockey Summit’ in Toronto. That twisted knee kept him on the bench in ‘07 & he was determined not to miss again. Plus he now he had some t-shirts & toques manufactured to sell for the G.S.I. charity of choice, ‘Right To Play’. The logo is a slight re-working of a drawing of ‘grandpa’ that Sienna rendered onto a practice jersey a few years ago. Turned out the Exclaim folks liked it so much they reproduced it in the program & Sienna got full credit. So that was cool! i stayed home with the dog & missed all the excitement: the amazing Islander / Morningstar jam on ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ at the El Mocombo; Dom being awarded M.V.P.; & best of all, the Gas Station Islanders winning their division & the Cup. Geo had a blast & in the video Dyl shot of the celebration in the dressing room, i think everybody did. It’s priceless: a bunch of mostly young men, in various states of undress, swilling beer out of the rusty Cup & hooting out their theme song ‘Go Gas Go’.

WINTER SUBSIDED IN SLOW DEGREES: Retreating in rivulets one day / rebounding with feisty jabs the next. Then one week into April, a feeble spring snow in lacy jags left melting doilies on the lawn … & robins hopping around & folding them up. Next morning, as if on cue, a fierce warrior sun shattered the slate grey sky & daggered through. We were lured out early by the jubilant cacophony in the trees & the visceral warmth waking up the world. We spent that day breathing in miracles. Periwinkle emerged: glossy & eagerly green. A heron groked in. Crows appeared in pinwheels. Fritallaria burst open. Water oozed out of rocks. Gnats spiraled. Trees ruddied up. Tulips bossed up through the leafy mulch & grew. And one astonished monarch unfurled & ribboned through the ripening air. Those early days were intoxicating. No bugs to contend with: perfect for collecting firewood, raking up winter debris .. watching jonquils unfurl. Mid-month we captured the groundhog who ravaged my gardens last year. He wasn’t too happy with us, but the feeling was kinda’ mutual so we relocated him up the road to the ‘ranch’. He should be grateful: Geo’d been taking potshots with the slingshot & Doozer spent a great deal of time excavating his tunnels. So he got a reprieve & i got to fill in holes. Hope he’s happy. We deported four red squirrels too, but ‘Half-tail’ just gathered a horde of re-enforcements & followed George right back home. So for now, we’ve a glut of squirrels, an uneasy truce & acorn stashes everywhere.

FAUX PAS: Around that time, Al & Judy made a dinner party (well, i’m pretty sure it was Judy ‘cause i’m not so sure Giffie could‘ve finessed that) … anyhow: it was wonderful. A couple other railroaders & their wives .. & wine & hors d’oeuvres .. & wine & canapes .. & wine & a frosty margarita .. & i do know better than to drink that much. So when Judy announced dinner, i tippled in & sat where i was told. And i was just leaning forward to compliment the hostess on the beautiful table setting … flickering votives tucked among flowers woven up through .. & i shifted my place setting & my cloth napkin suddenly burst into flames. Oops! Luckily for me, Judy was standing right there .. so i picked up that flaming fan, which was burning rather artfully, & held it up: “Judy, better drop this in the sink”. And what a cool, cool kitty: she just took it & carried it away. Then tsheeeeew .. when it hit the dishwater & WHEW from me!

BEGINNING MAY: Cousin Robert showed up from Vancouver & we gabbed ourselves into a stupor every night .. well, no doubt the whiskey helped. Drove to Ottawa one sunny afternoon to see Richard & Pat, their two rag-doll cats & the teeny-tiny pooch. Pat plied us with food & we watched Rick’s videos & i saw how much restraint he used in the Hunter family portrait d.v.d.. The ones he made for Pat’s family are merciless roasts .. so it could’ve gone either way! Another day, we hit the local garden centre & i spent more than usual with Rob to egg me on! Then he was off to pick up his Bob (somewhere near Oshawa visiting his sister) & carried on to the Falls before heading home. His dad, my uncle Carson, was really not well & had already said so long. Rob didn’t know what to expect when he finally got home. And all we could do, was send our heart thoughts west with him.

MAIS OUI: George took off with his G.S.I. teammates for the ‘International Ice Hockey Federation: 2008 World Oldtimers Tournament’ in Quebec City. Russians kicked their butts. Royally! Never mind that: it was all for fun. One day, a gang of ‘em shunned the shuttle bus & did the long walk down into the old city. Dom & Kev (both native Quebecois) led the tour & Kev showed them a plaque on a building commemorating his renowned Livernois ancestors’ photography establishment. As for me, i spent that sunny morning scraping paint & pulling weeds at the Marble Church in Actinolite. It’s one of a kind & when it’s all spiffed up our Tweed & Area Arts Council will have a marvelous venue. Just imagine all those creative juices under one roof! So it’s upgrades by increments & the possibilities are endless.

A FORCEFIELD OF LOVE: Skye, Dyl, Dex & Sarah Trask showed up next for Skye’s usual request: a spaghetti dinner, to celebrate her 30th & Dexter’s 2nd. It was our last chance to visit Sarah before she left to join her sweet-heart back east. For now, they’re just practicing “happily ever after” & this July, she & Tommy will make it official. Good time for a big family hug. It drizzled rain so we had a wonky game of ‘Clue’, rocked the stereo, watched some movies, then the girls dropped me at the train, so i could ‘represent’ at the Hunter family reunion in Niagara Falls. i stayed with ‘my’ Jan. Doug was away camping so we scrabbled & gabbed & next afternoon she delivered me to the party. Cathy was totally under the weather, though she delegated enough jobs to Barb & Gord, then to whomever walked through the door, that it came together nicely. It was mawsy & cold so we watched Gord flip burgers then piled inside for Linda’s taco salad, a daub of ‘green goo’ & a great sampling of delectables. Then the usual banter over the last deviled egg & the chronic ingestion of too much dessert. It was a relief to see aunt Lola. Start of ‘08, she’d moved into Cavendish Manor on Dunn Street: a mere field & a few houses away from the house she’d lived much of her adult life in. They’ve converted Falls View Public School into a lovely senior’s residence & since the actual ‘view’ was commandeered by skyscraping hotels, screaming neon & all sorts of touristy stuff, they had to change the name. But, she’s back in her ‘hood’. Mine too in a way. And even some of you. We attended that school: a beautiful stone block building with ‘BOYS’ & ‘GIRLS’ chiseled into the archways. i remember lining up. And the funky damp smell of the pool: the echoey sound when someone called your name in there .. the steamy windows & the golden light that beamed through. There was a minty green lunchroom in the basement, with the dustbane & the mops. And the boiler banging with the ductwork overhead. On the other hand, recess was wide open air. Trees & blue skies & a wavering veil of mist. i started kindergarten there .. in a little plaid jumper, before the move to Ottawa .. then grade three when we moved back. Now it’s hard to even recognize the place. But i digress. So there was a fire on aunt Lola’s floor & she was evacuated, straight out of the tub … initially to the firehouse (where uncle Joe worked) across the street, then up to Chippawa to the senior’s home that mom & the aunties worked in all those years ago. Even our great aunts, Clarissa & Gladys lived there a while too! Pops lived there too, but that’s a whole other story .. & it’s all just too much ‘Groundhog Day’! But Lola made it to the shindig, just slightly worse for wear .. & apart from smoke damage, her room was spared & she’s since been moved back home. A lot of upheaval in any event. It was the usual gabfest: i quizzed John on his boat in the barn project & got the update on his & Sally’s trek along the escarpment: an adventure in installments .. right up Ontario’s spine! Joey brought her Dave & introduced him around. And we met the blended brood. Brave of Dave i thought, but no sweat, he fit right in! Playoff hockey was on Gord’s gigantic t.v. in the solarium, so that captured most of the kids & some of the men .. but since “my” team’s sitting out again, there was no temptation there. For me, it was fun just to flit around & catch up. The indomitable Joy arrived & got everybody laughing. Then she & Lola & Lola’s friend Sandra, started riffing off each other .. our very own ‘Golden Girls’ routine .. to which we replied with hoots & guffaws! Joy was the Bowman’s neighbour back over on Barker Street, virtually forever .. & along with Rose & George McKinnon .. were like extended family. But sad to say, this past winter Joy passed away & she will be missed. That lady was a force to be reckoned with! Later, i made a pitch to help fund Richard’s 8mm film recovery project ‘cause i so enjoyed the first installment. We grew up on that d.v.d. accompanied by Richard’s corny, though somehow appropriate, soundtrack. While we talked, images of those cousins as gangly kids floated around in my head: up at our farm north of Wiarton, all jumbled in with my Given clan .. or at Berford Lake or Sauble Beach. There’s birthdays & reunions .. some at Shannonville & then here. And our parents too: young vivacious, hopeful. But it was a costly & time consuming venture. Rob & i chucked some cash into the coffers up in Ottawa & i was hoping to inspire others to do the same. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Heck, i think Rick would just be happy to locate a lightbulb for that old 8mm projector.

BACK AT DRAGONFLY: Spring was unfurling in very tiny increments. Oh the lilacs were fragrant with grapey little clusters & the honeysuckle dripping with bees .. but it wasn’t ‘til the last days in may that the earth actually warmed up. Then some fundamental shift occurred & it turned torpid with heat. The blackflies & mosquitoes appeared in unison & everything else just peaked at once. So i stayed out, battling bugs & the sulky weather that brought them on .. & got the garden started. And excepting the Toronto play-offs, George’s hockey was pretty well done .. so he was in & out at that .. & ramping up for the next round.

THE STORY OF NISKA: About a year & a half ago, Geo’s brother Don (Donimo Hum) met Cindy & Heiko Bank on his meter-reading route in Newfoundland. And if you know Hum, you know he can talk & carry forth on any number of subjects to anyone .. so no surprise that he soon discovered they’d fallen in love with Twillingate on holiday & relocated from Midland, Ontario to renovate the ‘Rumrunners Roost’ into a bed & breakfast. And, in summer ‘08, they intended to fetch their boat & sail her home. Heiko & Cindy built the Niska: a gaff rigged replica of an 1860’s east coast stay-sail schooner. She’s 60’ tall, 60’ long, 13’6” across the beam, with a 6’3” draft: so far too big for the short-cut through the Trent-Severn & she’d have to sail all the way around. Heiko figured the trip would last about six weeks & he was casting about for crew. Well, Donimo volunteered on the spot. Then he invited George, & George invited Tom Wager, & Heiko had his crew. So when everything fell together, there was a lot to do. George got permission to stow a small load of cedar aboard & toss it off in Exploits on their way by .. but since our own cedar bush is thoroughly exhausted, he had to buy some. And a floater coat & some rubber gear & a wet suit & peanut butter & coffee & cheese…! i got George to rejig some of the board & batten .. & hang up new & unusual bat-bafflers .. & caulk as many bat adits as we could find. i was thrilled he’d happened into the ‘adventure of a lifetime’, but i couldn’t fathom dealing with bats. And when Heiko arrived in Ontario, Geo & Tom drove up to meet the captain & check out the ship. They needed to know she was seaworthy. Well, Heiko put them right to work. The boat had been in dry-dock for a couple years & was dried right out. She badly needed caulking. And paint. And engine repairs. And a radio. And the toilets weren’t working. But they tossed in together, gave Niska a fresh coat of paint & a new lease on life. They worked hard & when the boys dragged in later that night, carrying boat parts & lists .. they were hungry, tired & stoked for the adventure.

BUT FIRST: Geo carved Heiko a new Lunenburg sign, then one with St. John’s to replace it (once the ship gets re-registered in Nfld.) .. & spent the rest of the week tieing up loose ends, while the heat sizzled & maple keys rained on the lawn. At weeks end, we took a dervish turn into T.O. for a wedding & a hockey game. Odd combination .. i know! Dom & Jenna were ‘welded’ in a delightful ceremony in the courtyard of Hart House on the U. of T. campus under a clear blue sky. Ah! Youth & beauty. The ambience was perfect & as the celebrations wore on, the night became lucid with moonlight & a refreshing breeze. Very next day, the groom doffed his tux for a G.S.I. jersey & joined his team for the ‘Good Times Hockey League of the Arts’ play-off finals. It was exciting: tied 0-0 with the La Hacienda Flying Burritos, all the way through .. then in overtime, a G.S.I. goal & a win! So they’re champions again! And Go Gas Go! It was a wonderful & wacky, whirlwind week-end & early Monday morning, Al collected the sailors with their carload of gear & aimed his car at Georgian Bay.

LUCKILY: Lynn showed up at the same time, with buckets of Stoco Fen manure for my garden. So there was something else to think about. We meandered & gabbed the morning away, then suddenly i was alone. It’s such a weird & rare thing to spend days on end just talking to yourself .. though i’ve gotta’ say, i loved the novelty of it! i made lists of chores & did them. Or not. i wrote. i read. i meditated. i puttered in my garden. i went out. i entertained. i played ‘Fraser & Debolt’ & the ‘Weakerthans’ over & over. Nothing out of the ordinary: just totally free-form. Excepting of course the dog, whose keen sense of time never really let things slide. But i did get into a very fine groove.

ALONE TOGETHER: John Vainstein dropped by on his way to the cottage. i had dinner at Stoco Fen. Partied at Ochlomed. Had a few ladies in for martinis. Lolly-gagged a couple days when Kathy Manuel detoured to dragonfly en route from Hong Kong to Exploits. R delivered a pint of sweet organic strawberries. I went to a play with my friends. Pat came by for coffee. And despite how i tried to burn up their party, Al & Judy invited me to go with them & boogie at the Waterfront Festival in Belleville. Then Karen & Dan were kind enough to cart me home. Everyday i fielded calls on the progress of the sailors. And beside my bedroom door, the mock orange grew floosie with blooms .. & i fell asleep every night in a heady delirium of perfume.

AT THE MARINA: Getting the Niska ship-shape was slow work. Donimo had arrived in Ontario, plundered Lori’s freezer for supplies & joined Heiko, by the time Geo & Tom showed up June 9th. They spent most of the first week on repairs & being the smallest, Geo got intimate with the cramped engine room. They had her lifted in & out of the water twice for leaks & finally, third time’s a charm, she stayed in. But they got to know Midland & made friends & partied under the stars. Tom & Geo drove over to King’s Wharf Theatre to see Ace Piton, but that very day, Billy & Lynn were visiting too & he was away. And almost every night they discovered exactly where the rain leaked in. Then, caulking guns in hand, they finally sailed away.

UNDERWAY: i’m going to leave the details to George .. suffice to say: they sailed, they motored, they got storm-stayed, they met ‘schooner groupies’ & ‘boat-bunnies’, picked up hitchhikers & visited with Lori then Linda Davies then Kathy Manuel in various ports of call along the way. They waved at the Lillys passing by the park in Windsor, & ‘my’ Jan at the Allenburg bridge on the Welland Canal. One morning, Ken & Kathy, Don’s chums from Windsor, sailed alongside, snapping fabulous pics of Heiko & crew on the Niska under full sail. They waited out tornadoes .. & crossed Lake Erie under a brilliant bowl of stars. George said it felt sometimes, like he was falling up. He carried his embattled mandolin everywhere & entertained, at least himself. And learned to read nautical charts & honed his G.P.S. skills. So he became the navigator. Don was ‘cookie’ down in the galley & kept a meticulous log. And apart from the skipper, the only real sailor was Tom .. so automatic first mate … & he kept the crew in the rigging & spelled Heiko at the helm. Downtimes they searched out food, laundromats, showers & phones. Mostly Geo was “up” when he’d call: so thoroughly diggin’ the trip .. & thanks to Wags who lobbied for sail whenever there was a breath of wind .. some glory days of that .. but some Niska blues too: weather, boat issues, a revolving stomach upset, a bucket in the head …

ALL SHOOK UP: And then a calamity shook the crew .. literally, to pieces. Being old school schooner, the Niska has no such thing as bow-thrusters & isn’t easy to slow or reverse. So for the wrong split second in the Welland Canal, a mega-ton laker-freighter, sucked her right in & side-swiped ‘er: ripping the davits & dinghy completely off & snapping the main-mast boom. Scary moment that! Though it certainly could’ve been much worse. Of course, there was an immediate investigation: with interviews & notepads & videotapes .. & the schooner herself was declared still sound .. but when everybody finally exhaled, the same couldn’t be said of the crew. That turned into a very long day. A day of decisions. Tom & George were so rattled they went to Jan & Doug’s in the Falls. Jan had been there. Waving. She heard the enormous collision, & though she said it crossed her mind, she couldn’t let herself believe it had anything to do with her friends. And since she was on the wrong side to actually see the event .. Jan just got in her car & drove home. Later they called Jan & Doug to please come back & rescue them. Don was rattled too, but he chose to stay the night aboard with Heiko. Next morning, everyone agreed, the adventure was going to pause, or maybe even stop, right then & there. It was a tough conclusion, but Heiko could not proceed without repairs to the alternator & a steering cable .. & vacation time was running out for Donimo & Wags. They could see Heiko was discouraged & seemed poised to abandon his mission. Apparently, he actually voiced surprise that they’d stayed as long as they did. So they collected their gear, crammed it into the Foster’s jetta & Doug delivered them home. George said it was the saddest thing: leaving the skipper, head in hands, lacking both resources & finances & a mutinied crew.

TIME TO REGROUP: But i was happy to see them. Don’s pre-booked flight home was in four days & George & Tom needed a break. Geo promised Heiko, if he made it across Lake Ontario, he’d facilitate the woodworking repairs .. so four days later when he motored into Myer’s Pier, the men dismantled the rigging (no mean feat on a ship of her size), hauled the broken parts up here & our patio was transformed into a temporary shipyard. Then, since it was O Canada Day, we drove back down to Belleville & boarded the battered Niska to cheer at the fireworks bursting into the night. Little rainbow stars. It was absolutely lovely.

FAMILY HUG: Next morning Skye, Dyl & Dex arrived. And by some stroke of luck & good timing, Sienna & Nate were just around the corner at their Haynes grandparents, while mom & dad moved house from Red Rock to the Sault. George went & fetched them .. & suddenly, we had a full house. So Heiko had an audience & we got to play with kids. We tried versions of bocce & croquet around Dooze & Dex who kept absconding with the balls .. & swam an afternoon away at the Ochlomed pool. That night we took a picnic to the pier, loaded up the cedar & toured the kids around the ship. Grandpa climbed the rigging & wowed around in the wind. i’m pretty sure they were impressed. i sure was. And squinting up into the sun like that .. who knows? .. it might’ been Jack Sparrow .. looking for a pearl! Oh i know .. dream on! And lots of time for that i guess .. ‘cause by nine the next morning .. everyone was gone.

ANCHORS AWEIGH: Rejuvenated & repairs complete, Heiko was all set to continue. Tom had a couple more days before work so he joined up & they had a couple glorious days sailing to Gananoque. But once Tom was gone, with a crew of only two, Geo & Heiko only motored through the scenic Thousand Islands & negotiated some pretty hairy moorings. After a week of sun & rain they finally made Valleyfield. Next day was the challenge of navigating into Montreal .. but when it dawned, drizzling rain .. George called at 7 a.m. with another bad case of the Niska blues. Seemed the weather was taking it’s toll & in spite of the slew of man hours spent bent over caulking, there were still lots of unsolved leaks. And apparently Heiko was ready to quit again. He confessed to being over-budget .. his lone crewman, though no slouch, was definitely not first mate material: nor experienced as Tom .. not to mention, six weeks into the journey & he was only half way home. And back on the Rock, his wife running a brand new business while overseeing renovations & she was all alone. So all things considered, i advised George to just come home. It was a terrible thing to abandon ship again, but i knew he had to do it. i could hear it in his voice: he felt defeated. We had a trip planned to the Sault in ten days anyway & it was a pretty sure bet the Niska wouldn’t be reaching Twillingate any time soon. So George called his cabbie friend from the C.N. days & Martin drove him downtown Montreal to catch a train. And when that man finally straggled through the door that night .. i smothered his sad ruddy face with kisses.

SOLITUDE INTERRUPTED: Nice he came home .. though ‘til he rounded up a body to replace him on the Niska he couldn’t stop ‘being on the boat’. But once he did, he relaxed .. briefly .. into being home. And kind of unexpectedly, we squeezed in the G.S.I. b.y.o. picnic that got relocated from the ancestral home of the Gas Station Islanders on Toronto Island, to Don Kerr’s living room, when it rained. It was actually quite wonderful just to socialize with the folks Geo spends every Saturday night with, September to June. All out of their sweaty gear .. & even fully dressed. It’s a happy thing he gets to do: the people, the pucks, the music .. it rejuvenates him. Matter of fact: it’s his addiction. OM: So, while he seems intent on cramming things in: i’m taking things out. Simplifying really. Paying more conscious attention to the moment i’m in. It was so easy here alone. Learning the slow lime green joy dance of an inch worm, tasting it’s way along our railing. Making love to the air. And the diligence of ants. It took a co-ordinated effort & such a long time, for a small army of ants to carry a dehydrated earthworm across a row in my garden. They held it like a prize. There was a leader & scouts & porters & movers of dirt. Of course, only one tiny grain at a time. And i learned how to sit: allowing energy in .. like the slowly pulsing mound of garter snakes that sat beside me. There are so many things in the world. And so much wonder.

ON TO THE SAULT: In traveling time it’s a whole day closer: just two picnics, one traffic jam & a leisurely scenic .. & still we arrived in time to kiss the grandkids good-night. So YAHOO! Took a hotel room at a place with a pool for the first couple of nights .. then we moved onto the futon in the basement of the new digs. It’s a family friendly house on a tree lined street & even though it’s smack dab in the ‘burbs’, it’s got a roomy back yard with a charming overgrown garden, a patio for the ‘bbq’, a thick hedge of raspberries, red current bushes, rhubarb, a cherry tree, a funky little garden shed & an arbor just groaning with great clusters of grapes. All that & the kids just open a gate in the back fence to get to school. Sure jammed a lot into that week: the ‘Bush Plane Museum’, a long rambling hike, a goofy ‘Space Chimps’ movie, swims in the pool, tours of the neighbourhood, romps around the park, a beachy day on St. Joseph’s Island. And boy oh boy, did we eat raspberries. That was a kind of nirvana for me. Spooner won a ‘Wii’ game in a raffle, so we had fun with that .. baseball & bowling & golf .. though it seemed i scored better, when i played all those things, somehow backwards. But one of the best moments happened in a sudden downpour .. when the kids spontaneously stripped down to glory around in the gurgling puddles that appeared there. Just “singing … (at the top of their lungs) … in the rain”. Happily, there were already little people banging on the door & it looked like everyone was adjusting quite nicely. Mandy was still in decorating mode, though it was already looking just like home. And Spoons likes his new job at the M.N.R. .. matter of fact, he’s already earned a promotion to supervisor .. though with all the government cut-backs, i hope he doesn’t find, that he’s only in charge of himself. And it was great to see the relief on their faces when the realtor called with the news that the house in Red Rock finally sold.

THEN TURN SOUTH: Took the long way home across Manitoulin with a pit-stop at Karen & Johny Corbierre’s new place at M’Chigeeng. They’d just moved, but renovations were already well underway. And since Johny wanted his truck that was still parked in Brad’s driveway near Belleville, we carried him along to the Cheechimun, across a sparkly Georgian Bay & down the Bruce to Owen Sound. Dropped him at the bus & landed in on Lorio almost at dark. Then Skye, Dyl & Dex joined up & we kinda’ partied on. Took in the ‘Electric Eclectic’ Festival .. up a rutty winding lane to the crest of a hill behind someone’s art project house. It certainly lived up to it’s name, with some highly unusual musical offerings to an equally unusual crowd. It was all fairly surreal .. but cool to see that little boy dance with wild abandon. Then marvel off into the long wavy grass, while the psychedelic sun blazed off into the west .. & an enormous smiling moon rose up to take it’s place. Enjoyed a couple more beach days .. the best was at Sauble, so redolent with memory for me .. & a great afternoon visit with Hugh & Linda Davies in Southampton. Moira was in England, but when she was still at school, she’d taken a co-op term with a master art restorer at a gallery in the Sound. And lucky us, Lori managed to finagle a private after-hours tour of the fifty or so Norval Morriseau pieces he was working on. So we took a bottle of scotch & got a look behind the scenes. The guy’s good: we saw ‘befores’ & ‘afters’ & picked his brain .. & It was really quite a revelation to see all that alchemy & magic in his little bag of tricks. It’s like he CAN actually work miracles. So we oohed & ahhed around & he answered all our questions. The Morriseau’s were primarily early works from two private collections .. but since the artist had recently departed the planet, i guess they were getting ready to share. i’m glad they did. That guy drew on anything: paperbags, cardboard, plywood .. especially when he was just kind of ….. surviving. We stumbled across a couple such pieces in Iron Bridge, at the Red Top Motor Inn. He’d traded the owner’s dad for carpentry services back in the day. Nowadays, the inn is a bit of a shambles, but it sure was cool to notice them .. hanging there behind the desk. In any event, you can certainly tell Norval was channeling some other realm: making cryptic maps, so we might follow too.

WIARTON WILLIE: So, long week-end in August, we were in the right place at the right time for what we hope was the ‘first’ annual Given clan reunion. Many moons ago, we used to do this up at Berford Lake. But not since grandpa died. i always thought .. except for Roth Park & Hanson’s old cabins .. that he must’ve owned the whole place. i remember excursions out “to check on things” as a kid .. sometimes with a batch of cousins .. on the wagon, behind the tractor, to the lake .. or maybe bumping through the fields to this giant mud hole. There was a defunct (zinc?) mine somewhere & a long trek through a meadow to an old homestead, where we picked a basket & a kerchief full of perfect apples. And a place prickly with juniper where wild strawberries ran in a ribbon alongside a stream. They looked like rubies. And tasted just like sunshine. Grandpa was a good steward .. naming names for all those places: like .. “the old — place” .. so you felt the presence of past. And by saying it out loud .. he somehow found a way to honour that. Our reunion was a casual affair. We ate our picnic lunch then sat around catching up .. looking over old photo albums. The kids basically amused themselves: making forays back & forth to the Wiarton Fair or just puddling around the little beach. We got some great group shots of everyone hanging off the giant groundhog .. then Alison kidnapped Dex & introduced him to all the rides. We got pics of that too: at the very tip-top of the ferris wheel .. Alison demonstrating exactly how Dex should throw his tiny little arms into the air & just squeal. It was a good afternoon: though i’m always amazed that we’re getting to be the oldsters. Of course, the real elders, aunt Bev & uncle Jack were there .. making us four generations deep. Oh what a happy thing. And i’m pretty sure grandma & grandpa Given & the gang, were up there somewhere, smiling down!

HOME AGAIN: Drove across country under a sweltering sun with a menace of roiling thunder clouds that stayed at our backs all the way home. Collected Dooze from the kennel & corn for dinner & found it strange to be alone. Strange to have time together with nothing much to do. Oh there was Nicola & Brad’s lovely outdoor wedding, & Janice & Peter’s 25th anniversary party over at ochlomed (which lasted half a day & well into the night) .. & a few surprise visitors … but mostly we were just home. Geo played some ball with his friend Scottie’s team. We hiked around. We hauled a heap of stuff to the dump. We visited Shaft, the neighbours cat, when they went to P.E.I. And took in Tweed’s Art In the Park. Nice to be normal. Good to be home.

TROUBLE WITH NORMAL: Well it just didn’t last. In the month & a half since Geo left the Niska, he’d spent a bit of almost every day tracking Heiko’s slow progress up the St. Lawrence & trying to worry up more crew. So when Heiko finally made Blanc-Sablon on the Labrador / Quebec border .. & could almost smell St. Anthony .. they arranged to meet, so George could help crew the ‘Niska’ home. He was so ready! And right after Labour Day, Lorio was flying down to visit Lorraine in Gambo, so Geo booked into her flight .. then Donimo & Lorna made the day long drive north in a sleety rain to deliver Geo to the boat. Next morning Heiko needed fuel & a case of oil, so they couldn’t leave right away. Geo was feeling anxious ‘cause two hurricanes were chasing each other up the U.S. coast. He didn’t feel qualified to be at sea in that. And when they didn’t get refueled ‘til after noon there was another day’s delay. But at daybreak, when it was raining again, George realized he couldn’t stay. Not enough time. Even if the skies suddenly cleared & all went tickety-boo (neither of which were likely), it would be at least three or four days going south. But weather WAS in the immediate picture & the skipper was fretting about his engine. So, once again, feeling totally defeated, Gee called Donimo .. who’d ferried to Labrador & back in the meantime .. & they all stood on the wharf & waved as Heiko headed out in a drizzling mist: alone. Then they packed the forlorn sailor into the car & took the long ride south. Again.

RECOVERY: The hurricanes more or less petered out by the time they reached Newfoundland .. though they did bring gales & days of rain. And Heiko only made it another day down the Northern Peninsula, when the tired old engine finally blew. If he’d had a crew he probably would’ve tried to sail her home .. but alone with no boat available to give him a tow, nor resources to repair the engine, he was more or less stranded in Bide Arm. Poor Heiko was stuck there for days. Then he winterized as best he could & finally .. seventeen weeks later .. made his way home. So i guess it was all for the best. George got a good visit with his mom & both siblings in one fell swoop .. & eventually got Lorraine out to Exploits. Our partners, Dirk & Petra were there too, so they visited around the harbour, paddled out to poke around Gull Island Cove, ate fish & berries then excavated rocks & nettles from below the septic tank to extend our rudimentary field tile. Whew .. hot, itchy work! So then they dove into the ocean to cool off.

HEY, MAKE YERSELF AT HOME: George arrived home the day after my 56th birthday. i definitely wasn’t lonely: with time off work waiting for surgery to replace her gimpy hip, my Jan drove up & stayed a week. i offered to drive her in the wheelbarrow so we could take a hike .. but for some reason she just laughed at that. We tag-teamed Dex when Skye came for Irene’s surprise party. Jan wanted to see ‘Across the Universe’ so we watched, while Dex just fiddled away on the floor .. making a colourful parade of hockey men & super-heroes. But every time a song came around .. well he’d just stand right up & dance. It’s easy to see, that nut didn’t fall far from the tree! Then on hiatus from her job in the Phillipines, Ange Beer came home with Skye & i had to confess on the spot that i’d murdered her jade. Skye gave it to her when she first went off to school .. & the jade had obviously prospered. It was the off-spring of one from Ben Veldhuis (sp?) in Dundas when i was pregnant with Spoons. She’d left it in her parents care & when they were headed off on a cross-continental tour, they brought the plant to me. And i wished i’d thought of this at the time, but my lovely old (sorry Spoons) jade had contracted an incurable virus & recently died on it’s own. i guess we’re harbouring spores ‘cause i’m pretty sure that’s what got Ange’s too. Sorry. But i’ve got babies started again. And plenty of hope. So you see, it would’ve been hard to be lonely, but when it came around, it was good to finally have my man at home.

HARVEST: Not sure how it was where you are, but the unique geography of dragonfly predicated some very odd weather last year. After all that gnarly snow, spring kinda’ just snailed in & it just stayed too cold & wet to plant. There were days & days of eerie fog & variations on grey .. ‘til old sol finally mustered the strength to evaporate the last vestiges of winter & split the sky with heat. It got muggy fast & almost every day, big black barrow clouds stoked the horizon, though they mostly sailed away .. & we sweltered on. Everything got pretty well parched in all this granite & sand. But with diligent watering, my second crop of lettuce & peas quickly surpassed the struggling first. That happens fairly often .. ‘cause in my usual spring enthusiasms i always plant too soon. Then just as we began enjoying that, a deer browsed through & polished it off in a night. i nursed a third crop through the smoldering summer which finally thrived into fall, but those deer scuffed into the carrots too .. chipmunks picked the tomatoes green & early birds cut down my beans. Repeatedly. So all i got was a few squash, bushels of golden zucchini & an unnaturally high yield of jalapeno peppers.

GRATITUDE: The autumn calendar packed up fast. All the hockeys began at once. We spent a few days in Dundas. It was kinda’ neat just to plunk Dex in his wagon & haul him over to see Ev (sorry we missed you Rob). We gabbed in their delightful back garden & got the scoop on her show in the impending Hamilton Art Crawl. Katherine arrived while we were there & it kinda’ caught me off guard to see that their little girl had grown up into a lovely, articulate, young woman. Next, Marcus dropped by for coffee in Skye’s garden shed .. & it was just a short walk over to yak with Weeds & have a tea. One night we met up with most all the Hudeckis at McMaster & cheered for Elliot, #78 & his football team. Mary H. brought the cowbell & we sure made some noise! Then for my birthday prize, we took front row at the Casbah for the lovely & weird Martin Tielli. He certainly gets out there: on the beautiful fragile edge. Ravishing the crowd. Taking chances …..! And i was there! Around that time, the pine needles rained down in a day. We raked up heaps & heaps of them. Lorio came for thanksgiving with Moira who’d recently returned home from her bohemian investigations abroad. Skye & Dex came too, leaving Dyl home to put the finishing touches on that Caledonia c.d. So we basked in the glorious warmth while Dex dismantled the pine needle piles then the neighbours brought their guests down the hill for a marathon game of croquet . And when the feasting was done & the company gone, we got right down to business: stowing firewood & thinking toward winter. Weeds dropped in on his way to work up on James Bay .. borrowed Allman Brothers, Little Feat, Hot Tuna & boogied on. When he came back to return them, we just sat on a log & soaked up the last of the autumn sun. And counted our blessings.

THE BIRDS: It was time to gather the gnomes up close to the house & put a bucket on the gargoyle’s head. i do so enjoy that chore. There’s doo-dads & gee-gaws everywhere, which means i visit all the nooks & crannies. And notice things differently than in spring when the surge of life is so distracting. In autumn, the earth is stripped down to bare bones, exposing her solid dignity. And all that ingenuity. If i’m lucky i’ll see a swirl of swallows, or a phalanx of geese vees honking south. Last fall, raking mulch over the gardens, i began to notice an undercurrent of twittering. Blue-black birds began swooping in .. & swooping in .. & swooping in. The twittering got louder & louder. And pretty soon every limb on every tree around me had a bird on it. The twittering became a cacophany … then suddenly, it just stopped. There was total, utter silence. It was so eerie & weird. And having seen Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ i beat a path into the house with Dooze close in on my heels. But i wanted to witness this phenomenon .. so i skulked back up & crouched under a pine tree .. & one by one they flew away. Ebony wings slicing surprised air. Leaving only silence.

ON THE FLY: That kind of profound quiet touched something rare in me & i carried it around a while. Good thing too: kept me grounded through the next surge of activity. Heck in that one week after thanksgiving, between all that beavering & hockey, we trained it into Toronto for a Bidini gig at the Cameron, then out of the blue, Colleen, from the B.D.R. days connected with Geo on facebook. She was touring in one direction & her main squeeze, Ron Sexsmith, was touring in the other. They planned to rendevous that Friday at Ron’s Empire Theatre gig in Belleville, so Colleen invited us to the show. And yahoo to that. Ron was note perfect & we crammed in a quick visit while the roadies packed up the gear. Saturday was book club so Geo finally got to talk on about Paul Quarrington’s ‘King Leary’ & Sunday we heard a talk on Exploits at the local Speaker’s Club.

FUNNY THING THAT: At one time, Judith Wolfe was married to Pat Wolfe. He taught the ten week log building course that George took six of to got this nesting project started. Now, Judith is hooked up with John Braden, living just north of here in Queensborough. John’s relatives met Geo while he was opening up the house in Exploits with cousin Garry one year. They were kayaking Notre Dame Bay & got invited in for dinner & a good night’s rest. So when Judith & John told our friends, Marilyn & John, about their forthcoming trip to Newfoundland, Marilyn suggested they give us a call. And long story shorter, they too fell under the Exploits spell & bought a house. A charming little place that was built & owned by one of George’s great uncles .. a Sceviour, who like some of the Manuels, were ship-builders too. So John & Judith presented their travelogue & we went along for the ride. Talk about six degrees of separation. In any event, it was difficult to sit through without shouting out & adding our own excitements in. So that’s another pebble in the pond & I’ve no doubt at all .. someday, we’ll make a wave.

BOO & BOOHOO: From the very early days, when we hauled our own little goblins into town to knock on doors, it’s been a long standing tradition to dress up, or not, on All Hallow’s Eve to drink wine with Pat & Phil Cockburn at their generous kitchen table. It’s often rowdy & always fun to guess who’s under the masks at the door. So we did that again this year .. though likely for the last time .. ‘cause april 2nd, they returned to find their home going up in flames. Our friends are physically o.k. but one can’t help but speculate how they might be feeling between their ears. All those memories, reminders & accumulated stuff .. vanished .. along with those everyday necessities of life. Such a heavy new reality: give up all your wordly possessions & go sit with loss. It’s so hard to fathom. But It’s good they have family & friends to sit with them too .. & when we’re sitting there beside them, maybe we’ll all learn something valuable & new.

FIESTA TIME: R’s been so busy designing & crafting artful timber frames for other people that he rarely found time to work on his own. Then early last november Deb & R finally threw open the doors & hosted a fiesta to celebrate the fabulous new rooms. Lots of light, lots of space .. enough to cha-cha-cha & hoist a pinata. And maybe it was the margaritas, or perhaps Pat’s lovely lime sangria, but for some weird reason, it took a very long time to bash that sucker open. Ole!

FRIGID AIR: We mark time by weather & all fall long there were inklings that winter was gonna’ be a doozy. It was a banner year for acorns & i think the rodents collected every one. Birds that seemed to linger, all took flight in one day. Fat wooly caterpillars curled up under everywhere & pine trees sprouted pinecone crowns that chattered all winter long. The thermometer zoomed up & down & the rains that came were often slanted & sleety .. ‘til one day, mid-November, a blast of frigid air swooped in & froze the pond into a skating rink. And spurring me into a flurry of preparations for the upcoming season .. though a couple weeks later, when snow arrived just in time for the Arts Council Christmas Concert, i still had to make a frantic but futile search for my winter boots. Finally had to settle on a wardrobe change ‘cause i just couldn’t pull off rubber boots with my skirt. The concert, emceed by Carol Snell, featured readings by hubby Peter & a dapper Billy Piton .. then Deb made me cry with her rendition of “Christmas in the Trenches”. And when she was done, everyone in that room felt pretty much the same.

SO HAUL OUT THE ANGELS: i’m such a doo-dad junkie & over the years i’ve amassed a veritable mob of angels & reindeer & elves .. so it takes me a while to pull everything out & dangle it in just the ‘right’ spot. Drives George absolutely bonkers. So i was still trimming the tree on the 24th while prepping for our traditional carol sing that night. But the weather fickled around & suddenly our world was slickered with ice. And after Mark & Maggie arrived sideways in the driveway, we made the sensible call & cancelled. So we ate hors d’oeuvres for supper & sang along with our festive c.d.’s while we hauled out the gifts & piled ‘em around the tree. And eventually, the intrepid crew from up the hill arrived & boy, did they bring the party! i guess it was an epic journey down .. literally slip-sliding-away .. so it was scotch & towels all around. Deb made a sloppy wet angel when she flopped on our floor .. & the kids .. well, you know, the big kids (Jonny, Jake, Marijka, George), invented a game in the kitchen, with a bowl & a ping pong ball. That turned into a raucous clatter. Mark sat down at the piano & graced us with a beautiful medley of Christmas songs. R & i pretty well demolished the smoked salmon, while Maggie & Deb, “well wined” & very wet from that vertical descent, kinda’ howled along .. inventing raunchy chorus’ & erratic tone poems. So we had a short rowdy moment & i heard it took a very long time to winch those women back up the hill. Next day, the 25th, was very very quiet. i worked away prepping food for the incoming horde, while Gee watched in dismay as the temperature rose to +8. His promising test rink was turning to slush & he finally conceded that shinny with the grandkids might not be in the cards.

AND RING THEM BELLS: But, as you know, we only hold our dreams in abeyance … & by the time Spoons & fam rolled in the next day it was below zero again .. so they scarfed down lunch, grabbed their skates & made an exploratory trek to the pond. They didn’t return ‘til dark. Of course, since hopes weren’t that high going down, no-one took hockey sticks or a ball, so they just skated around. It made George deliriously happy anyway: doing figure eights with Sienna & racing around with Nate. His cheerful enthusiasms are so infectious, i could picture it in my mind’s eye. i wished i’d gone .. but then supper would’ve been at nine. And i’ve been assured, that means cranky kids .. likely, cranky parents too! Well, that’s just not an option. No, i took the time to collect & cook .. & in my mind’s eye, everything was picture perfect!

DING-DONG: Skye, Dyl & Dex arrived on the 27th, fresh from Hudecki celebrations the day before. We got them fed & when Lorio finally rolled in, through a thick blanket of fog, we set back out into it, for the Intergalactic Book Club Christmas party. And had us a very fine time, groovin’ with the herd. The Thomasburg Hall was just the perfect fit for all of us & everybody’s company. There was the usual eclectic assortment of finger foods, plus Billy & Lynn cooked an enormous bird & supplied all the sandwich fixings. Rebecca brought a ginger-bread house which Dex feasted on all night long! Billy turned the clock back so it stayed 11:30 for an eternity before anyone caught on. We did our ‘christmas thingies’ … a sort of talent show wherein the extroverts in our group get to shine & the rest of us cringe, then usually rise to the occasion. The Piton-Marriott’s kicked off the night with a clever little skit. Then three generations of Snells, including the amazing 90 year old Mrs. .. wowed us with their musical scope & virtuosity. The Chatreau-Roels/Haines families collaborated too & performed a lively & unusual set, accompanied by Marijka’s mesmerizing dance with a hula-hoop. Leslie & Pat got up & asked us just to breathe. Skye & Dyl got up & sang “we are pregnant” (& oh yeah & yahoo!). And not to be out-done, wee Dex kept lunging for the ‘mike’ & babbling out good cheer. Then all kinds of music broke out. At one point there were at least thirteen musicians ‘onstage’ & everyone else was whirling around. There were some pretty special moments: Nate & Dex joined Grandpa Gee on hand drums .. & Mark led the Intergalactic band in an unforgettable version of ‘Satisfaction’ which got every single body on the dance floor & wore us out with the encore: ‘Diamonds On the Soles of Her Shoes’. And for sure, George got his ya-ya’s out: riffing on the piano .. or leading the band through one of his guitar tunes. Then he borrowed a mandolin & played us some Niska blues, with Mikey Mezzetesta on fiddle & Jake Foley on musical saw. Needless to say, Dyl did too: just sittin’ in with those many versions of the band, pretty much all night long. It was noisy. It was jovial. And it was a whole lot of fun. Gonna’ have to do that again!

LET’S DO CHRISTMAS: We finally opened our gifts on the 28th .. & oh happy surprise, Mandy found me a new pipe smoking gnome .. then we set about building dinner. But when the turkey was only about an hour from done & with two casseroles waiting on the oven .. a mighty wind blew in & the power went out. At first, with eleven bodies & two dogs moving around a dark dark house, there was momentary chaos. But we got the candles lit & the woodstove fired up, then Geo hauled the bird out to the barbeque & we were back in business. It was tricky though & that howling wind wreaked a bit of havoc with the barbie, causing a couple spectacular flare-ups. So the turkey took a hit .. & one side was a little charred .. but while the spuds boiled, the casseroles baked, then we brought the turkey in to finish in the woodstove. Then when everything was finally ready, well lo & behold, the lights came back on. Yahoo! We could all wash up & use the facilities. But of course .. there should never really be a ‘dull moment’ so that’s when the toilet overflowed. Though when all was said & done, dinner was absolutely splendid. And as we sat there congratulating ourselves on surviving all of that, we raved about the turkey, ‘cause it endured a whole lot too: the subtle flavours; a hint of smoke; nice crispy skin; surprisingly moist … then Nate held up a sprig of rosemary & with a something of a critic’s haughty air, suggested that what he actually detected was .. ‘a little hint o’ wood’. Well that just cracked us up. And thank goodness for that.

NEXT: Lena, Bob & Kolja came for dinner. It was non-stop talking & hopping from topic to topic. We talked politics & canvas mats & unicycles & windmills. Last summer Lena went to Italy to track down a long lost duchess on her mother’s side & i was trying to get the details on that .. & Kolja was on his way to Argentina for some R & R & barbeque. Said he was rethinking career options & as he riffed on his future, he told us he was dabbling with the idea of “green housing”. i suggested there might be some interest in “green housing for seniors” in a future near here. But we never got everything out .. so i guess we’ll have to do that again. Next day, George took Dyl & Spooner & their mountain of hockey gear into Belleville for shinny with the Rubber Booters .. & when they got home, John & Tanya Masterokas came for a skate on the pond & more gab gab gab. It was crazy busy, but a whole wack of fun. There was tobogganing & movies & skating & shinny. And now that Spooner’s playing hockey one lunch hour a week with the boys at the M.N.R. .. & last year Mandy sidled up to the hockey thing & joined a women’s league in Red Rock .. & Nate’s into little Tykes hockey .. & Sienna learned to figure skate … then add in long-legged Dylan .. & put wee Dex in goal .. & voila .. grandpa’s got his hockey team. Skye stayed on the sidelines this year & refereed .. & so far Dex has ‘the stance’ but not yet the moves. Nevertheless, he was a happy little stoic between the posts & got right into the role. So grandpa Gee was in his glory, but he really better watch out. Now that he’s not the only one with wheels, those kids can & likely will, organize, to finally pay him back. Yep .. soon It’s gonna’ be grandpa .. ass over tea kettle .. into the snowbank! And hahaha!

NEW YEAR’S EVE DAY: Spoons & his little fam left for Niagara with visits along the way .. & we just laid low. Kinda’ waiting out the clock so we could greet 2009 with a dram of whiskey & a kiss, before a long winter’s nap. Dyl went to Friday hockey with George & the next day Skye & Dyl left too. Then for about twenty-two minutes, It got very very quiet.

JAKE DAY: Too bad they couldn’t have stayed for the festivities, but life in the city beckoned .. & no sooner had the kids driven out the lane, than Geo grabbed his skates & headed to the pond. Wags dropped in for coffee .. Peter McConnell came to the door bearing gifts .. Pat skied down the hill for a chat .. so finally i just put my coat on & headed out. The beautiful day was almost gone .. & just as the night began to light up with a zillion tiny twinkle lights, the last of the skaters straggled up from the pond. We re-assembled in R’s kitchen for soup & cake & a rowdy game of darts. Thanks Jake. And happy 22nd .. & many many more!

DEEP FREEZE: It wasn’t long before the serious cold set in & we fell into that easy rhythm of sleeping late then lollygagging through our days. And when i finally forced myself to dismantle Christmas, i just curled up to read books. Oh there were outings out & dinners in & we did have to keep the furnace stoked .. such hardships eh? And like i said at the beginning, there were mandalas & all that skating .. & the i-pod & all that dancing. And Billy Piton .. our wild & crazy guy who loves to riff on possibility (& i love to egg him on) .. hatched a plan for our writers group to record a couple readings for a local radio show. Aptly, he dubbed it ‘Writers Read’. So i picked ‘Pops’ & ‘Raven’ (which, Geo informs me will be attached to this blog somehow) .. & Geo & i dithered & dickered for days. Over-coming a large learning curve: he trying to master his marvelous computer tools & me trying to read my own prose – more than less, flawlessly. So for a while, it was couples gestalt .. but we’ve known each other forty-two years & maybe we’re finally starting to get the hang of things!

WOLFE ISLAND REPRISE: Mother Nature co-operated this year .. & once again that G.S.I. team won the tournament. Supposedly there was a trophy in a fishing shack somewhere .. but it seems no-one bothered to retrieve it. The real prize was skating out onto the frozen St. Lawrence. It was a river you could skate away on. There’s a short bit of video: skate, skate, skate .. then drop to yer knees & slide, slide, slide … splay .. flail .. & stop. Then a whole lotta’ yabba-dabba-doo! Made me smile just to see it. And hear their sounds of rowdy joy. That night, Dom, Dyl, Kev & Gee played … in & out of the band … at the General Wolfe Inn ‘til 1:15 when they laid their guitars down & walked onto the 1:20 ferry. None of us back here even waited up. Truth is, when you’re hanging with a two year old & two pregnant women, everybody goes to sleep early. But still it was grandpa who got up with Dex & the rest of us mosied into our usual breakfast at noon thing. Tony & Diana dropped by .. then the gang hiked back three ponds & shinnied away.

FIVE HOLE: Of course Dave Bidini was at Wolfe Island too: on a short recreational break from touring his play, which evolved from his book ‘Five Hole:Tales of Hockey Erotica’. Yep! You read it right. i read the book. i like Dave’s terse, pragmatic stories. i like his hats. That said, & i’m no prude, that book made me feel tawdry. And kinda’ sticky too. i know he wrote it that way .. wry, real life observations .. but i wondered aloud how the heck it could be transformed into a stage play. And not at the strip club either. Anyhow, it was playing the Grand in Kingston in a couple days & Dave invited us along. Well, it was absolutely brilliant. And lewd & funny & somewhat provocative .. & we just loved it. Dave was in the band, with Selina Martin, Ford Pier, Ryan Granville-Martin & much to my delight, Martin Tielli. He justs quirks anything up! And the four fearless actors from the One Yellow Rabbit ensemble, pulled off the amazing costume changes & those tricky Five Hole Stories with a great deal of panache & aplomb.

DEXTER DAYS: Montessori Schools have a two week spring break .. so Skye left Dyl playing with his music again & brought her little beetle boy up here. The days were just beginning to warm so we got outdoors & chased around after Dex who dragged his wee baseball bat around .. throwing out poses. Or we’d play ball .. but as with hockey, he’s got the stance but not the execution. So he’d wow his arm around & crouch to throw the ball, then somewhere in that arc, he’d let it go. And every time, the dog chased down those wild wild pitches & the three of us would all chase the dog. Just the perfect thing to tire everybody out. A couple days in, Skye left Dex with us & went home. Then we really got exhausted. But he’s such a joy. At dinner one night he put his fork down & chirped, “Hey guys: I know. Let’s sing a song”. Then he just burst into “when you’re happy & you know it clap your hands…” .. so we did. And that’s exactly how we know, that kid, for one, is gonna’ be alright.

SPRING SNOW: This past week there was a whisper of warmth. Robins re-appeared on our lawn. A few brave green things popped out of the ground. Canada geese honked by in waves. A pair of mallards raced up & down: investigating real estate. A lone beaver carved arcs in the pond. And on friday, we stood in the teeming rain, just listening to a chorus of spring peepers. Chiming their discordant joy .. up .. into the lusty night. And i’m back around to now. It’s a few days before the easter week-end & winter has returned for a final hurrah. But we’ve already felt the promise of spring, so now this just looks beautiful. Lace on cedars. Moss drinking snow. In a couple days it’s Easter week-end & George is off to the Exclaim Cup Tournie. i’ll stay home to stow away the parkas & tidy up. The kids are all coming home next week & we need to make room for a line-up of rubber boots. i think we’ll be needing them for croquet. Life is just so exquisitely easy right now & we’re sucking the marrow out of every darn minute. We treasure this & we laugh a lot. And we’re more keenly aware than ever, that things can change in a moment. So that’s all for now. One purple crocus is waving at me .. gotta’ go say hi. As usual i’ve gabbed on a lot .. but i’m just so happy to be here. Wide awake & breathing. Beating like a wild thing against the ravages of life. Take care of each other & joy dance .. oh & hey, you’re it!

mary

*** CHATTERBOX ***

NON-SEQUITERS: In far off Bhutan they have a government ministry which measures “Gross National Happiness”. It’s a matrilinear society .. so the women really run the show. Homes are traditionally decorated with animal totems & penis icons. Apparently the bigger the better. So what’s not to be happy about? Maybe it’s time to try something like that here. // if you’re caught outdoors in a thunderstorm, think small: kneel in a low spot, feet together, hands on knees & bend head forward as far as possible. Stay little & low! // Dr. Doug Carson, professor of integrated biology at Guelph, decided to build a “science” guitar out of all sorts of Canada’s natural resources, including 500 million year old fossils. Something an ageing rocker might appreciate.

OUT OF THE BLUE: i got ‘the’ Fraser & Debolt c.d. in the mail one day. It’s beautiful, quirky & fiendishly clever. It moves me: head, hands & feet. It tingles. It causes visions. It makes me grin. And it speaks a language my soul can understand. And since it’s the singular collaboration those two ever produced, it’s been playing in my head for the past thirty-five years or more. Now, thanks to the dudes who dug it out of the archives & remastered this gem, i no longer have that sshhkk..sshhkk..sshhkk from my scratchy l.p. playing along in my head too. Too much more of that & i’d be right around the bend. So for all those reasons it was such an incredible gift. A happy surprise & a supercalifragilisticexpialidotious thank-you for saving me Den. You always were the sensible one.

CLEAR SKYE: that’s the clever moniker Skye gave her business & for the past year or so, she’s been selling her organizational skills to anyone who might benefit from a little creative sorting. She’s really very good at this & is occasionally called upon to put her library tech skills to use for some clients. She’s becoming something of a dynamo: still working three days a week in the office at Dundas Valley Montessori School, being a wonderful mom to a happy two year old, plus that one on the way, still loving the Dyl like crazy .. & in all her spare time .. cleaning out ‘yer junk drawers. Find her at: www.clearskye.org

RANT: when Obama was elected, our little munchkin friends south of the border emerged from the ‘Bush’ singing “ding-dong, the witch is dead, the witch is dead .. get out of bed …”. Up here we went for ‘the many faces of Steve’ & all those flying monkeys. WOW! That’s just embarrassing. And weird.

RAVE: It’s practically terra incognito out there. A pretty scary time for the planet .. environmentally, spiritually, economically, politically .. & while we dither away trying to figure these things out, it’s growing dire. Happily, there are brilliant minds & endless creativity, that can & likely will, have positive impacts with ingenious solutions. i’m a grandparent: i’ve gotta’ hope so. Though it’s totally debilitating to think that we are the ones, us regular human beings, who enabled the powers that be. We sat on our hands & turned our critical eye to our navels while some arbitrary muckety mucks & diddlers ran the show. i say: time to look up. Crane around. Crawl outside the box. Let’s put some of those idyllic hallucinogenic musings from the ‘60’s into play. What’s so wrong with showering with a friend in rainwater collected from your roof. Or eating roots & berries & stuff out of your own back yard. Or swap something with the neighbours. Hitch-hike! Hug a tree. Soak up the sun. Knit a sweater. And when it’s dark .. just go to bed. Take someone else & cuddle. Or get out & dance in the moonlight, then welcome the paisley dawn. Let’s get on the “further” bus. And heed Wavy Gravy’s wise directive to cultivate compassion, timing, balance, flexibility. Oh & a well honed sense of humour. i think we’re gonna’ need it.

BUMPER STICKERS: stuck in a traffic jam i flashed on aunt Lola’s big blue buick & the massive chrome bumper plastered with stickers: Santa’s Village / Carlsbbad Caverns / Lake Placid / Flowerpot Island / Sarasota Springs / Grand Canyon / Hialeah … slapped on by hapless teens while the family’s buying postcards in the giftshop. They kinda’ morphed into slogans in the 60’s, then declarations & affirmations & nowadays they’re mostly snide remarks & provocation. A powerful freedom in any event & an antidote to long over-heated idles on construction addled highways. My fave this summer: “Buckle up! Makes it harder for the aliens to suck you out of your car.”

WELCOME EARTHLINGS: Will & Renee added Matthew Michael Lundrigun into the mix & with two older siblings i’m sure he’ll be a quick study // cousin Bruce Bowman practically beamed through the phone when daughter Erica & hubby Alan welcomed wee Robert Bryant Malcolm Medlar turning Lynda & Bruce into grandparents too // Jolene & Gary Robbins invented Meaghan, so big sis’ Sarah Lillie could have a little playmate. Have fun kids!

KINSHIP: just before Christmas, cousin Suzanne got her broken heart repaired & it sounds like she’s on the mend: she’s making a plan to come from Australia this fall & join brother Rob, a whole lot of Crowe’s & an assortment of kin in Winger, to bury Carson’s ashes & remember him. i’m bringing a rose // last fall, Ron & Belinda Lisk’s son, Danny passed through our little village’s troop salute en route to Trenton & his deployment to Afghanistan. We just pray he comes home safe // & speaking of Lisks: Karen & niece Alison keep threatening to show up for tea. Well, c’mon girls – dare ‘ya! // Donimo Hum had time off work .. pre-op & post-op .. for a bum knee: so he’s digging in the archives at “The Rooms” in St. John’s. Unearthing all sorts of nitty-gritty details on the ‘olde ones’

LOCAL COLOUR: Dex did his first “..Time Warp Again” with the Intergalactics at Peter Snell’s birthday party last February // A whole herd of Tweedles celebrated Peter McConnell’s b.d. with sushi, then headed en masse to Picton & laughed our way through Anne Marie MacDonald’s ‘Good-night Desdemonda: Good-morning Juliet’. With the summer off from teaching at Loyalist, Peter Snell reverted to his thespian ways & dervished through four roles, including Juliet’s craggy nurse. And i gotta’ say: he’s a natural! // the Bach-Vallieres are growing their house with a timber frame crafted by R // McConnell’s made a pilgrimage to Peru so Emmy could discover her native land & they came home with an amazing pictoral travelogue & pink salt // last year, Lynn got ‘Cruiser’, a young morgan gelding, bringing the herd to four plus a boarder. She & Billy have mastered level two of the Parelli Natural Horsemanship program & have developed an amazing rapport with their equine friends. Meanwhile, their pair of standard poodles, Fozzy Bear & Gazebo, built four little ‘party’ poodles to sell. Now it’s baby goat season. Sure is busy at Stoco-Fen // & like the hordes of leather clad grandparent bikers we met travelling through Nfld. .. Karen & Dan tour where-ever the road takes them .. & it often leads to Barrie // Phil & Lois appeared to keep Deb company when she got her knee regrooved .. & Lois brought along a beautifully tailored duvet cover & bedskirt that she’d created in her studio. That woman’s a sewing wonderkind! // first we did volleyball, then ochlocratic baseball .. & now .. since R & Peter McConnell road-tested the game, we’re going to try curling. And maybe sweep our troubles away!

ON THE MOVE: Trish Trepannier finally retired from public service on ‘the hill’ & turned to dreaming of wind & water on that other hill in Cheticamp on the Cape Breton // Akivah & Cynthia Starkman moved to Wolfville on the other side of Nova Scotia: closer to family, those red tidal flats & all those fiddlers // Hugh & Linda Davies keep moving ever closer to their beloved Snake Lake. Last seen in a rental in Meaford, while the place they bought gets regrooved // for now, the roaming nomads, Ron & Sherry Jowitt are back in B.C. getting to know the latest grandkid // Howard, Camille Coles & the beautiful Isabella moved back to Barrie again // & for now, Pat & Phil Cockburn are sitting by a river while they re-invent their lives

ALL AROUND THE CIRCLE: Got a Che Guevera postcard from Kolja in Argentina. He wrote something about the country “… being driven into the ground by corrupt & lousy politicians” .. & i kinda’ wondered if he’d be making the trip home // Jan’s good to go with her swivelly new hip .. lucky thing too .. ‘cause with four grandkids & counting, there’s lots of little people to chase around .. & when they lost their beloved lab Ben, Jan & Doug got Abbey to chase around too. Maybe she better check her warranty! // got a query from Gerry Ouderkirk wondering if we were at a Grand Funk concert in ‘69 (?) at the Skylon Tower in Niagara Falls .. & yes, we were. Weird night: trips captain was there! / Gigantic speaker fell over & broke a guy’s leg / Dennis bought me a tube of salty Dutch licorice / & since everyone smoked in those days & the place had no ashtrays, Geo drew a very nice one on the concrete floor / Jan made a life altering decision when she picked Doug over George / there was a messed up biker fight in the parking lot .. way scary / & just imagine: Grand Funk in a cavern // Like my bro-in-law Terry, John Burvill’s driving big rigs into the U.S.A. – while Bronwen’s making prize winning mustards in Merrickville & setting up a new glass blowing studio in Ottawa.

DO THE CORRESPOND-DANCE: internet, e-mail, face book .. sure facilitate social connection, but it’s like flirting: not that satisfying. And i only get what comes downstairs in Gee’s head. Don’t get me wrong .. ten words ARE better than none .. & some, like Diane Toulmin & cousin Richard write amazing blogs .. but those little outbursts generally lack context & nuance & depth. It’s so great to get dispatches with grit. Just to know someone’s out there, plonking around the wheel too. Got some wonderful newsy letters around Christmas: Suzanne, Mary O’Riordan, Ruth Clarke, Paxter, Mary Rowell, the Mulvaneys, the Jowitts, the Thibeaults, Nancy & Michael Woolfrey & even Toppo .. to name a few. We love it! Those letters are treasured & rare. They sit by our phone & get mulled & digested. i share with the kids & mutual friends. We get to sit with you in our kitchen: having tea. So, welcome .. & keep those cards & letters coming.

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT: Skye, Dyl & Dex spent last spring break lolling on a Cuban beach; then for Skye’s 30th, Dyl surprised his bride with a ticket to merry olde England to hang with her Campbell cousins & sample the scene. What a lucky girl! // as for those Campbell kids: Kirsten’s managing happening bands & groovin’ around Europe setting up concerts & all sorts of ‘party scenes’. She’s very mod. Very cosmopolitan. And still really diggin’ it. But she still shops in Canada at Value Village & discovers “just the coolest clothes”. I saw a suitcase full in November when she was here.  Moira returned from Europe to regroup then flew to a Brazilian beach to dine on shellfish & count waves. Andrew’s in Whistler, rejigging mountains for the Olympics or grooming trails for the rich & famous & when he’s not doing that, well he’s the snow-boarding musician juggling a camera // Actually, Geo connected face-book dots linking Andrew with Emmet Stutt & Graham Scott out on the west coast. Could be mutual musical interests draw this next generation into a whole new circle of friends. Cool! // & Don’s girls are both back at school in St. John’s: Crystal finally honed in on teaching & Iris is finishing up her ‘well-rounded athlete girl’ degree .. well really it’s kinesiology, while working security at the airport. Other than that she’s studying fun // & my nephew Curtis is liking his new job at a place printing all manner of office forms .. only hitch is: mom’s the boss. Could get tricky! // Janine Cockburn’s selling her fabulous Momiji line of “pre-loved” garment re-creations at ‘Fresh Collective’ on Queen Street in T.O. // & bro. Daniel, Toronto’s “Best Subterranean Reality Tweaker” (as described in one review i read), won an elite juried competition to spend six months in Berlin making a film – all expenses paid. And he gets to take his vivacious bride to be // Speaking of brides, we just got an invite to Jessica Prentice’s wedding in Playa Del Carmen on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico next january. Way to go girl! Haven’t had the pleasure of meeting the groom, but i heard for sure it’s true love // Matt Snell & his gal Rebecca Reeves were sad to leave Montreal but who could resist a contract to teach english on that very same Yucatan? i heard Matt’s taking his musical saw // Ace Piton is the technical director for King’s Wharf Theatre based in Penatang so his parents go to see a lot of plays // Joda Eisenberg will marry his Meghan next February & sister Shauna will be in England teaching school // Emily McConnell’s off to Ottawa U. this fall to begin her journey into health sciences. Calling Dr. Em .. // just got an e-vite from David Hodgins to attend his gig with a latin/flamenco guitar driven band down in the county .. too bad we’ve got a conflict // Bryan Bach is off at school cramming his brain with maths & sciences: waitin’ for a sign pointing which way to go // kinda’ like Josh Brown studying music & art & dabbling in religion: nice these kids are exploring possibility // & does it really surprise anyone that Jake built his mom a fabulous pop-up book for Christmas & is, as we speak, a happening thing? // well, read on ..

MUSICAL SPAWN: our group raised a whole herd of musicians & now they’ve moved beyond campfires & Christmas eves into the realm of gigs & c.d.’s. It’s a talented bunch, but in most cases, they just come by it naturally. Like Andrew Campbell, who sent song samples .. well he’s definitely inherited his dad’s songsmithiness (is that a word?) & a worthy voice too. We want more // And Jake Roels, a.k.a. Alphabot, invented ‘Crush All Humans’. He’s playing gigs around Toronto (like the Horseshoe) .. gathering fans & making contacts. Watch this spot .. // grooved to Matt Snell’s characterful musical stylings at the Tweed Craft Fair, but it couldn’t prepare us for the quirky ‘Gallows Humour’ from his Horror Choir c.d. It’s twisty, dense, dramatic & weird. But you can tell, he likes it that way // Dyl’s still doing ‘Big Fish’ radio at McMaster & he finally got the Caledonia c.d. in the can. He & little bro Jackson continue to Cowlick around the golden horseshoe behind their ‘Eternia Hernia’ c.d. & have already won Hamilton’s “best new artist” award. It’s a pretty sure bet Dyl will always have his finger in as many musical pies as possible. Or any other kind of pie, for that matter // & not technically our spawn, but Dyl’s B.D.R. alumna, Brian Borcherdt’s Holy F*!# continued to wow us with their extravagant musical jams. They caused quite the row on Parliament hill at election time though: as an example of the nasty sorts of things liberal culture grants have funded. But really, it was a surprisingly small amount of $$. No, Brian & crew have toured & grooved their way into all that global success. They’ve worked hard & actually added IN to the G.N.P. So shame on you Steve! Loosen ‘yer tie. Clamp on the i-pod. You don’t have to say the name. Just dance!

LEFT & LEAVING: The one true thing we know is that death is the outcome of life. It’s the one rule nature never bends. It’s there before us all our lives & as we get closer we finally have to look our own mortality in the eye. i’m not trying to be morose, but ready or not, we’re all leaving the planet. Reverting to stardust … & twinkling there. And as we slowly say good-bye to the elders that begat us & learn far too much about the many ways there are to die … we’re ageing into elders ourselves. Left tethered here on earth, we cleave to each other … to talk & laugh & cry & muddle through our grief as best we can. And what we find is that we’ve folded those people we lost into our hearts. They travel with us & in an odd way, become more alive. More present. It’s the saving grace when we are foundering. i know i’m just babbling here … but i think it’s an important babble. It’s not easy or comfortable to edge up to our fears & look into the abyss … but when we do, we see that each of us is an integral thread woven into the colourful fabric of this universe. And that as the wheel turns, we become visible & then invisible … but like the proverbial tree in the forest … we are indeed, still there. i guess you can tell i’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. My guess is that it’s probably normal … when our own wheels start rattling off … but ‘til recently, i’d somehow deflected most of these thoughts away. Probably that’s normal too … but when my friend Bob died a couple years ago, things began to come more clearly into focus. i realized that even though death has walked right alongside me my entire life, i never really sat with my own inevitable demise. O.K. i know i’m getting into some weird territory so i’m going to stop there & skip to the last line: every darn day is a gift, so count your blessings! Willie P. Bennett was one of them so when he died suddenly a year ago, without the preamble of illness, it left a gap that’ll never be filled. After a heart attack a while back, he told me that having survived that & so many other sorts of heartbreak, he felt he’d been granted some grace. He had a new lease on life & he wanted to make the most of it. And i just bet he did. Willie was a deep well of a soul & fully immersed. We first met through a circle of musical friends & when he was best man to my maid of honour at Paul & Lori’s wedding, we spent a swelter of a day lolling in the kiddie pool with the bridal party & all the kids. Then we’d meet up at concerts & bonfires & Campbell feast days & some memorable christmas eves here at dragonfly. He was a hit with the kiddies who called him uncle Willie Bill & he sure could spin a tune. Willie was a seeker with a knack for distilling emotion & experience into masterful songs that articulated our complicated yearnings in simple, iconic ways. And even if you never met, i know you’ve heard his songs. Those were his gifts & our everlasting blessing. Lost Barry McLellan too. He played drums in “These Boys”: (you know, “Hornepayne’s Answer To The Beatles”) with George, Stewie Deacon & Gary Smith. Geo told me it was Barry who insisted the band practice hand claps. By the time i met Barry late ‘60’s he was like a character right off the pages of ‘On the Road’. A dynamo with many sides: generous, charming, charismatic with a big guffaw & a great wide smile .. but dark & brooding too. Once in a while he’d show up at the farm, knapsack full of memories that took whole nights to empty out. Then he rambled around out west & we’d get late night calls .. but often he was so into his cups, it was hard to decipher his cryptic meanderings. He just sounded lost. We caught up to Barry a few times in those years when we traveled west on the train .. or tried to .. but often he just wouldn’t show up. Eventually, cards & letters came back ‘address unknown’ & it was kinda’ like he dropped right off the face of the earth. Finally we visited his mom in Thunder Bay & managed to reconnect. He moved back to Ontario & seemed to be making plans for the future .. a hopeful thing for someone who had trouble reconciling his past .. but after his mom died, he disappeared west again .. & it wasn’t ‘til Stewie phoned to say Barry was gravely ill, that we found him. i hope he found peace. At least now those elusive demons aren’t chasing him anymore. Miss ‘ya buddy. And this past December, at the ripe old age of 93, uncle Carson gave up his rather colourful corporeal existence. He was, as he liked to say, ‘a tough old Crowe’: headstrong, opinionated & i think, something of an enigma to many who knew him. He was a natural storyteller with a keen sense of timing & a warped sense of humour. He was very good at using his pithy observations to poke a little good natured fun .. but he was only ever kind & generous to me. And boy did he ever have a way with roses. Yep, Uncle Carson was a character (a trait he passed on to his kids) & i loved that man. And it’s a fundamentally different world without him in it. And i just heard that Ernie Blandin died. Suddenly. That’s quite a shock. He was my cousin Donna’s other half almost forever & though i didn’t get to know him well, i do know he had a great affable smile & spawned a slew of beautiful kids & grandkids. And i just bet, he’s up there, keeping watch on his brood & grinning down!    Sorry to bring all this grim reality to bare .. but over this past year, quite a few of my friends are grieving their parents .. & we’re grieving our family & friends. And in the face of all that loss, we honour their memories & do our best to carry on.

STAMP NEWS: May 15th Canada Post will issue a ‘Canadian Horse & Newfoundland Pony’ stamp. It looks cool: i got a preview in their little philatelic publication. And kudos to Donimo Hum, who actually got the Newfie part of this ball rolling. The ancestors of the NFLD pony came to the Rock with the first ‘planters’ (settlers) in the 1600’s. You can see their lineage in the moor ponies, welsh ponies, norwegian fijords .. compact & sturdy .. used to rugged terrain. Over the years they became a breed unto themselves & were, well into this last century, invaluable partners in the struggle for survival. But when vehicles & the roads that brought them, opened up the wilds of Newfoundland, a lot of folks just turned their ponies loose. Or fed them to the dogs. They began to disappear .. so pony owners like Don got a movement moving to raise awareness of their plight & save the ponies. And more than a dozen years ago, he went to the NFLD legislature to vet the idea of a “heritage species designation” & once that was passed … well why not put ‘em on a stamp. Don was the instrument that pushed all this through .. so once again .. kudos to you Hum. Now go buy a stamp.

NEWS OF THE WEIRD: in a remote Columbian jungle, paleontologists unearthed the sixty million year old fossils of  ‘titanoboas’: a 42’ long snake that weighed 2500 pounds & swallowed crocodiles whole // it’s a well-documented scientific fact that bats always exit to the left // & that cows can go upstairs .. but not down

MY BOOK LIST: for a while, for whatever reason, i couldn’t focus on a novel, so i dug into our stacks of magazines. Walrus, Maisonneuve, the Brick, the Beaver, Smithsonian, Downhome, Canadian Geographic, Maclean’s .. & every darn issue of the Canadian Morgan (mostly i see the errors i didn’t catch, proof-reading for Lynn). George takes Paste, Chart & sometimes MoJo to keep up with new music, plus the piles of weeklies amassed during his rambles. So no shortage of things to peruse .. but my habit’s back & in a year i’ve plowed through forty books. i won’t list them all, but i’m giving a shout out to Claudia Dey’s brilliant first novel: Stunt. It’s sad, funny, deep & moving. And extremely visual. Some other faves: the Flying Troutman’s, Lullabies For Little Criminals, A Scientific Romance, Villa Incognito, The Master Butcher’s Singing Club, A Map of Glass, Oh Pure & Radiant Heart, The Boys In the Trees, The Red Tent, Divisadero, Blasted, The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns & about twenty six more!

OUT OF TOM ROBBINS’ STRANGE BRAIN: ………… “if Jean Paul Sartre had been Thai, existentialism would have been a sit-com”. ………….”are we not a contradictory species occupying a dichotomous planet wobbling about what, from all indications, is a paradoxical universe?” …………”It is what it is. I am what I it. There are no lies”.

THE GREAT WALLENDA: had an intriguing credo: “On the wire is living, everything else is just waiting”. By some quirky twist of fate, i read three novels in a row that he figured in. Then on the radio July 5th, i heard the next Great Wallenda broke the last Great Wallenda’s world record. To once again defy “the jealous throb of gravity”.

INTERGALACTIC BOOK CLUB: met last February for shinny at the pond, soup & a lively discussion of ‘Four Souls’ by Louise Erdrich .. insightful, unique, complex with colourful characters .. well, you likely guessed i picked it ‘cause i just love that woman’s work. Afterward we poured scotch & Deb made a toast in memory of Willie P. then played us one of his iconic songs .. c’mon train .. // next, Pat presented Rory Stewart’s ‘The Places In Between’ documenting his trek across Afghanistan. Historically, geographically, culturally & ideologically, that place has been a crossroads for thousands of years. Tug-of-war is a way of life & fierce is bred in the bone. We’re ill prepared in this ‘new world’ to apprehend the depth of that much soul invested in ‘place’. It actually boggles the mind. But because Stewart was brave & crazy & thoughtful to boot, we have a place to begin // then we finally did Paul Quarrington’s ‘King Leary’. Last time Geo tried to put it on the list it was out of print, but when Dave Bidini championed it on ‘Canada Reads’ on the C.B.C., the publishers were compelled to print it again .. & it won! So we laughed, told hockey stories & thought about what lives on as we grow old // next it was Joseph Boyden’s ‘Three Day Road’ .. compelling, harrowing, dark, graphic & more than once i slammed it shut. War is hell & fought on many fronts. Should be mandatory reading // next up: The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society .. for an alternate look at the realities of war.

STAND UP & DANCE: since Noisy Boy gave up reviewing, our music intake has dwindled. Gone are all those unsolicited c.d.’s (some good, some bad & a lot of in between) & press passes to concerts & gigs. These days Geo ferrets out new stuff by reading, guessing & asking kids what they’re listening to. And he comes home from T.O. with all sorts of downloads on his ZIP drive from Dyl or Dom or Kev. Gotta’ keep things fresh. And we’re still getting our musical thrills: Attack In Black with the Arkells // & again, with Ladyhawk (that’s a flashback) // the Weakerthans with the delightful Jen Grant opening // then the Weakerthans again, with the tequila fueled Constantines // the Bidini Band // Martin Tielli // Ron Sexsmith // the Five Hole Band // the rousing Kingston Samba Band, then Mr. Something-Something who made us sweat it out on the dance floor with their amazing afro-celt-jazz-fusion // & all those zany electric eclectics // Geo saw Blurtonia with his buds in T.O. // & while he was off sailing, i went to that concert to see: Attack in Black (again), Sarah Harmer, Sam Roberts & the Tragically Hip // & best for last: George & R drove into T.O. to see the up & coming, Alphabot, at the renowned Horseshoe!

YAHOO! ON THE TURNTABLE NOW: Hey Rosetta // T.V. On The Radio // Raconteurs // Constantines // Recoilers // Tokyo Police Club // Mother Mother // Razorlight // Handsome Furs // Attack In Black // Hot Hot Heat // the Stills // Wolfparade // the Arkells // the Trews // Kings of Leon // Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs!

EMILY FEEDS ME RAVENS

EMILY FEEDS ME RAVENS

Twenty-five years ago i came to live in this forest of gnarly oaks, grandfather pines & a slew of other wild things.  Our house is nestled into a  beauty  bowl  of granite, that’s all studded with moss, speckled with quartz … & cupped in the long, bony fingers of Canadian shield, that dither down here from the northlands.  Eventually, these give way to limestone & a great lake south of here … but if you stroll up to sit on the little bench, along the rosy ridge, your eyes  follow the bead-chain of ponds.  Away off: into the blue yonder.  And beyond.
It’s an honour just to sit there ……
…… & empty out
…… & let the place soak in.
And, no matter how often i go, without fail, mother earth opens her up her astonished palms & offers me surprise.

Today ….
i was drawn uphill
into the paisley maze
of morning light …
leaking over the horizon ……
….. and it was Raven …
startling out of the treetops
with a raucous clatter
… that shattered …
…. the psychedelic dawn.

Whoosh………woosh……..woosh……..

Like a carbon spear
wheeling arcs
… & arcs
… welding an eloquent ribbon
.. of indigo calligraphy
.. into the ruddy
november sky.

… You know …
Raven is many things to many people: trickster .. messenger .. creator … thief ….. but it’s his ability to navigate into the mystery that inextricably binds him into the long memory of men in a profound & often complex way.  He’s definitely deep into mine! Turning things inside out & upside down.  Rabbling around for new ways to see.  And as i sat there blinking up, i remembered the last time Raven ambushed me.
A couple winters ago, we toured the Emily Carr exhibit at the A.G.O..   It was a rare treat really.  i’ve felt a kinship with that feisty woman, who went to bush, ever since i was introduced to her work,  in a grade eight art class.   The teacher came into the room & declared: “today I’m going to feed you ravens.”    Well … i was hooked!    Early in the last century, before women were even persons, Emily flaunted convention & struck off into the wild west coast rainforest: to paint & write & be!  She lived in a world close to spirit.   A world where art & words reveal the divine.  And it was a world filled with ravens.
Emily’s mojo & pluck resonated in me.   Life, became her craft & her passion spoke a primal language, my nascent soul could understand.  And now, through all these years, i’ve feasted on her ravens many times.  They nourish my humility.  They fill me up with awe!  So in that art gallery, when Big Raven landed smack dab on my reality tape … i paid attention.   That Raven had so much to say.  And on the train ride home, i scribbled this note to the indomitable spirit that is Emily Carr.
NAMASTE  Emily: and thank you.  i met your Big Raven again today.  Oh, he’s fine: maybe a little disoriented this far east … but roosting to good advantage in a rigged up room at the A.G.O..  Tucked in, around a corner & perched way up in a wavering treetop.  i didn’t actually see the nest, but i’ll bet it’s a sturdy thing.  Woven higgeldy piggeldy through … with twigs & bark & redwood threads.  Lined with flotsam & bits of rope scavenged out of some tide pool, winking up the coast.  Either way, you’ve got to crane way up to spy it & when i finally did, the pilfered twinkle & glint is what i saw.  Practically blinded me!  It’s well known Raven’s got a weakness for any shiny trinket … so i guessed it must be salvage causing all that dazzle, floating in my squinty eyes.  And that’s what finally convinced me his nest must be clinging up there on the leeside of those vaulting angled peaks. The ones Lawren Harris inspired you to.  Those things are awesome!!
Aloof: yet so totally compelling.   An enigma really.   They exude an inherent, stoic quiescence: that is somehow, both: rooted & reaching.  A kind of oriental koan … wrapped in ice & blue hued snow!  i felt those riffles of frigid air, shivering down off those slopes!  It was such a surprise.  i would have thought, that at this low altitude, those glaciers would already be  rivering away.
So it took a while to recognize him, but  Raven’s there.  All ebony & indigo & punked up ruff.  With those shifty sun flecked eyes.  Opened wide.  Watching!  And i’m sure he isn’t lonely: plunked down, downtown Toronto like that.  Presiding over all that brick & mortar & sooty glass … with an endless stream of humans scrolling by.  Heck, he hauled a whole forest of lodgepoles, totems, & tilting trees along.  Rivers too.  Roiling through turbulent ferny understoreys.  Seething in seclusion.  Likely teeming with salmon, just aching away, toward the sea.  Though all i made out were the shifty vague shapes of spectral fins.  That & a flickered fishtail.  But really, it was the silvered slivers of spray, raising rainbows up into that flat museum light, that finally gave them away.
And the serene beauty you daubed into those verdant mossy glens, fully, completely, wowed me. Those places where the water is momentarily becalmed … & it just sits there: breathing.  Patiently threading air to air!  Alternating pearly beads of moonbeam … with jewelled shards of sunlight!  Building an agile ephemera that eventually evaporates even the last vestiges of winter.  Leaving a ripe, steamy waft of composting fecundity.
i do have to say … it was kinda’ weird, to smell things like THAT in a gallery.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, the sudden whiffs of freshening cedar that zephyered in were absolutely intoxicating.  And that sweet vernal promise from those alpine blooms.  But … oh my gawd … that bear!  i guess it wouldn’t have been very west coast without one!   But she was pretty rank & kinda’ grizzly still from her long winter nap! Though i guess, lucky for the art crowd, still somewhat skittish around strangers.  So she stayed at bay: back scratching, up & down in the shadows.  Pausing every now & then, to sniff up into the unfamiliar ether & harumphh.
Anyhow, looks like Raven’s settled in, though i had to wonder what he eats.  Didn’t see any rodents or actual fish, but they’ve got to be there, spawning dubious futures just behind the scenes somewhere.  No carcasses either, with those festering tender bits, though it’s a pretty sure bet, that even the HINT of rotting flesh is sanitized on the spot, in that place.
No, i’m guessing Big Raven subsists, on the spontaneous tears of folks like me.  Wandering into the familiar spell of his gaze & compelled to turn, see an old friend.   Just wondering aloud, why it took, so very long, to get there.
Emily, it was a neat trick to paint Raven’s breath with all that.  You got the sounds right too.  Matter of fact, sometimes it was downright noisy!  Water falling, wind quaking, mountains moving, trees dancing … & all those creatures rustling in the underbrush!
But there was silence too.  And in the deepest quiet, i heard the loudest sound!  It was the slow lazy drone of bumbling bees & a high pitched mosquito whine, that twined around my own wild, beating heart & built the forest mantra that answered Raven’s call.
Even then, Big Raven caught me off guard.   And when his insistent squawking & frenetic flapping finally registered in my thickened brain, i stumbled back … right over my own shadow.  Tears spilled into a puddle of stunned surprise around my clumsy feet!  i bowed deeply then & proffered up my penance: ” … it’s been too long Raven.  i have missed you.”
Well he cocked his head to study me … then he went to ground.  And with one quick flick, of his long forked tongue … Raven absolved my salty confusion.  Then he bowed back … & kinda’ winked at me.  And i swallowed your raven whole.
i just wanted to let you know Emily, from my heart place Emily … i thank you!  And Namaste.

Bollocks

BOLLOCKS

Pops was his name, ‘bollocks’ was his favourite expression.  His voice was big, thick & british just like him & ‘BOLLOCKS’ usually came out in a loud guttural belch .. though sometimes it just kind of dithered out, in an exasperated rolling mutter: ‘bollocks’.  Either way, i never really quite got exactly what it was he was saying .. though by the time he’d worked himself up, into a frothing, roaring “BOLLOCKS” .. you just kind of instinctively knew that it wasn’t meant to be a civility.  And it wasn’t til years later, working at Sunrise Records, that the word finally revealed itself to me .. compliments of an album, by none other than Sid Vicious & his rabbly friends: ‘Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols’!  But by that time Pops was long gone & all that was left to do, was have myself a good long chuckle.
Anyhow, i was thirteen when i first met Pops.  He was already a crooked old man, whose life was beginning to delaminate.  Bent & bald & blind .. his fastest pace was a real SLOW shuffle .. though in NO sense of the word would you call him broken.  You know, in spite of his advanced age, he was still ‘sharp as a tack’ .. though most people opted for ‘mad as a hatter’ instead.  And well, to be fair, Pops WAS feisty .. full of opinions .. & he sure could rant & rave!
But most of the trouble Pops caused was more like mischief, than anything even slightly sinister.  Like sometimes, Pops would just spontaneously burst into song & if you dared try to shush him, he’d just crank up the volume even more.   Mom called him cantankerous, but to me, that was just Pops in all his puffed up glory.  And when the ruckus he’d set to, came to it’s natural conclusion he’d bellow: “You know what ladies .. I took a lot of wear & tear & some rather nasty scars just to get here .. & I’ll be damned ..  while as my ticker’s still ticking .. I’m not just gonna’ sit here QUIETLY, waiting with the wall-flowers, ‘til I finally wilt & fade away!”.
Seemed to me, Pops was just mad about getting old.  And once you finally peeled away all that ‘bollocks’ & bluster .. well he was made of fascinating stuff.  Mushy inside & kinda’ prone to sentimental rants & maudlin sidebars.  But on the other hand, he could also be eloquent, kinda’ funny & actually somewhat charming.  And if you just took the time to plunk yourself down, he’d gather up a memory & spin it right off into a multi-coloured yarn.
Oh yeah .. Pops was a born story-teller!  With that sonorous voice, big expressive hands & what my english teacher liked to call, dramatic timing.  Mom cautioned not to put too much stock into the ramblings of an old man, with an over-active imagination, but heck, she thought i had one of those too .. so really, how bad could that be?  And anyhow, to hear Pops tell it, in his youth he HAD travelled to lots of exotic, faraway places.  Places populated with larger than life characters .. caught up in events of unusual substance & full of derring do!  Oh, Pops could work magic with words .. & i just loved being in the thrall of his spell.
Yep, for sure, Pops was a character!  Like he was plucked right out of that grade five history book: “Pirates & Pathfinders”.  It was funny to try & conjure Pops as a baby, ’cause for him, everything seemed to start at the tender age of fifteen, when he broke his mother’s heart & ran off to join the navy.  Said he was a torment to her anyway & he’d developed a mighty hankering for adventures & the sea.  Well it sure sounded like he found what he was looking for ‘cause he got to sail all seven of them & worked his way up from lowly deck hand, to captain.  He’d fought campaigns for the king in the great war .. sacrificed the tip of his thumb to a knife wielding Arab in Egypt .. spent an ignominious week of shore leave in a Hong Kong opium den .. carried a goat on his back across the Morrocan desert .. & once, even had the dubious distinction of dining with pygmy cannibals in Pau-pau New Guinea.
Then, with all that swash-buckling under his belt, Pops said he reckoned it was about time for a rest & a wife.  So he landed back home in Folkestone, where there’s almost as many white cliffs as nearby Dover & managed both.  He married the sweet, fair Emmeline & hired into the service of the constabulary where he worked as a real english bobby for another twenty-five years or so. But when he finally retired, his five ungrateful children had already scattered, helter skelter round the world & never really got back home again.
Now, whenever Pops got around to this part of the story, tears would well up & roll down his big white face .. ‘cause those kids broke their own mother’s heart & Pops was pretty sure Emmeline died just pining away for them.  Then ever so slowly, his sight clouded over & he went blind.
But you know, Pops was a tough old geezer.  And he wasn’t gonna’ let that get the better of him!  Not to mention, by that time he’d memorized his entire life anyway.  Said he could get around just fine, thank you very much.  Though Pops did allow, that two things still truly baffled him: wild cats & women.  So, no surprise really. that it was a “mangy old tomcat”  that finally tripped Pops up .. right out in front of Ewen’s Grocery!  Said he just kinda’ toppled over sideways, into a big double decker bus & cracked a couple ribs.
Yep, according to Pops, that darn cat proved his ultimate undoing.  You see, he landed in the hospice & while he wasn’t looking, one of his long lost sons swooped in from Canada & commandeered his entire life.  It was that good for nothing Wills i guess, who sold the house right out from under his dear old dad .. including Pops’ favourite reclining chair .. & promptly had him exported him to the colonies.  Then, in Pops own words, he was more or less stuffed & set up for viewing in ‘this here senior’s museum’.
That’s what Pops called the nursing home & as far as he was concerned, he’d been kidnapped & brought here, practically against his will & obviously, much to his chagrin!  At this point Pops would launch into a vitriolic saga, full of devil lawyers & quack doctors who were ever so happy to relieve him of his hard earned savings, but never ever managed to actually set him free.  Then, he’d tell anyone within earshot that every time that ‘no good’ Wills did show up for his monthly viewing, he always brought flowers .. probably meant to kill him .. ‘cause surely Wills knew that his own father was deathly allergic .. & never mind that, being blind as a bat, he couldn’t even see them.  Then of course, that darn Wills would just sit there & natter on & on .. about the grandchildren Pops thought he’d never met.  So i guess he must’ve forgotten his 90th birthday .. when his whole family arrived en masse, bearing a giant chocolate cake.
i remember it though .. like a weird twisted dream!  i was right beside Pops in the gazebo pouring aunt Jeans famous “puritan sangria” for the infamous Wills, his four siblings, their various spouses & the seventeen grandkids. The cake was cut & everyone was clamouring for Pops to make a speech.  i kind of cringed though, wondering what on earth he might blurt out .. but Pops was already creaking up to make his toast.  Something wasn’t right though.  He had a kind of  bewildered look on his face & the glass of sangria that’d preceeded him up into the air was wowing around .. sloshing over everywhere.  Undaunted, Pops drew himself up .. ahemed a little .. & cleared his throat!  There was a very long pause.  Pops cleared his throat again.  He opened his great maw, but all he mustered was a choked-off sounding ‘BOLLOCKS’!   By now, i saw .. he was positively wobbling .. & wavering .. then suddenly he just keeled right over .. face down, into the remains of his cake.
One of the kids started clapping.  More than a few were laughing.  i myself, was absolutely stunned .. frozen in time.   But all that commotion did seem to revive Pops somewhat, ‘cause he came right back up .. covered in cake .. & roaring!  ‘BOLLOCKS’!  But just as quickly, he collapsed again.  All the way to the ground!  This time, he didn’t move.  And when i finally snapped awake, i was really quite astonished to see, that for all Pops was .. he’d folded up .. into a surprisingly small heap!
Needless to say, that was the end of THAT party.  Pops was hauled away on a guerny with a mild concussion & another cracked rib.  It was pretty bad .. & cleaning up, i overheard the teenagers tittering about the pints they’d smuggled in to share with Pops.  Well that just made me mad!  Even i knew, their grandpa wasn’t supposed to mix alcohol with his meds.  And when Pops finally came back to us, he was a little more confused .. though more determined than ever that he’d be leaving that damn museum soon.  And that part made me sad ‘cause everyone, excepting Pops, pretty much knew that he was more or less installed at the Riverview Rest Home for the duration.  Nevertheless Pops’ resumed his scheming in earnest .. & fully intended to make good his escape.
The Riverview started out as a boarding house, run by the kindly Mrs. Margaret Delong.  As the residents aged, she hired staff & transformed the stately old Victorian home, with wrap around porches & a gazillion rooms, into a nursing home.  She hosted a dozen elderly clients & employed my auntie Gladys as the cook ..  that is until she up & died ..  then aunt Jean took over in her place.  Two of my other aunts,  Mary & Lola, did the practical nursing & eventually, Margaret hired mom to be the manager ..slash.. book-keeper.  So, for the Hunter sisters, it was pretty much a family affair.
We moved in next door in 1966 when mom bought the place for $16,000.  It too was a grand old house, with a wide front verandah, the self same river view .. & a ghost!  Likely that’s the very reason the price was absolutely right .. but that’s a whole other story for another time .. suffice to say, had mom told us the house was haunted, my sister & I likely would have freaked.  But at the time, we had no idea .. & it was definitely a step up.  And so what if my Grandma, her two spinster sisters, a boarder named Shoey & an unknown spectre would be sharing our new accommodations .. the place was huge .. & our very own.
i must admit .. at first it was hard.  Moving from Niagara Falls to the village of Chippawa, on the very cusp of high school, meant i’d left my entire social life behind.  i didn’t know a soul. Then Mom came up with the brilliant idea that if i helped out at Riverview, it would look good on my application to the candy-stripers programme when i turned fourteen.  Plus, it would keep me out of mischief & besides .. as grandma piped up to remind me .. ”idle hands are the devil’s work”!
Well Grandma had nothing to worry about that first summer: Riverside really kept me hopping!  i folded laundry, ran supper trays, read aloud to Miss Jenkins & raided the garden for bouquets.  i didn’t really mind the work & of course, it didn’t hurt that Mrs. Delong’s brutally handsome son was home, painting the place inside & out to earn next year’s university tuition.  Sometimes i just walked Chichou, Mrs. D’s chihuahua around the block, or ran errands for the clientele .. but that’s how i really got to know Pops.
He always sent for pipe tobacco .. & occasionally peppermint nobs, with change fished from deep in his trouser pockets.  Every Saturday morning i waited through the interminable fumbling, ‘til finally he’d reach for my hand .. & one by one, deposit the coins .. rubbing each one round & round in my palm to “read” it. There was seldom enough .. & with a muttered “bollocks”, he’d invite me to reach deeper into his pocket for more .. but anyone could see that growing bulge there, in his pants, & there was NO WAY i was going near that .. so “BOLLOCKS” again, when i declined & Pops would reach over for the billfold he kept chained onto the pull of his bedside table.
i really hope you don’t think me disrespectful calling him Pops .. he was the one who insisted on that.  Though Nina, the registered nurse, always referred to him as Mr. Watson.  I don’t think they liked each other much, but i sure did.  i guess at that time in my life, all men were pretty much exotic creatures .. being surrounded, as i was most of the time, by all that estrogen & my own budding hormones.  Anyway, for an old guy, Pops still cut a dashing figure: kinda’ handsome .. just as long as you didn’t gaze directly into those eerie opalescent eyes .. with a buffed bald pate & hands the size of dinner plates.  And even all bent over, he was still, really, really tall.  And something of a dandy.
Matter of fact, for someone who was blind, he didn’t scrimp on vanity.  He trusted no one to shave him, save the barber hired in, once a week, for the big production.  It got to be my job to get Pops set up in the laundry room: with a big striped apron spread over his chest & three thick terry towels steaming in the corn pot.  The little Italian barber would fuss over Pops while he built up a shimmering mound of foam in the big white mug we kept above the tub ..  then he’d grimace fiercely .. stropping his long folding blade back & forth, until finally, with a big flourish, he’d clamber up onto a crate & administer a dandy shave to Pops’ big head.  I found this process endlessly fascinating .. & once he’d shuffled back to his room, he’d splash on a dash of the Old Spice which made him smell just like my dearly departed dad .. & for me, that was yet another big point in his favour.  And Pops dressed every single day, without fail, in a white on white striped shirt, meticulously pleated trousers & the whole held together, with a pair of wide red suspenders.  Then every Sunday morning he’d add a jaunty bow tie & only his scuffed-up leather slippers belied this dapper appearance.  Mrs. D. had his street shoes tucked away safe .. & maybe she figured he wouldn’t get very far in just slippers .. but after what happened next, i don’t think anything could have stopped our Pops!
You know, thinking back, it all seems so gut busting funny.  At least the one lone visual left in my head is .. but for the old lady brigade .. it was no less than “positively shockin”!
i didn’t think it was that big a deal, really.  It’d been a particularly torpid summer & i think Pops, like all the rest of us just got addled by the hot hot heat.  And truth be told, there’d been plenty of inklings something untoward was bound to happen.  i’d known Pops two years by then .. & over time he’d developed a sorrowful case of loneliness.  He’d totter around kinda’ aimlessly, behind the tap-a-tap-tap of his snake head cane, just looking for someone to keep company.  Well, not just anyone .. it had to be “a lady”.  Oh yes .. Pops pretty much shunned the men .. & LOVED the ladies!  i guess he was still trying to figure them out.  And once he’d honed in on one, well, he’d climb right up into bed for company & “cuddle” ‘er up!
i heard all about this .. not directly mind you .. but it was hard NOT to hear the “whispered shouting”  that hearing impaired people employ.  They certainly didn’t want my sister & i exposed to such tawdry tittering .. but at least once or twice a week .. mom & the aunties would sit in the kitchen with the WHOLE gaggle of old gals orbiting about, making tea .. & take turns titillating each other with the latest from Pops’ big old bag o tricks.  First you’d hear ‘Mr. Watson’ .. as if THAT formality could somehow dignify the subject.  Then a collective audible gasp .. some clucking .. & tsking .. then finally, the predictably disgusted pronouncement: “MEN!”.  Aunt Jean, who everyone knew was the rebel, invariably threw her tousled red head back & laughed.  Which always made me smile, but around that kitchen table it only ever incited a whole new round of tsking.  And if you asked her, which nobody ever did, “Pops was harmless ..  just a randy ol’ coot .. not enough lead left in his pencil to even dot an i !”  You know, i kinda’ think aunt Jean must’ve known a thing or two about “coots” ‘cause that’s just what her own sisters called her husband when she wasn’t around to hear.  And besides, aunt Jean never had much trouble with Pops.  She liked to jolly him along with a nice hot toddy & some ‘Jimmie Shands’ on the record player in the sunroom.  Aunt Mary on the other hand, was a pragmatist.  She kept a stash of thick rubber bands in the pocket of her uniform & swore that was the sure cure for Pops’ big wandering hands!  As for aunt Lola, well she pretty much kept her own counsel .. but she sure did blush a bright beet red & cluck along with the rest of them.  Now & again someone remembered  the special raisin rice pudding aunt Gladys used to serve .. but i guess that was always a last resort .. since really, it had more to do with crushed sleeping pills than that extra handful of raisins.  i know once in a while Mom had to wrastle with Pops too, but she had a real soft spot in her heart for him.  In fact, i think she was the only one who really understood his loneliness.  ‘Cause i just know she was pretty lonely too.
As the frequency of incidents increased, so did the tone of exasperation around that table.  Pops had been diagnosed with a chronic case of amorous mischief & it seemed to be his mission to invent ever more wily new ways to foil every single plot those women could come up with to cure it!  First, he muffled the tap-a-tap of his cane, with tape & a sock .. & when Nina confiscated the tape .. he made a game of picking aunt Mary’s pocket for elastics & used them instead.  Then Mrs. D. installed buzzers so the patients could ring for help, if Pops showed up to cuddle .. but everybody went positively buzzer mad .. distracting the staff with calls for juice & pillows & suggestions for the cook .. so that Pops turned out to be the very last thing on anyone’s busy mind.   And of course, they couldn’t just lock him in his room, so they tried restraints, but Pops would set up singing his rowdy pub songs ’til the other residents complained & the straps would come off.  Someone hung a cheery string of jingle bells on Pops’ doorknob, but he just put a sock on that & ambled on by. Then Nurse Nina finally confiscated all those socks, obliging with a fresh pair on his breakfast tray every morning, until Miss Jessop confessed to mom, that all of hers were missing.  Yep, Pops was definitely resourceful, aunt Jean said.  Why, just that morning, she’d glanced up from her cutting board & to see a miserable little Chichou .. hobbling across the yard under the great weight of jingling bells, tied with a flourish, onto his fancy jewelled collar.
So you see, for the most part, Pops was harmless.  But in the face of all those scoldings, hot toddies & interventions … Pops just seemed to get ever more determined to wander & hug.  And boy oh boy .. one day he wandered right away & that caused quite the stir at my house.
O.K. .. so like i said, it was hot!  One of those swelters peculiar to the dog days of summer.  i’d finally made candy striper & i was dragging myself up the porch steps, after a particularly sweaty walk home, from a shift at the hospital.  All i wanted to do was cool off.  The old ladies were on the verandah, around the usual pitcher of bitter sweet lemonade & a basket of scones ..  lethargic bits of needlework, lying idle in their laps.  Aunt Clarissa asked me to drag the hose around front so she could revive the drooping peonies.  Grandma got me to crack fresh ice into the jug .. & quick, before they could think of more jobs for me .. i beat a hasty retreat up the stairs.  i just had to get out of that sticky polyester uniform.  So i was there in the tub, fan beating back & forth in the hall .. blissful.  Just listening to the oscillated bits of conversation that floated up the stairs .. when Rosalie from the library must have walked by in a miniskirt .. ’cause i did hear about the length of it .. or rather the lack thereof.  They clucked on about that for a while.  Then i heard Mr. Delvechio’s lawn mower sputter to life next door & he must’ve been hot too .. ’cause ‘my lord’ .. he wasn’t wearing a shirt.  Then Dwayne Stuart went by on his motorcycle .. so i couldn’t quite hear what happened next .. but i did notice that the shower downstairs was on.  Mom must have come home early from work.  The ‘ladies’ themselves were scandalized by it, declaring the act of showering unseemly from the moment we’d had it installed .. so they never ever used it themselves.  But, there were seven women in our house, eating stewed prunes every morning & we really needed that second bathroom, to accommodate all those morning constitutionals.  And always thinkin’ Mom had seized on the moment of renovation & had the plumber install an extra outdoor spigot out front.  It was his idea to take the tee right off the new shower line: save money .. minor inconvenience right?  And so far, it’d never really been much of a problem.  That is at least, not until that very hot & sticky afternoon!
It’s funny isn’t it .. how sometimes things seem to go in very – slow – motion.  First i heard the shower.  Then i heard the hose unreeling.  i remember thinking, oh, oh .. Mom forgot to tell the ‘ladies’ she was going for a shower.  Then i heard the little squeak .. & on no, someone’s  turned the hose on.  And i’m pretty sure everyone in the neighbourhood heard what happened next ’cause it was classic Pops: “BOLLOCKS BOLLOCKS BOLLOCKS”!
There was a moment of deafening silence.  A confusion of clucking.  A creaking of chairs.  The front door slammed …  four times .. as each of the ‘ladies’ pushed into the house.  And by the time the litany of  ‘oh my, my, mys’ began .. i was back out of the tub .. dripping down the stairs.  Hastily wrapping my towel ‘round me as i ran.
BUT.. i’ve gotta’ tell you .. that’s a lot more than i can say for Pops.
There he was .. standing tall .. in the middle of our kitchen.  In nothing but his birthday suit!  Grandma had taken matters into her own hands & was wildly whacking at Pops with the broom.  The spinster sisters were all agog: Aunt Clarissa was  noisily inhaling long draughts, from the tiny bottle of smelling salts, she carried in her apron pocket!  Aunt Sadie was racked stem to stern with quaking & had a white knuckle grip on the doorframe!  But bless her heart, there was our boarder, Shoey,  trying her very best to get between Grandma & Pops.  Kinda’ waving a soggy tea towel in his general direction!  Looked to me like she was desperately trying to cover up .. at least SOME of the offending bits.
Oh poor old Pops. Though i gotta’ hand it to him .. blind & buck naked .. he still tried to  work his magic.  He cleared his throat & gathering as much dignity as he could muster .. stretched his arms out, palms open in a gesture of conciliation .. & began speaking in his deep rich voice: “Calm down ladies .. do calm down. Look at me! I’m absolutely harmless. I was merely overcome with heat ..  & the shower was so cool. Then it suddenly turned scalding.  So, here I am .. forced into your midst! I humbly beg your ladies pardon”.
Well, that caught us all off guard.  Shoey, one hand still clutching the broom, stuffed the tea towel into Pops’ outstretched palm & hissed: “Cover yourself!”  Which he kinda’ vaguely did.  Grandma stopped wrestling with Shoey & snorted!  Clarissa  passed Sadie the smelling salts.  i just stood there gaping.  But Pops must’ve sensed defeat . He suddenly looked so small.  So forlorn.  Every trace of bluster had drained away .. & Pops just hung his head, muttering: “bollocks, bollocks, bollocks”.
Then suddenly Mom & aunt Jean burst through the back door, with Chichou on their heels in hot pursuit.  i guess they must’ve heard the ruckus all the way next door, but now everything had gone very very quiet.  They just stood still a long moment, trying to grasp the situation, then suddenly everyone was talking at once.  Chichou yipped wildly, all around Pops’ feet.  Grandma took up with the broom again, this time, whacking at the dog.  The great aunties & Shoey were wagging & tsking .. but good old aunt Jean just kinda’ threw her head back & howled.
But not Mom.  My inscrutable Mom.  She sidled right up to Pops & ever so gently took hold of his free hand.  Then she tip-toed up & whispered something in his ear.  That made him grin.  She grabbed her pink kimono from the back of the bathroom door & draped it over Pops broad shoulders.  Then she somehow wrangled his abandoned slippers onto his feet  & steered him toward  the door.  They were almost through when Mom turned around .. & fixed us one by one with a withering glare.  “Go on!” she said in a sad flat voice.  “You should all be ashamed of yourselves.”
And i guess we all kind of were.  No one said a thing .. & before the ‘ladies’ could recover their tongues, i flew back up the stairs & leaned way out the bathroom window.  Chichou pranced around the corner first, then Pops, in his mostly naked glory .. holding the women in close, one on each arm.  He seemed to have made a good recovery, just gabbing away at top volume .. regaling his escort with the details of his escapade.  Mom said something i couldn’t hear & they all had a laugh at that, but just before they disappeared into the foyer, Pops pulled up short & shook himself free.  He turned vaguely back in my direction & bellowed back cheerfully, “Thanks for the shower ladies.  Too bad about the kerfuffle!   … I’m still quite over-heated! But no hard feelings anyway.  When I find my clothes, you’ll come for tea .. & i’m certain ladies, you’ll discover, that I am nothing, if not a  gentleman”.  Pops cupped his hand around his ear, hoping for a reply.  None was forthcoming, so Pops just executed a dapper little bow, then pulled himself back up to attention.  And with that pink cape floating out behind .. clicked his slippers .. & saluted the stifling air.
And roared: “BOLLOCKS”

MY BIO:
mary collins lives in the forest, with her husband George, Doozer the chocolate lab, some gnomes & other wild things.  When she’s not puttering around the garden, she likes to spin off yarns, just as much as Pops did!

Dragonflier 2008

Wingless,
a lone blue feather
tethered to the snow
aches to fly …
off into the yonder
& away.

BEGINNING: It’s late october. Thought i’d get an early start on my quasi-annual missive this year … see if i can get it together for the holidays … but i poked my head out the door, just to sniff the dampish air & was lured up moon hill to see what i could see. It’s been drizzling for hours: more on than off & this welcome rain so refreshed our parched yard that even the subdued palette of late autumn looks inviting. So i waited for a lull in the rain & zig-zagged up through the moist-maze of colourful. Slip-sliding over slick mats of fallen leaves. Drinking in the thick wet air. And up on top, i turned a slow deliberate circle to try & memorize this naked landscape as it undulates away.
Soon the world will be plush with snow, but at the moment it’s very lean & muscular. Bony too, with verdant tufts of soft moss tucked discreetly into all the moist folds. i was up pretty high & from there, everything slopes away. To the south & west, rosy granite cascades into bowls of black onyx where one lone duck bobbed in & out of the tawny reeds. Now & then a rogue raindrop dimpled in, rippled & winked back up. i just stood still, watching water merge with water in arcs to infinity ‘til a beaver paddled into my reverie. Doozer’s too i guess ‘cause he let out a deep chesty howl & the duck quacked off with spectacular fanfare. The dog bowled past me, careened down the hill & plunged in. Nonplussed, the beaver slapped his tail once & disappeared. i laughed & laughed & turned east, leaving Dooze to swim bewildered circles in silence. i peered through a tangle of tree tops into the mawsy distance, then finally north, where the tilt down is more gradual than grandiose. A couple nights ago, a blast of arctic air finally stripped the trees, so now all but the reliable evergreens, a few hearty beeches, the tenacious oaks & a couple brazen sumacs have dropped their leaves. What remains is the bold architecture of bare trees striping off over the horizon. But just then the downpour resumed in earnest & i beat a hasty retreat, waving vaguely at the neighbours’ as i slid down the hill for home.
So i’ve toweled off the dog, abandoned my soggy moccasins by the door & i’m back to the business at hand. Last time i wrote was deep winter & apart from the hockey forays, we were more or less hunkered down. George puttered away at wood-working & finished up the exquisite corner cupboard & a built-in storage bench in the dining room. i added into the photo albums, piddled away at the ever diminishing piles of boxes, then plotted garden futures & travel plans.

HOCKEY DOODLE DANDY: The Wolfe Island Tournament was a rollicking success for the ragtag band of Gas Station Islanders who braved the 401 & the whimsy of the mighty St. Lawrence to play. Dyl & Geo went early, tuckered themselves silly on the rink, jammed out with various & sundry hockey players / musicians on the General Wolfe Inn’s stage, caught the last icy ferry out & arrived home very late. George sat on the bed & relived highlights for me in snapshot memories & for him, watching tall gangly Domenic tangle with the diminutive yet determined Sarah Harmer in the corner for the puck, totally framed the spirit of the day. The only glitch for Geo was Dom’s Habs red hockey socks! Noonish the next day, Dom & a half dozen intrepid Islanders arrived

for a game of shinny, spaghetti, meatballs & a mound of spinach salad. i was prepping in the kitchen & totally missed the moment when everyone simultaneously threw themselves face down to marvel at the iridescent bubbles of frozen light trapped in the ice … & the slow motion fish rippling by. But when Don Kerr was suddenly possessed of the urge to take a flying leap into a snowbank, Dyl snapped a mid-flight pic & man, Don really caught some air. That & a wide inscrutable grin!

A couple weeks later, at the beginning of march, Geo & his good buddy Al were wrangling over a puck in the corner when Geo’s knee buckled in a most unorthodox way & they had to carry a busted up # 11 off the ice. Over the next couple of months George managed to hobble back into motion, but with a torn ‘ACL’ & ‘MCL‘ it did put the kaibosh on his hockey season. Tournie time was comin’ up so he perversely went out to most of the games & hooted himself hoarse from the sidelines. For the Exclaim Cup on Easter weekend, he pulled on his jersey, joined his Islanders on the bench & patted backs as they whirled on & off the ice. They almost made hockey history & by all accounts, the guys were on fire, playing to within one goal of the championship. And the mandatory team ‘rink rock’ gig was such a hit that they were asked to reprise it the next day.

,

They invented a reggae “O Canada” & Grandpa Gee carted wee Dex & his new pink shaker egg onstage for his musical debut. And every night, Geo joined up with the Exclaim revelers at Lee’s Palace to carry the music, beer & all that tomfoolery on. So, busted knee & all, George still managed to get his yah-yah’s out!

YOU ARE VERY STAR: (being a Rheostatic primer) Our very first Rheos’ experience came out of a Campbell’s Christmas packet … not sure what year but it’s gotta’ be at least mid-‘80’s. It piqued our musical interest: quirky, deep, wonky, fun … & they were ridin’ the crest of a wave surging out of the Canadian ‘indie’ scene. Up ‘til that point, most of our musical outings were family friendly: Mariposa, Home County, Carlysle, WOMAD, et al, but the kids were getting old enough to hold down the fort, our vehicle seemed somewhat reliable & somehow there was mad-money floating around … so we dove right back in.
Now about that time, our friend Lynn worked for a local weekly paper & she asked George to write a music column like the ones he added on to these newsy letters every year. That was the real genesis of Noisy Boy & as he made industry connections, alternate writing opportunities presented themselves which gave him the real obligation to attend a lot more gigs. So we began seeing the Rheos’ playing around … & many, many times since: surely more than any other band & occasionally more than once in a week during the marathon ‘Green Sprouts Music’ weeks. They’d take over a bar & pack the fans in with a new show every night. You could always count on meetin’ up with friends at the shows & you met folks who would eventually become friends. It was a real community & the gigs were quite like family reunions. The Rheos’ truly reached out & touched their fans: connecting all the dots to make a beautiful pure circle of audience & art. And in those perfect round moments, every single one of us became very very star.
Dyl’s been on-stage with the Rheos’ as have quite a few of our musical friends. Matter of fact, during one ‘Sprouts’ week, Noisyboy (a.k.a. Geo) e-mailed Dave Bidini the names of one of his railway buddies’ kids: each excellent musicians in their own right & fine prospects as guest players. Well Dave made that happen & we watched it happen for lots of others over the years.
And when George wanted to present Dave’s book ‘On A Cold Road’ to the Intergalactics, he arranged for a half dozen signed copies to be delivered to his hotel room. Dave was very accommodating & they squeezed it in between train trips. Then over coffee they swapped stories & got to know each other from a different direction. And the book club got to scrape away the frost on the window of the van & get a peek into one of very many marathon gigs on the cold Canadian road.
Then a local high school invited the Rheos’ for “music in the schools” & we hung with them between rehearsals & gigs: driving in the Rheomobile to the ‘pita pit’ for lunch, then dining at an ignominious greasy spoon that Dave insisted on for supper. Said he liked the name: Cosy Grill. Back at the school, Martin & i got to be smokin’ buddies under the “NO SMOKING IN THE PARKING LOT” sign. Shockin’ i know … but those clandestine meetings led to some humorous kibbitzing, weird random musings, a couple deep twisty thoughts & an absurd Arlo Guthriesque ditty inspired by the possibility of being arrested for that criminal act. It was goofy fun & while Martin & i were out morphing into felons, Geo, Danny Mayer & Pete Snell joined up with Rheos’ on the ice to take on the student hockey challenge. All in all, a whopping good time!
But separately from the music, George got to know Dave, Tim Vesley & Don Kerr through hockey & i came to know them ‘cause well, i’m his puck bunny. Noisyboy had wrangled his way onto the Montreal ‘Stompies’ line-up to play a couple early Exclaim Cups & with the demise of that team, Dyl finagled Geo onto the Gas Station Islanders, & the rest, as they say, is history!

BEE SKY OPUS IN MAGENTA: Those Rheostatics are every single one a unique talent & after more than a quarter century being intimately wrapped up in each other’s creativity, the collective agreed time had come to disassemble the beast. Send it in for re-grooving. So at the end of march month, we toured into the big smoke for the final hurrah at Massey Hall. The night before, the Rheos’ hosted a warm-up to farewell at the Horseshoe: a loose, sloppy wet kiss for their fans … like a boozy breakup with a long time lover … pumped full of happy / sad, clutch & grab & a distinct reluctance to part! But by the next evening the band & the fans were fully committed: sharing deep soulful moments & long passionate kisses. It was a love-in. It was amazing. It was emotional. The inter-band banter made us laugh. They even jibed Morningstar to Islander about the imminent Exclaim Cup & George got a shout out about his status on the “injury” list.
So there were thrills, moments of virtuosity & moments of sheer musical elegance. But for the most part, the Rheos’ offered up earnest renditions of a fair few fan faves & such was the sense of reverential respect that you could have heard a pin drop in that lovely old hall. It kinda’ put me in mind of the Band’s ‘Last Waltz’ … & it was a very fitting finale for our era of Rheostatic love.

NEXT DAY: We toured Emily Carr at the A.G.O. A rare treat really: i’ve felt a kinship with that feisty woman who went to bush & painted, ever since i “met” her in a grade eight art class. Her mojo just pulled me into a world that keeps on calling me back. And on the train ride home, i pulled out my notebook & let that mystery unravel …

NAMASTE EMILY: and thank-you. i met your Big Raven again today. Oh, he’s fine: maybe a little disoriented this far east, but roosting to good advantage in a rigged up room at the A.G.O. Tucked in, around a corner & perched way up in a wavering treetop. i didn’t actually see the nest, but i’ll bet it’s a sturdy thing. Woven higgeldy piggeldy through, with twigs & bark & redwood threads. Lined with flotsam & bits of rope, scavenged out of some tide pool winking up the coast. Either way, you’ve got to crane way up to spy it & when i finally did, the pilfered twinkle & glint is what i saw. Practically blinded me! It’s well known Raven’s got a weakness for any shiny trinket so i guessed it must be salvage causing all that dazzle floating in my squinty eyes & finally convinced me his nest was clinging up on the leeside of those vaulting angled peaks. The ones Lawren Harris inspired you to. Awesome! Aloof yet so totally compelling. An enigma really: they just exude an inherent stoic quiescence that is somehow both rooted & reaching. And amazingly still. An oriental koan wrapped in ice & blue hued snow. i felt the riffles of frigid air shivering down off those slopes & it was such a surprise. i would have thought that at this low altitude those glaciers would already be rivering away.
So yeah, Raven’s there: all ebony & indigo & punked up ruff … with those shifty sun flecked eyes. Sitting there on watch. And i’m sure he isn’t lonely: plunked down, downtown Toronto like that. Presiding over all that brick & mortar & sooty glass … with an endless stream of humans scrolling by. Heck, he hauled a whole forest of lodgepoles, totems & tilting trees along. Rivers too: roiling through turbulent ferny understoreys & seething in seclusion. Likely teeming with salmon, just aching toward the sea: though all i made out were the shifty vague shapes of spectral fins. That & a flickered fishtail. Really it was the silvered slivers of spray, raising rainbows up into that flat museum light that finally gave them away.
But the serene beauty you daubed into those verdant mossy glens, fully completely wowed me. Those places where the water is momentarily becalmed & it just sits there breathing. Patiently threading air to air: alternating pearly beads of moonbeam with jeweled shards of sunlight. Building an agile ephemera that eventually evaporates even the last vestiges of winter, leaving a ripe steamy waft of composting fecundity behind.
i do have to say, it was kinda’ weird to smell things like that in a gallery. Oh don’t get me wrong: those sudden whiffs of freshening cedar that zephyered in were absolutely intoxicating. And that sweet vernal promise from those alpine blooms … but oh my gawd, that bear! i guess it wouldn’t have been very west coast without one … but she was pretty rank. And grizzly still, from her long winter nap, though i guess lucky for the art crowd, also still somewhat skittish around strangers. So she stayed at bay: back-scratching up & down in the shadows. Just pausing every now & then to sniff up into the unfamiliar ether & harumphh.
Emily, it was a neat trick to paint Raven’s breath with all that … & you got the sounds just right too. Matter of fact, sometimes it was downright noisy: water falling, wind quaking, mountains moving, trees dancing & all those creatures rustling in the underbrush! But it was in the deepest quiet that i heard the loudest sound: the slow lazy drone of bumbling bees & a high pitched mosquito whine twined around my own wild beating heart & somehow harmonized into a loud primal OM. So eventually, i took that forest mantra & answered Raven’s call.
Anyhow, looks like he’s settled in for the duration, though i had to wonder what he eats. Didn’t see any rodents or actual fish, though they’ve gotta’ be there … spawning dubious futures behind the scenes somewhere. No carcasses either, with those festering tender bits … though it’s a pretty sure bet that even the hint of rotting flesh is sanitized on the spot. No … i’m guessing Big Raven subsists on the spontaneous tears of folks like me. Wandering into the familiar spell of his gaze & compelled to turn, see an old friend. Wondering aloud why it took so very long to get there.
It’s weird: Big Raven really startled me. And when his insistent squawking & frenetic flapping finally registered in my thickened brain, i stumbled back, right over my own shadow. Tears spilled into a puddle of shame & stunned surprise around my clumsy feet. i bowed deeply then & proffered up my penance: “ ……. & it’s been too long Raven. i have missed you.” He cocked his head & studied me, then he went to ground. And with one quick flick of his long forked tongue, he absolved my salty confusion. Raven bowed back then & believe it or not Emily, i swear that tricky bird sorta’ smiled. So again, from my heart place, i thank you. And namaste.

JUST LISTEN: It didn’t take long to parse the meaning out of my emotional reunion. Raven is inextricably bound into the long memory of men in a profound & often complex way. He’s definitely deep into mine. It’s impossible to remain ambivalent once you’ve met him face to face. He likes to turn things inside out & upside down, to see what makes them tick & that sort of wily mischief really makes you think. Some say he stole salmon from the beaver, others that he stole the sun … there’s lots of stories … but his real strength is his ability to navigate into the ‘mystery’. So when Big Raven landed smack dab on my reality tape, i knew i’d better pay attention. i guess i’ve been so caught up in the whirlwind of everyday that i’d become seriously derelict in duty to my own spiritual needs. i figure that’s precisely why he got up in my face & stayed there. And no matter that i made such a spectacle of myself there in the A.G.O. ‘cause while i was visiting Raven i figured it out. Everything i needed was right there. Just waiting to get out.

HEY, THERE’S THE DOOR: In the seventies, i’d studied the mahareshi’s ‘transcendental meditation’ & discovered that by simply sitting & pushing away busy thoughts you opened yourself to a beautiful lightness of being. That might sound odd & really, mere words can’t do justice to the sense of it, but it was a revelation. New doors of perception opened to me & i know it grew me as a human being. Over the years my practice became a source of abiding joy & as i better learned to BE in the moment, it became a way to maintain in the calm eye of the whirlwind that was life at the farm. We kept up a hectic pace there & thinking back, i’m truly in awe at the kind of energy we had. All that went out the window (what window? you might say!) in 1986 when we moved to this fort in the forest & buckets of rain became my meditation.

SO BE HERE NOW: My friend Pat Cockburn’s been sitting for several years & she’d arranged for her teacher to come from Toronto to give an introductory talk. Maybe get a group sitting together here. And just sitting there listening to Nanates rekindled a tiny flame in me in that place where joy resides. i felt so humble & filled with gratitude. It was the perfect gift.
Now, it’s been almost a year since i went to hear that talk, but i guess i wasn’t truly ready yet. At first i really struggled, then that Raven came along, tucked me under his obsidian wing & just held me still, ‘til i was quiet. And absolutely ready to listen.

AND JUST GO SIT: Sitting is very serious practice. Pat shared the zen “way” to meditate, which is different in approach but reaches for the exact same place. And i do so love the vibe: sitting with like-minded friends in a room ripened for the experience with gongs & clackers & incense & bowing. But since i have to uproot the chauffeur to go anywhere, i mostly just sit … very very still. Like a lotus. In my own private temple made of air.

THEN SPRING INTO ACTION: Things finally began to unfurl toward the end of april. Suddenly, dandelions shot through with sun were dancin’ dainty blue squills across the yard. Headstrong tulips shot unruly stems up through the sodden mulch to splay vivacious petals skyward. Alders popped a nascent shade of lime. Violets burst purple. Forsythia replied in gold & jonquils unfolded sweet scented origami cups above a veritable sea of hyacinths, fairly bursting with pastel beads of dew. Oh yeah … spring is such an easy beauty.
But ‘til then it’d been too cool & wet to work the soil, let alone plant, so that our brand new ‘Mantis’ tiller arrived just as the warmth began to waffle in. Never thought the day would come, but ever since the sciatica laid George flat just before Skye’s wedding, i’ve worried about him. i hoped the ‘Mantis’ would dig his potato patch without that sort of consequence ever again, so right away we churned up my little garden plot to try it out. It’s a marvellous wee thing & remarkably easy to handle. Heck, i wrangled it, unlike that behemoth Raymond lent us that first year at the farm. i’m sure he meant it as a kindness, but the thing really tried to kill us & we’ve hand dug all our gardens ever since. Now we merely have to ‘Mantis’ in with that amazing little tiller.
So after a slow soggy start, spring finally sprung with an unusual exuberance & we had to rush to catch up to the calendar. Geo dug in spuds & i carved rows in the soil to dibble in seeds: carrots, peas, salad greens … both of us somewhat tortured by the fact that we were about to abandon the project & abscond to the coast. But we felt obliged. Afterall: it’s a ritual of spring.

IT’S MAYDAY, IT’S DEXTERDAY: So glad you joined our planet day! Strung up reams of streamers & a whack of balloons to celebrate Dexter Blue’s first birthday at dragonfly. Great aunt Lori came from Owen Sound with Moira (on the cusp of merry olde england & beyond) to join the usual local suspects for barbeque, a couple birthday cakes & a rousing game of croquet. We had a wonderful afternoon … all except Skye, who hung up the last of the banners & promptly took sick. She stuck it out, groaning on the couch, but even without mom, wee Dex didn’t miss a beat. He’s definitely a case for that old adage, “the nut doesn’t fall far from the tree” & he’s a gregarious mixer. He ‘beetled’ about: hamming it up for pics with the guests, running comedy gags & interference in the games. Then he sat like a little buddha on Janice’s lap & opened up his presents. But i’d say it was we who got the gift! A child’s guileless grace is so very nourishing & as Dex marvelled over each packet, no matter what they contained, his face read pure delight. Then he flashed us all that big wide grin & soaked us all in JOY!

LET THE BAT BATTLES BEGIN: Luckily George had begun to regain confidence in his mobility ’cause just as the last of the revelers drove off, Skye mentioned a screechy racket emanating from our north porch wall. Geo hauled out the ladder, pried off the board & battens & stood very, very still while at least 50, maybe 75 BATS, flew out, around & away. It was quite the ‘aero-bat-ic’ display (ha-ha), but i wasn’t laughing. Don’t get me wrong: i really admire nature’s ingenuity & i’m fully cognizant that bats have an integral role to play in the chain of life, but i just can’t reconcile rodents flying around the inside of my house. (Probably wouldn’t like monkeys either … or birds: Mandy will vouch that birds are weird too) Outside o.k., & yeah for bats on those hot, buzzy summer nights. They can fly around all over the place & devour as many mosquitoes as they want … but inside, it’s something else. All that grudging admiration dissolves, along with any logic or rationale & i go over the edge in hysterics. Just ask R! For Christmas i bought ‘Stella Luna’ for Dex: the beautifully illustrated story of a lost baby fruit bat … but it’s probably gonna take more than props to rehabilitate my bi-polar opinion or forgive those miscued bats.
Our annual excursion to ‘the rock’ was scheduled for mid-june & once George destroyed the bat-cave there was a great deal of pressure to get our house bat-proofed to prevent a mass re-settlement. To George’s credit, he was very patient with my whims & hung up all manner of bat bafflers: inside & out. He caulked some very tiny holes, closed in the south porch with windows & re-invented most of the board & batten. Nevertheless, i’ve got Cliff’s old fish-net at the door, ready to grab the inevitable wily interlopers.

AH TAIKO: In Japanese ‘taiko’ is a drum. We found little white Taiko, with her tail like a drum, at a yard sale.

A friend, Jill, was using traffic through her mom’s yard to advertise her Lab’s puppies & well, Skye & i just could not resist. Taiko was keen, smart, empathetic, intuitive, & as Jill pointed out, she had lovely eyelashes. She thought Jan & Doug were her fairy dog-parents & bonded with them early on. The two of them taught her to bark at the door: Jan would wag & bark & catch most of the ‘cheerio’ doggie treats Doug chucked at her. It was a hoot & it worked. Geo trained her to fetch his boots out of the pile, gloves out of the basket, her ball from the bucket & out they’d go. She was all-terrain, hauled firewood, delivered live partridge & loved hockey almost as much as George. When we got Doozer, Taiko became his ‘mom’. She shadowed him & diverted him from trouble, mostly the cats: Hobbes & Nigho (whose little pink noses got quite out of joint) & when diversion didn’t work she’d flatten him with her paw & lick him into submission. Taiko was Doozer’s tour guide & our very good friend & it was difficult watching her decline. First she got cataracts & slowly lost her ability to navigate; arthritis left her stiff & slow; then according to the vet, she likely suffered a mild stroke. She lost her verve & her nerve … getting lost in the house, confused in the yard & stuck into corners just barking for help. It was sad but still we struggled with the decision we knew we had to make. And now that she’s gone, we really miss her, though her lovely lively Taiko spirit lives on.

LEFT & LEAVING: Dooze was grieving too, so we delayed our departure to try & heal our broken hearts … but the plans we’d set in motion so many months before were starting to gather momentum & far too soon we had to drive away. Leaving just that one sad doggie tail wagging good-bye.
Against my better judgement, we drove the “Donaldmobile”. Ever the optimist, George figured our little ‘94 Ford Ranger had enough ‘stuff’ & besides, he really wanted to take another deck’s worth of cedar, a chair for Lorraine, more benches for Exploits & an arsenal of fishing rods. i’d already amassed a whack of non-perishable supplies for the island expedition … so after spending a thousand bucks to make it roadworthy, George turned the cab into a living room, we crammed it to the gills & hit the road. Half way through Quebec though, the thermostat started wavering up & down. For a couple kilometers it hovered on the verge of too hot, then the dreaded red light came on. We pulled off & tried to enjoy our smoked salmon lunch while the truck cooled down, then George squeezed the hose, added some antifreeze & we were back in business. i was a little nerve-racked after that & kept vigil on the needle, but by some unlikely miracle it seemed, the thing was o.k.

FORTUNATELY / UNFORTUNATELY: Day two started out with sunshine & a renewed sense of optimism. The rad was all topped up & the needle stayed in the a.o.k. range … but half way across New Brunswick the truck set up a shimmy. “Now what?” A cursory inspection revealed nothing obvious & we bickered about what to do: i voted for an immediate auto club tow / Geo wanted to try for the nearest Canadian Tire, only two highway exits away in Oromocto. And since he was in the driver’s seat, we lurched east along the trans-Canada with the four-ways flashing & the tension mounting. By now the truck was jiggling. We were in a bowl of fluorescent green jello. The truck felt like it was literally rattling apart. Then it was wobbling. i was barely breathing. George was slowing slowing slowing. Than a horrible memory crossed my mind & i shrieked: this happened to Den. His darn wheel spun off & just about killed him! But there, across the overpass, the ubiquitous Canadian Tire sign. We started up the ramp. The truck yawed sideways. George jammed on the brake. There was a clunk. And a scrunch. And a great long screech. George wrastled with the wheel & we finally stopped moving. It was over. And for a long moment it was very very quiet. Then ‘what the hell …’ & we both jumped out just in time to watch our disembodied tire rolling right back down the ramp.
We were o.k. The car following had watched the whole horrible debacle unfold. The teenage kid in the back seat leapt out & snatched the tire before it rolled back down onto the highway to cause further mishap. His mom leapt out & wrapped me in a big maritime hug ‘til i finally stopped trembling. Then i just stayed inside the guardrail, waving traffic around our tilting truck while she drove Geo to get help. The army stopped, highway patrol stopped & everyone slowed down to yell ‘was i o.k.?’ That lady came back with refreshments & in the end, a flatbed loaded the ‘Donaldmobile’ & we climbed up in the cab beside the driver & he hauled it away. We got a new tire, a rim & a brakedrum … just no guarantees. So we crossed our fingers, counted our blessings & forged ahead to the 1:00 a.m. ferry.

WE MADE IT: Arrived Port Aux Basques in the early wet dawn & headed north to Steady Brook for breakfast with our Exploits partner, Dirk. We’d been hoping to meet up with his new bride Petra but she had to work, so the three of us talked kayaks, paint & decking …Dirk showed off the hand-made greenland style paddles he was crafting, then we hopped back into the beast & aimed at Gambo.
When we finally got there i collapsed in a heap. i’d started the trip on meds, trying to cope with a persistent cold. Add the overheating, the jostling & all that jaw clenching & i guess i was just ‘all beat out’. But the first couple weeks were easy: scenics with Lorraine, catching up with kinfolk, a big black bear, Karen’s chocolate brownies, jam stands, galleries, museum tours then shopping the fishplants for supper. Geo & brother Donimo tested the ‘Donaldmobile’s’ mettle as far down some overgrown logging roads as they could get, in a successful attempt to finally solve the mysterious beginnings of Joe’s Brook.

Trout Fishing Joe’s Brook

Slogging up the creek they saw caribou, partridge & swarms & swarms of nippers, though George was disappointed there wasn’t the ‘eureka’ trout pool he’d been hoping for. But every single evening they scouted more trout & the night they went with Lorna’s brother Frank, George learned to fly-fish with a pro. So he finally got to use the lures Bob Lundy built & caught a record body count. Thanks Bob, they were beautiful: even just floating around there, in Lorna’s kitchen sink.

TAKE ONE: We hired skipper Lloyd one weekend to carry the wood, tools, a brand new barbeque & all our supplies to Exploits. Donimo & Geo were hyped for the adventure with their two newly acquired ‘Seaknife’ kayaks aboard. It’s Lloyd’s son Lindy who builds them. The same Lindy who told George he was going out to paddle with a beluga in 2002: the same beluga i told George we saw in Summerford: the same place George dove right in & joined the ranks of whale riders.

Whales Tale

Anyway, didn’t see any whales that day, but there were still lots of icebergs around, so we gawked & swivelled across Notre Dame Bay. A sleek black harbour seal popped up alongside & bobbed around in the wake … checking us out, while we checked him out … then he disappeared into the deeps. Lloyd told us that was kind of a rarity that time of year. Usually the seals would all be down north by the end of june. It was a good get for me ‘cause apart from aquariums, i’d only ever encountered west coast seals visiting Bob & Vicki on the lights at Race Rocks. Lots though: loitering on opposite rocks in the company of enormous, stinky sealions in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. But here in the east, where so many maritime cultures had grown up & flourished in such perfect symbiosis with this creature, i’d never actually seen one. So it was neat for me to finally have a visual for my archives.
Once we got the shutters off, Geo hammered away for two days ‘til he got the front deck done. Don poked around finding flattish rocks for a step up & i swept, unpacked & larded up the pantry. George got really excited when he unearthed an enormous flagstone in exactly the spot he needed one. A kind of palimpsest: it must’ve languished there for years, just under the gnarly sod that had swallowed up his ancestors’ pathway.

A guy from lower harbour dropped by to yak kayaks & since he was there lifting lobster pots we struck a deal to get a dozen or so a couple weeks hence. Monalyn & her lovely daughter Manon motored over from Jeffries Cove & got the grand tour. With her grandparents & her mom (George’s aunt Una), Monalyn & brother Ivan spent every summer of their youth in that house. It’s the place their joy grew. Una loved it too & between her & uncle Perce, kept it percolating along for the rest of us. But since it was aunt Una who’d pasted up the layer upon layer of wallpaper that we were busy ripping down, it was somewhat of a relief to hear her say she loved the renovations … & the naked wood plank walls. Monalyn figures to fix up her cabin across the way & get back to spending summers in Exploits again. Yeah for that & cousins unite! It’s a Manuel resettlement: hey it’s practically a movement!
So when the chores were finally done, the brothers paddled out to sea. They aimed at a berg across the run, a few kilometers off,

but just as they got out the mouth of Upper Harbour, a massive three spired specimen loomed into view.

Must have sailed in on the overnight tides & was just kinda’ lurking there around the point of Grebe Head. So the men veered left & got much closer than they should.
It’s easy to see why they would. Icebergs are enigmatic giants. From a distance they just seem so silent & aloof: sailing through latitudes without heed to lines on a map or shipping lanes … detouring for nothing & crushing everything in their wake. But once you enter the effervescent air that hovers around a berg, you begin to fathom the nuance.
Icebergs are ceaselessly noisy: dithering with seabirds & thuggish bands of gulls … always crackling & popping, with ear splitting thwacks! Fracturing again & again into purpley dark shadows & indigo clefts. But in the full force of sunlight, that ice shatters into prisms … refracting the eons of colourful picked up during their long haul south. Sometimes you can even hear water dripping as accumulated rainbows just rivulet around in the glaze of periodic sunshine. But up close of course, icebergs are polar cold. And steamy with a hoary mist that freezes when you breathe. So when you get in that close, just sitting in that frizzled air, all you can think of is: awesome. Needless to say, men will be boys & those two were gone for hours.

TAKE TWO: Next weekend we hooked up with our other house-partner, cousin Kathy, her sis Kathleen & hubby Richie & headed out again. Left from Little Burnt Bay, like we used to do before we discovered Lloyd & Lindy round the bay. And once upon a time, i almost had the chain of islands memorized, but this time i hardly even saw them. It was alternately teeming & blowing & the swell on the sea threw whitecaps over the bow every now & again. i was petrified & though i tried to put on a brave face, i really didn’t fool anyone. i was pretty well green! Luckily between Garry’s garage & both the K’s uncle Cliff, we’d scrambled together enough wet weather gear to keep us dry … & of course with skipper Richie at the helm, his state of the art G.P.S. & two excellent first mates, we made it. Though i’m also sure that being in uncle Herbert’s boat & aunt Lily’s floater coats helped a little bit too!

And once i’d scrambled up the hill to the house & kissed the sodden ground, it turned out to be a wonderful mawsy weekend: lobster, spirits, a tasty feed of sea trout … & we more or less lolled around, puzzled plumbing futures & a jigsaw, drowsed by the woodstove, walked in the rain & Richie found way more rocks for the walkway. The spired berg was still there, having sailed back & forth across the harbour mouth all week ‘til it finally grounded in on Broadcove.

So there was million year old ice in our drinks & an otherwordly soundtrack as house sized chunks cleaved off that iceberg & just skipped away. But the weather threatened to worsen … though i can’t say it’d ever gotten that much better … so we packed up early & headed out for another soggy ride up the bay.

TAKE THREE: Middle of the week, Lori arrived from Ontario. Next day, Spoons & fam flew in & once again, we set our sights on Exploits. Well, in reality it drizzled the whole way & the shroud of fog was so thick that we couldn’t see a bloomin’ thing …

but it was a good dose of maritime ambience & wouldn’t ya’ know, rounding Grebe Head into Exploits, the sun scraped a hole in the sky & dazzled right through.
It was an auspicious beginning. We were eight bodies so there were episodes of chaos, ad hoc meals on the deck & a pile of surf socks at the door. Right off the bat, Nate (read five year old dervish) & grandpa Gee (read fifty-six year old dervish)
caused a ruckus … & i’ve heard a couple of versions, but the facts remain: grandpa had an elastic, grandson was the target & in the ensuing excitement, Nate missed the edge of the deck & fell backwards, at least eight feet, off the end of the deck. Luckily he missed the jaggedy rocks & the rusty bedstead … & landed on the upturned kayak instead, bounced once & landed smack dab in the stinging nettles. And man o man he was wailing! It was pretty scary: i’d turned at the exact right (or maybe wrong) moment to watch the whole thing in hideous slow motion. Matter of fact, summer before i’d predicted as much, though George had shushed me with the well known fact that there’d always been some kind of high decking at the back & we’d never heard of anyone going over … yet! Besides, there wasn’t lumber enough to install proper rails. So of course, thinkin’ bout it later, i felt maybe somehow i’d jinxed it. But Mandy finally got Nate calmed down, gave him a good once-over & apart from the startle, a wee bump & a few good scrapes, the worst of his agony seemed to be the direct result of nettles. But ouch! A good long romp in the ocean pretty well took care of that & the drama kind of got forgotten … except once in a while when Nate felt compelled to tell everyone just how it happened that his very own grandpa Gee tried to kill him. That’s gonna’ be some legacy eh? Anyhoo, apart from a couple other minor traumas, mostly our adventures were good ones. Having rented a double kayak there were harbour tours for everyone, including Lorraine who got a bit miffed that George was trying to gondolier & insisted on a paddle of her own.

The kids scrambled over the craggy hills like goats, collecting ‘osie eggs’ & pockets full of rocks. They picked periwinkles & peeled ‘em to use ‘em for bait: then reeled in connor after connor off the dock & one spiny sculpin whose name might’ve been Sam.

Celebrated Mandy & Spoons’ anniversary with a cage full of lobster we kept stashed under the wharf … & thanks to Mandy & her crew of expert mussel pickers, we ate at least a bucket every day. We marvelled over the breakwater, picked berries for pancakes, excavated mountains of beach glass & every vase in the house brimmed with wildflower bouquets. Entertained a boatload of Lillies & anyone else who veered in off the path. And one night, gabbing ‘round the lanterns, an apparition of Neptune himself appeared out of the inky darkness & totally startled us with a rata-tat-tat on the kitchen door. Dirk had paddled the ten or so kilometers out of Cottlesville: leaving into a calm golden sunset & arriving two hours later in the drizzly mist. He was soggy head to toe, with bits of kelp & gravelly sand stuck here & there … & in all his paddling gear he looked very much ‘king of the sea’.

When he peeled it all off, the sweat that sloshed out of his dry suit boots likely would’ve filled a bucket, though he didn’t seem all that much worse for wear after such an energetic journey. We poured scotch all round & gabbed on past midnight. Next day dawned pissy again but Lori, Geo & Dirk paddled out around to Gull Island Cove to spy on more icebergs & on the way in, Dirk gave the novices a rescue lesson so they could save themselves in that icy cold sea.
It was easier to leave this time: maybe because we’d gone in & out so much; or it could’ve been the festive handover of the key when Kathy & her gang arrived for lunch with skipper Lloyd. Or that there wasn’t the physical reality of shuttering up the house … but i think really, it was having all those ‘greats’ & ‘grands’ onboard. They’re our tangible link to the future & an affirmation of our past. And these days it seems like we’re always in the act of coming back.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC? The ride in was a quintessential tourist event. White & opalescent ice-castles dotted every horizon & there were bergie bits galore. And the capelin were coming in, so there were whales everywhere. We saw them spouting & breaching off in the distance & that was quite a thrill … but nearing the final run into Cottlesville, Lloyd shouted, “more whales or home?” … & we took one last spin around the bay. i leaned over & whispered to Sienna “wouldn’t it be cool if one came up right beside the boat?” … & what do ya’ know, in the twinkling of an eye, a glistening black humpback surfaced: fin then fluke & gone.

Exactly right beside the boat! Then, when the gasps & oohs & ahhs were done, Sienna leaned back over to me & whispered, “grandma, that was kinda’ magic!” And really … it kinda’ was!

FURTHER: Back on dry land, between laundry & showers & a seafood fiesta, we relieved Don of all that trout, made some hasty farewells & the mainlanders drove south for three nights at a Super-8 in St. John’s. We had adjacent rooms & on the same floor as the pool with a gigantic waterslide. It was the perfect foil for tired kids & between dips we toured the Fluvarium, the Marine Labs out on the shore, then Signal Hill & a browse downtown. By some serendipity, Dave Bidini was on the Rock for a family wedding & that Sunday was his day in the city to play a few tunes & give a reading from his new book ‘Around the World in 57 & a 1/2 Gigs’. We rounded up an audience of Manuel cousins; Lori, Geo & i took a cab; & we all joined up at the Ship Inn, a somewhat storied old pub, for Dave’s eclectic dabble. Middle of that night, Lori flew away; three days later the kids flew away; then Geo & i spent a quiet afternoon with uncle Dave & aunt Gertie & landed in on Kathleen for a fabulous dinner & our very last sleep on the Rock.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN: Sailed early from Argentia into a swollen gray day & arrived late in North Sydney under a perfect full moon. We took a room overlooking the harbour & hit the road bright & early next morning. It was blossoming into a fine hot day, in fact the radio d.j. warned of record high temperatures, so we contemplated detours & places we could be … but suddenly we were both aching for home & we just pushed on: past the turn-off to Trisha’s in Cheticamp; past the beautiful sandy beach we’d discovered a couple trips ago; & across the Canso Causeway. Time to empty & fill the usual things & check those lug nuts for the umpteenth time. They’d become something of an obsession since the debacle in Oromocto, so we pulled off into a maze of confusion in the Timmy’s / Petro-Can parking lot. Vehicles parked willy-nilly & everywhere & even more vehicles moving every which way & all at once. So we had to kinda’ inch in. But, a few feet into the game & in the usual horrifyingly slow motion, a big blue van backed right up & smacked into us. Oh George laid on the horn but since we had nowhere to go, we just had to sit there & watch it happen. i said i guessed we should’ve gone to the beach. HaHaHa! But the poor woman in the driver’s seat was truly contrite & apart from our shock & total disbelief, the truck only had a minor dent. A dimple really, compared to the demolition job done by the tire. On the other hand, she’d popped the fender on her brand new van & we actually felt kinda’ bad for her. So there was really nothing else to do but carry on.

THE DAMAGE DONE: We had to laugh (or else we’d cry) & we made a great effort to keep each other jollied up … but we were beginning to feel exactly like the truck looked: kinda’ banged around. And pulling away we wondered aloud just how many indignities the ‘Donaldmobile’ could suffer & keep on truckin’. And wouldn’t ya’ know, it wasn’t too long before we found out! Drove out along the seashore north of Antigonish for lunch & were barely back on the highway when we noticed the thermostat ranging up & down again. Geo was convinced that, just like last time, the thing would self-correct … i on the other hand was not. We drove in a snit, my eyes glued to the darn needle as it wowed around, George keenly aware that things (me or the rad) might blow at any time. Got about half way across Nova Scotia to a section of toll road & the guy in the booth leaned out & yelled: “you’re boiling over” … & yes, you’d think that would be that … but oh no … not yet! We sat there, in the blazing sun, heat streaming off the engine, while some guy advised us to drive with the heat on & it might be o.k. Hah! It wasn’t o.k. A few kilometers with that heater blasting full bore & all that sun beating in & we were beginning to stew in our own juices. And i guess it finally managed to evaporate George’s cock-eyed optimism ‘cause he took the next ramp off to look for a garage. But before we got anywhere at all, the needle red lined again & we yawed off onto the shoulder of some secondary road & actually called the auto club. We waited & waited: sharing the last warm drops of water, then digging out the frozen trout to cool our blistering brains. Neither of us had anything left to say other than the intermittent glare, so i paced up & down in the shade & Geo kept his head down, buried in the map. Not sure what was so compelling with the map but musing over that, it suddenly dawned on George that in his fried up frenzy he’d given dispatch the wrong location. We’d have to re-order the tow. So we spent a couple more hours literally letting off steam ‘til the flatbed truck finally loomed into view … & without further ado, the ‘Donaldmobile’ got hoisted up & hauled away. Again.
We were very lucky the mechanic said, that despite our best efforts, it looked like we hadn’t fried the engine. But it was closing time so we’d have to wait. We were sticky & stunned & stranded: looking pretty pathetic in that parking lot on our coolers of frozen fish. We were so addled by the day that we couldn’t quite figure what we should do. But like the mechanic said, we were lucky: the shop manager took pity on us, drove us to a hotel & we cooled our jets in the pool. We traded fortunately / unfortunately ad infinitum & by the end of the evening we were pretty well punch drunk: sitting on the edge of the bed, just more or less howling Monty Python: “Always look on the bright side of life … eeou, eeou, eeou, eeou …. “ at the very top of our lungs!

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME: It’s kind of an understatement to say it was good to be home, though things weren’t quite all that rosy here either. During our six week sojourn the dog had fallen into a funk, a groundhog had devoured the garden & those cute little chipmunks had munched clean through the bushel of apples we’d left growing on the trees. That & still with the bats. But like they say, “what doesn’t kill you makes you strong” & since we’d actually survived that series of unfortunate events, we had to sit & riff on our pile of happy memories & marvel at the minor miracle that we were still on speaking terms. George finally conceded that optimism alone can’t always carry the day … & he also allowed that he had no expectations i’d get back in the truck any time soon.
BUT: While we were away, Skye & Dyl & Dex had moved down the highway to Dundas for Dylan’s new position at the Dundas Valley Montessori school. We’d promised to deliver furniture & the burgeoning stash of boxes they could now accommodate in their spacious new digs, so a couple days home, George loaded the truck & delivered. Back at dragonfly he crafted worktable parts for Dyl & when he was loading the truck again, i realized if i was ever going to see Dex & his parents again, i’d better get back on the horse & i jumped on board!

INTO THE VALLEY: Our two families have long roots in Dundas. As a kid i had two aunts, uncles & a whack of Given cousins there & when it wasn’t the destination, it was at least a stop for tea. And in 1970 George’s dad transferred from Niagara Falls to Hamilton with the C.N. Police. They lived up the hill in Grandvista Gardens & Dennis & i used to drive up almost every weekend. We hung out on the fringes of Geo’s new circle of friends, dug into the happening local music scene, drank Mr. Wilson’s excellent wine & explored a whole new wedge of the escarpment. It was good times in Dundas & the place fairly percolated with a raw cosmic energy. Maybe it just pooled there but it seemed to nurture creativity & a whole lot of fun. Spring of ‘72, George & Joanna Diemert ventured deep into Raven’s forest on the west most coast of Vancouver Island to visit the towns worth of pals who’d migrated en masse from Dundas to Zeballos. When Geo returned for work, his family was packing up for their move to Windsor & Den was enrolled in accounting at Mohawk College while also working for an uncle in Mississauga, so together, the three of us rented half a victorian duplex at 52 Victoria Street. That’s where we lived when Spooner was born & that’s where, first day home from St. Joe’s, i laid him naked on the spring green lawn to introduce him to mother earth. Unfortunately, the neighbour lady thought maybe i was makin’ a sacrifice or something, but in any event, she freaked & came storming over to offer a spiel of maternal advice. Luckily he survived & who knows, maybe that’s why he has such an affinity for the great natural world! Anyhow, i sought refuge back in Dundas after a close encounter with suburbia in Mississauga & took an apartment at 99 York Road. George & i joined forces there & one fateful day in 1975, Geo got assigned to the midnight yard at the Ford plant & i guess he figured that’d cramp his style. i remember the moment quite clearly: Linda, Jimmy, Spooner & me were packing a picnic lunch for a day at Wally Tucker’s when Geo came in from work & said: “I’m movin’ to Belleville … who’s in?”
That seems like an eternity ago, but the place remains as familiar as the back of my hand. We still have plenty of friends & acquaintances there; & aunt Elda still lives up the hill; Paul Campbell who moved from Scotland to Hamilton as a wee lad (& eventually started Campbell’s Coffeehouse) has ended up on Hatt Street in Dundas, so Kirsten, Moira & Drew will end up there too; & Dyl grew up in ‘the Hammer’. His parents still live there & other family too, so in reality, he’s just kinda’ putting out shoots in the very same place that he first grew roots. Oddly enough, some of you might’ve been there before: at 33 Park Street to visit Mike Lloyd. A very long time ago.

The new place is great: top two floors of a very old house that they’ve spiffed right up in their inimitable style. With a grand verandah & a garden shed out back which they’ve transformed into a lovely spot to sit. Dex can run around & chuck walnuts, Skye is planning a garden around them & Dylan can just walk down the street to work. Dyl’s joined a hockey team & already finessed a d.j. gig every Tuesday night (7:30 – 8:30) on 93.3 Big Fish Radio coming out of McMaster University. Skye bops around like she’s always lived there & as of january, she’s working as an administrator at Dyl’s school. i think the biggest bonus is the proximity of extended family … ‘cause families just support each other in ways that can’t be measured out. So in the end it’s all good: we get our own condensed, special intense & the Blueboy reaps the many benefits of being surrounded by all that unconditional love. And that makes this grandma very very happy.

THE ANNUAL FALL TOUR: Drove back into the valley mid-september: ate Skye’s scrumptious birthday dinner, left Dyl to figure out the parameters of the new job, grabbed up Skye & Dex & headed north to Owen Sound. Kirsten was on a brief sabbatical from her jet-set job across the pond in London, so we spent a couple days lolling in Lorio’s lovely back garden, catching up with the gals.

i got another birthday dinner then we boarded the Cheechemon & sailed north again. It was still somewhat early for the full fall spectacular, though the colours awed us nonetheless. We drove through some wonky wind & sideways rain, but traveling with a toddler we stopped often, passed one night at the Sault & got to Red Rock four days after we left.
George & i were in a kind of parent-grandparent glory with our kids & their kids all under one roof.

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And it did my heart good to see how wonderfully kind & patient Sienna & Nate were with wee Dex. He had a blast rummaging through their lives, but they took it all in stride, saved him from the dangers & showed him a very good time. Nate asked auntie Skye to go to school & read to his class & if Dexter could go too & be the ‘show & tell’. We passed a delightful afternoon at McGamon’s Farm north of Thunder Bay & i think we did it all: the rodeo train, two mazes, duck races, a horse drawn wagon ride … a pumpkin slingshot, a pumpkin catapult & pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere. The kids just zoomed from activity to activity & we tuckered ourselves out following them around. Dex was fascinated by the petting zoo & when the older kids lined up to catch a pony ride, he turned around & retraced his steps all the way back … absolutely oblivious, ‘til he reached the barn door. And maybe he heard Dex coming, but for whatever reason, at that exact moment the donkey started to bray: hee-haw, hee-haw & hee-haw again. Dex just froze … & freaked & finally spun around. Good thing grandma was trailing right behind & i took his little hand & we went inside to hee-haw hee-haw back again. But most days we just hung out around the Red Rockettes schedule & lucky me, i got my third birthday dinner that week. Then too soon time to go & we headed off, back into the group of seven painting we’d popped out of.

GROK: The north shore of Superior is a dipsy doodle of coves & jutlands & on these treks we always make time to explore a few. On the way out we’d stopped but the sleety wind was beating sideways & we barely made it out of the car. This time, we pulled off in full beauty sunshine into Catharine Cove. Dex thought this was just marvellous & he charged off down the long arch of white sand, little arms & legs pumping … wrestling with the wind. Then he turned & faced the roaring surf & charged that too. Three steps in, he wavered & wobbled around in the cold surge of sand & whitecapped waves. His mouth formed a perfect O but before he uttered a sound, Skye swooped him up & they plunged up & down together. Dex just laughed & laughed & we laughed too. After lunch we dithered up the shore in the other direction. Eons of water washing over the jumble of boulders on the point, belied the primal forces that brought them there, but you only had to look down to divine clues from the geologic time line under your feet. Dex took great delight in the sopping moss that squeegeed water out when you pressed your fingers in … then splashing feet & fists into the tiny pools of dark water caught in the cleaving of rocks. It was a voyage of discovery & he was digging it! On the slow meander back he followed a bead chain of spruce cones at the edge of the forest: collecting fistfuls & driftwood & pebble treasures too. We watched him make a careful inspection of an old weathered stump, then he wrapped his little arms around it with a great big hug. And just as we were making motions to leave, Dexter spun a slow wonky orbit & flung himself down. He swooped a tiny perfect angel in the sand & went perfectly still. And he lay like that for a very long time. Grinning like the cheshire cat & just grokking the beach.

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It was a joyful afternoon & evoked a string of beachy memories. Some events just touch you in such a way that they become iconic & for me, this one is filed that way. In the folder labelled ‘mermaid dreams’. Full of the cacophony of wind & waves & populated by me & all those cousins at Berford or Wasaga or Sauble; then there’s Spoons, just three, in his bare scutty, trailing seabirds up either coast; & our spry, beautiful Skye spinning cartwheels up a sun drenched beach. Now i’ve got those grandkids filed too … under the sub-title wild abandon. And feeling absolutely free.

COUNT ‘YER BLESSINGS: After all our gallivants, it felt good to finally be home. George’s knee was so much improved that by the time he got his M.R.I. & subsequent consult, the surgeon told him he was as good to go as he’d ever get. He’d already tested it with hockey & discovered new limitations on a two day hike in Frontenac Park with buddy Al, but this was the word he was waiting for. His knee’s got a squishy new sound, which amuses the kids but gives me the ‘willies’ … & he’s not able to fully extend, but that hasn’t stopped him yet. Spoons & the fam made the trek ‘home’ for thanksgiving, not so much to see us, but to visit the Haynes’ after a whole year away … though somehow, happily, we got wedged in anyway. Since Geo was laid up all spring & in no shape to saw or haul firewood, we’d purchased a humongous pile of logs & Spooner gave a day to help with that. And because Kolja was around, visiting Lena & Bob, we plotted a surprise & he appeared for breakfast one morning, bearing a giant fruit salad. Later, on a stroll to the pond, the kids discovered grandpa Gee’s derelict trailer is a really fun teeter- totter, then up the hill, the men happened upon R practicing for the impending axe throwing competition at Montebello & i think they all had a go at that.

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Then everyone was gone: Kol off to site more windmills; the Rockettes off to scope out Dundas & home. And things at dragonfly went really really quiet.

CARPE DIEM: It was easy to fall into the regular rhythm of yard work & hockey & let the calendar fill up with diversions at will. It’s been almost a year since George took retirement & he celebrates that fact every darn day. He’s found a good groove: lovin’ that he never HAS to miss hockey; & can just go off to work the sugarbush with Steve Bittle; or camp with Al & the Friends of Frontenac Park, picking up litter; or dipsy doodle the day away paddling Melon Lake with the wife & some friends; & drop what he’s doing when Wags says “it’s a good day to sail”, even if you both end up flailing in the water; or spontaneously hop on the train & catch Blurtonia at the Horseshoe … he even squeezed in a double-barrelled weekend with the Intergalactic ‘camping life’ on one end & a hockey game in T.O. on the other. The calendar is always full & what he lacks in vigour, he certainly makes up for with goofy enthusiasm. Add to that his cheerful optimism & you’ve pretty well got a juggernaut. i’m just glad he doesn’t expect me to keep up to him, though he doesn’t seem to mind if i try. And i’m just so happy for his retirement, ‘cause after all those years of working, it must be nice to finally not.
The only thing Geo really misses is the camaraderie: imagine riding in that “room of thunder” with just one other soul for eight to ten hours, grabbing a nap & doing it again. They got to talk & you know how George loves that! But he doesn’t miss the burden of responsibility. Listening in on the guys talk shop always put me in mind of Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove … because hurtling down the track with the thrust of a zillion ton cargo of dangerous goods propelling them forward was literally like riding a bomb. It takes skill & finesse & experience to tame that kind of power & even the slightest miscue could become catastrophic. The guys have to be on the ball & they have to trust each other. George lost a few good friends to the job & had a couple close calls himself. And when people or cars played chicken with his train & lost, he had to somehow absorb that trauma & keep on going. But you can’t go on in the same way after you’ve comforted a perfect stranger while they die in your arms. You’ll carry that person with you forever, but it’s such an odd, unsettling intimacy that really has no parameters you can fit it to. i know George was scarred by these things … & i’m relieved he’s far away from all that. He is too. He actually gets to sleep in the same bed night after night … & all night. No more calls at 3:00 a.m. & no more calls whenever. It’s so nice to wake up beside him. Really, the glitches have been mine … so used to silent solitude … but we’re finding new ways to be together & once in a blue moon, Geo even builds lunch. So we just kinda’ follow our bliss & try to wring every possible joy out of this crazy quilt of life.
And that’s what George talked about in his retirement speech at the railroad ‘do’ in November.

My Former Life

It was good to finally meet the “crew” … & just a little weird. Having 35 years worth of backstory on someone, then finally coming face to face, was a tad unsettling; but a couple gin & tonics later, we were acting like old friends. Sometimes George goes to ‘coffee klatch’ with his fellow retirees & still with the ‘Rubber Booters’ hockey in Belleville: so he sees his buds. And he’s started back carving spoons & puttering away at the art with the aim of maybe getting enough stock together for a craft show. For Christmas i got a medicine cabinet to match the vanity he’s promising: a rather lovely thing, with a big mirror & made of juniper purchased at the farm. Though i have to say, that after living 22 years without, it was something of a shock to actually peer into that looking glass & see a grey haired lady lookin’ back!

OOPS! i missed my deadline. It’s mid-january already & even olde christmas is past. And when i should’ve been stuffing greetings into envelopes, i kinda’ got busy. It was this same sort of busyness back in the ‘70’s that initiated these Christmas missives in the first place … so you’d think i’d be more diligent, but as you can see, i’m not. i guess it’s that bliss thing. There were a couple great parties & dinners with friends. And with the crowd around here that usually means too much good food, carousing & drinking, darts & / or dancing, quite often singing, a couple rowdy board games & sometimes a craft. There were gifts to wrap, packets to mail & gifts to unwrap. We endured a week in the deep freeze, got buried in white stuff, then a thorough january thaw! Luckily R bought a snowblower just in the nick of time or we would’ve been snowed in: & shortly after slushed in. The Rockettes clomped off into the Nipigon woods, built a bonfire, chopped down a tree, then stayed in Red Rock for Christmas. Skye, Dyl & Dex spent theirs in Owen Sound with Lori, Kirsten (get that girl a jet-pack!) & Lorraine who’d flown back to visit Ontario after a year & a half away. They took a lovely horse drawn sleigh ride to see the lights in Owen Sound & on boxing day, Skye piled grandma & the fam into her little Golf. And because the starter had failed, the whole neighbourhood showed up to push start them for a drive without stopping, straight here. We were definitely ready ‘cause Christmas suddenly turns magic with a kid in the house & we crammed a lot in during the day they were here. But they had to rush off to the traditional Hudecki skating party in T.O., then the next day, in Hamilton, Dyl & brother Jackson were playing a gig to release their Cowlick e.p. We had a nice quiet week with Lorraine & a dinner out at Steve Terry’s with his baygirl, Marge from Bonnavista. Then George & his mom got on the train & toured down to the old neighbourhood in Windsor. Lorraine lived there as long as George worked on the railroad … & that’s practically a lifetime … so it was wonderful for her to see the old gang.

Next night they descended on aunt Marion’s in London where they spent a couple days catching up with Collins’: swapping stories, drinking tea & browsing old photos. Then Lori & George drove their mom to Pearson & she flew away home.
Things have been pretty low key since then, though a couple days ago, the inimitable R hosted yet another dinner party, serving up an authentic Japanese feast & lots of sake. After darts & dessert, ‘Scattergories’ made us laugh so hard, we cried.

AND NOW: There’s an opalescent disc sitting in a treetop outside my window facing east. Everything out there is twinkling. Last night i watched a dark shape move across the yard in that eerie spectral light … though before i got a good bead on it, the shape shifted into shadow & was gone. Maybe it was a wolf. i heard one later: baying at the moon. A wild plaintive sound, whirling up into a starless night.
George is in Peterborough playing the last game of a four day hockey tour. Last night in Toronto, his line with Dom & Dyl took all three stars, & it’ll be hard to top that. But he’ll be home soon for a long hot soak in the tub & i’m sure i’ll get the play-by-play. You could likely get it too in your computer. George is all over that these days. Our email is: terrappin@sympatico.ca // or go to facebook // or his weblogs, chock full of pictures & random musings. While he was away, i stowed the last of the angels & Christmas bangles & now i’m done with this too.
It’s a tome i know, but i had to bring it full circle. Now i just hope that you’ll respond in kind. This letter writing thing is somehow cathartic & i’ve discovered thoughts in here i didn’t know i had. So thank-you for indulging me. Be well & let’s make every moment count.
namaste

mary

***CHATTERBOX***
NEWSFLASH: When we moved Spooner up to school at the Lakehead in1993 we had no idea he’d be north for so long. Well the boy just called & the Red Rockettes are moving to Sault Ste. Marie. That’s a whole day travel closer & almost three degrees of latitude souther … though from watching the weather, i see it gets a lot more snow. He’s been hired as a class four ‘provincial forest evaluations & standards forester’ for the Ministry of Natural Resources. Which i think means most of the time he’ll be mulling over policy behind a desk. So he’ll miss those treks through the Armstrong forest reserve which has been under his purview almost ten years at Domtar … but time off will get more regular, the kids will discover fabulous new opportunities, Mandy gets to redecorate & we get to go for a weekend. So congratulations Spoons: i really can’t think of a better steward for our forests than you.

PSST: caught a couple rarified birds at dragonfly this year: Don Rysdale on the way home from a fishing weekend with a bud at a nearby lodge; & Ron & Sherri Jowitt touring Ron’s new hip just as he was gettin’ ready to throw down his cane. Now they’re trying to figure just where to land once the teaching gig in Georgia ends this june // the Davies in Southampton did a beautiful job renovating their charming “heritage” house & now they want to sell, move to Midland & be that much closer to cottage life at Snake Lake. The place had just been “staged” – to make it very spare & neat as a pin when we dropped in, so Linda showed us where they hide their real life for real estate purposes & Hugh told Lori about the tombstones & bones he found buried in his rubbly back yard. Now that’s gonna’ be a deal maker! // & if Hugh had asked, Geo was ready to join he & Weeds to chop firewood at the lake // Burvill’s have reinvented: J.J.’s a long haul trucker, Bronwen’s building mustard & they’re hardly ever home // now that her flock of kids have flown the nest, Diane Toulmin downsized & took a sabbatical to write // my friend Susie Hicks told me John & Carol Smith moved back to the Alberta outback from Gananoque // & when Susie was in Niagara Falls to bury her dear old dad, Jan decided to boost her morale with a “girl’s night out” when i arrived in town for our annual may 24th family reunion. Doug was camping, so it was three dear old friends … & somewhat ironically, also three of Geo’s once & future girlfriends … & two of Jan’s girls, Amanda & Sarah. We feasted & drank & goofed around a lot & had a total hoot. But he must’ve bribed the bouncer & maybe thrown the dog a bone, ‘cause somehow George crashed right on in! // Marcus is roaming the far east, adventuring with his old pal David: touring Tokyo; a 500 year old zen garden in Kyoto; a border hassle in Hanoi (details are movie script material); & a two day boat excursion to Halong Bay. Last we heard he was getting on an overnight train to Sapa to visit the Hamong hill tribes & three days later, a short flight to Luang Prabang, the ancient capitol of Laos. Can’t wait to hear the fascinating details.

OUT OF THE BLUE: Lorraine, now in her 85th year, got a call from her school teacher in Exploits. Gertrude Williams (nee Badstone), now in her 92nd year must be getting the report cards ready. i think Lorraine gets ‘A+’ // early 70’s Francis Lemieux traced my feet & Philip Watson crafted me a pair of custom sandals. i wore ‘em constantly ‘til birkenstocks came into my life on the Vinyard in ‘89: Skye thought they looked ‘vintage’ & she’s worn them ever since. i told Skye they were made in Dundas so she googled Philip & emailed a note: he’s still doing ‘footwork’ so she thanked him very much for the miles those shoes have gone! // think way back to parties at the farm – now think ‘life’ of said parties & Stewie Babcock & that little dog Chantel pops to mind. By chance, Geo met his accomplice, Roger Bideau, who’s about to retire from his railroad career. He reports Stewie (minus Janice & Chantel) is back in the ‘Hammer’ too … so, let’s get this party started!

I.B.C: the book club, now in it’s 21st year, is finally back on track … albeit a meandering one. After we did “the Wrong Boy” last February, we expanded our membership a wee bit & reconvened at ochlomed in April. Having new faces at the table with fresh perspectives was a good thing: fitting said faces around a table is sometimes quite another. It’s just lucky that we love each other! Read Sue Monk Kidd’s “the Secret Life of Bees”: insightful, bitter/sweet, exquisitely well written & lots of curious facts about bees. Next meeting to discuss our ageing brains got hijacked by a Beatles tribute & the men’s camping life. Ironically, no one remembered to re-convene. So, i gifted the ‘galactics’ Louise Erdrich’s ‘Four Souls’ for X-mas with an invite to skate, warm up with a bowl of soup, then a round table before dessert. George is hoping for a hockey team. i’m just hoping for a quorum.
-in ‘94 Geo tried to put Paul Quarrington’s ‘King Leary’ on the list but it was out of print, so we did ‘Whale Music’ instead. Now that Dave Bidini’s going to champion it for C.B.C.’s Canada Reads, the publishers are reprinting & George is gonna’ try again.

ANCARO IMPARO: whales & some fish rest by putting half a brain to sleep at a time.

KINSHIP: Great uncle Frank Given wished aloud that he’d like to visit his kin all at once & daughter Ann arranged to make it so. i was excited to see all those cousins i’d had so much fun with as a kid in Wiarton. And auntie Bev & uncle Jack: who so reminds me of my dad. And even smilin’ Jack showed up: the one cousin who almost never does // Stayed at Lorio’s & Andrew was there on break from moving giant rocks around Whistler & come east to mom’s & the clan of Campbell’s in Owen Sound. Excellent timing. Geo tuned Drew’s guitar to G, they traded tunes & who knew, the kid can really sing!

Hitched a ride cross country with us to see his dad (before Paul moved to Dundas), then he bought a car & drove back west to Spoons’ & home to dust off his snowboard & start groomin’ those ski runs for the ‘glitterati’ // i’m still waitin’ for Moira’s postcard from her Christmas tour in Wales // & from Don & Lorna’s Crystal, teaching english in the Gaspe // did get a couple newsy letters from Australia: feisty Mary Rowell’s filling all the walls with her painting & hubby Vic’s turning exotic fruitwood bowls on his brand new lathe … & Suz wrote with all her family news & details from her six week sojourn in Vancouver with her old pal Mal. They visited her dad & little bro Robert & Mal got a glimpse of what’s bred in the Crowe bones ‘cause at the age of 92, uncle Carson’s feisty as ever & sharp as a tack // when Robert & Bob tour east in spring i’ll see the pics & i hope Rob will bake some bread // Sienna invited eight little friends to her 8th birthday party to sing “High School Musical” karaoke & eat pizza: didn’t invite the bird that flew down the old chimney to terrorize the girls & when a zillion styrofoam beads exploded in the hands of a guest, Mandy had to vacuum the kids as they left. A memorable party indeed! // Bless their little hearts, Cathy, Anne & Jim formed a cousin committee to help auntie Lola relocate from Kiwanis Court to Cavendish Manor // it’s in her old neighbourhood, matter of fact, just doors away from her (& Grandma Hunter & all the DeForge’s) former home on Dunn Street … & i went to kindergarten & grade three there, back when it used to be Fallsview School. Too bad they built Fallsview Casino right in front of it & had to change the name! // And believe it or not, the ever perennial kid, Richard, finally hit the BIG 60! i doubt that’ll slow him down!

WELCOME EARTHLINGS: happy to announce: Rowan Scott Palmateer-Laidlaw, to Lisa & Andrew – who may have finally met his match // Eva Cecilia Parish, to Melanie [Hodgins] & Shaun & i just bet grandma Celia’s smiling down on all that joy // Ava Grace Kashmira Lowe joined Rachel, Adam, big sis Holly & doting in all her glory GRANDMA MARION // Clare Elizabeth Jayne Sears to Jeanelle, Keith & big brother Ben, adding into the Woolfrey clan // Ava to Emily & Kevin Falls making cousin Gary Lundrigun a grandpa & auntie Fran GREAT! // Isabella Christie to Camille [Coles] & Howard. Wondering if the grands Karen & Dan will haul a tiny little sidecar on their motorcycle tours
A while ago i heard the intrepid Wavy Gravy give this advice to parents : “… be ever mindful to raise ‘yer kids with timing, balance, compassion & most importantly, a sense of humour!” It’s good advice indeed.

CLAP ‘YER HANDS & SAY YEAH: Yahoo Dyl, having toiled every Saturday through the ‘06 / ‘07 school year to complete that Montessori teacher training & spent many late nights completing assignments. That, & becoming a first time ‘dad’ which made all the other nights late too. So, in spite of being sleep deprived … he really really did it! His two families are bursting with pride & Dexter Blue finally figured out how to sleep right through the night. A HEARTY ROUND OF APPLAUSE!
-& ENCORE Dyl who’s busy flying back & forth to Halifax producing a band who so loved Dyl’s ‘Junior Blue’ they requested his expertise to usher their new ‘Caledonia’ c.d. to fruition
-& KUDOS to Trish Trepannier just now easing out of her high stress government job into a well deserved semi-retirement; time to embrace that secret biker chick life.
-a great speckled bird let it drop that Matt Rust & Dorothy Scrutton actually finally tied that knot out in Nelson B.C. Now that’s a storied romance! WOW! Congratulations newlyweds!
-Gerry Ouderkirk has parlayed his many sea-faring adventures into books before, so no real surprise then that he’s just launched “The Ships of Kingston”, a book he co-authored with Skip Gilliam. And to support the Owen Sound Rail & Marine Museum, they used info from his data-base & lots of his pics to produce a d.v.d. Now he’s working on another marine history book & a book of fiction. And when he’s not busy buccaneering or adventuring, Gerry’s a captain on the Toronto Island ferry. Stand up & say YEAH!
-Clear Skye Organizing Solutions will come clean out ‘yer junk drawer, closet, file cabinet, tool shed or any other muddled space you’re in, once Skye finds the time to launch her web-based business. She’s got quite the knack when it comes to putting things in order … & i’ll vouch for that! YOU GO GIRL!

LOCAL COLOUR: R combined his drafting skills & timberframe experience to create the wildly successful ‘Arman’s Design’ to craft sturdy, unique houses & stay busy all the time. Weekends at home he’s puttering the addition to completion & since Deb switched schools to shorten her commute, she can hardly wait ‘til the hot-tub gazebo comes around // meantime they’ll excursion with McConnell’s down to Florida to reprise march break ‘07: eat well, drink well, play shuffleboard, fish marlin & catch some ‘Bluejays’ winter baseball // wonder if Janice will carry her fab new “Beatles” purse south? // Pete Snell joined mom & sis to tour the homeland & on his return from England, joined a theater troupe in Picton to play Percy in Timothy Findlay’s ‘Elizabeth Rex’. The crowd of Tweedles who watched thought Tif would likely approve // the Stoco Fen farm is a going concern: five beautiful Morgans, a yard of wilding cats, a pair of breeding poodles, a lonely llama & one homing goat. To make room for ‘Cruiser’ (Lynn’s all black Christmas Morgan) Billy & Lynn downsized & sold their herd of goats to a neighbour … but Pinto broke free & made her way home. So i guess she gets to stay! // And when Billy was growing up his parents lived in a house/variety store in the Toronto Beaches. As a teen he turned the basement into a coffeehouse/hangout & his adventures percolated out of there. So this past spring, Billy finessed a successful ‘Grotto’ reunion & the core group came together, broke into the derelict house & ruminated on their youthful shenanigans // Then in September, Billy went ‘On the Road’ to a party honouring Jack Kerouac’s wild & wooly writings. Then he sat in a circle of hep cats & read a couple chapters in the days long reading of that most famous tome.

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT: Matt Snell finally graduated McGill & reluctantly donned the gown & mortar to make Peter & Carol beam with pride … i saw the pics & Matt ended up beamin’ too. He’s still working on a novel & with or without the Horror Choir is polishing up a c.d.; but now that both he & Rebecca have gigs teaching english as a second language, rumour is, if they play their cards right, they just might end up at summer camp in the very far east // Jake just turned 21 which by itself is hard to believe & as Alphabot plays gigs at all the hip haunts in T.O.; Christmas time he took the show on the road & landed at the Bohemian Penguin in Belleville. i’ll keep you posted on the world tour // beginning under nuanced tutelage, now operating under her own dynamic will, ms. Emily is a delightful enigma: elegant beauty one day, concert pianist the next, goofy teenager, gregarious worker bee at the Food Co., a sometimes roustabout, pondering med. school & full tilt at ochlo-ball, fuller tilt at fastball but uber tilt in rugby … ‘yup: an all round kinda’ gal // Ace’s still got his Halifax groove on, having switched from theater work to a call centre so he can actually enjoy the bar scene. And with a few days off at new year’s he flew home, battled a snowstorm, solved a mystery & showed up at his parents door for a surprise three hour tour // Erika Bailey-Brown did a practice teaching stint at Parkside in Dundas & now she’s in the Bancroft hinterlands doing the real thing // Bryan loves the new A.T.V. at the Bach-Vallieres so much he’s thinking up jobs to do & George is thinking ‘bout how to adopt him.

STAND UP & DANCE: Rheos get the five stars in 2007, but you probably already guessed that.
-Caught a virtuoso harp performance by Carlos del Junco & his amazingly versatile band. Blew the Belleville Club crowd right away!
-On the verge of veering off to the rock & kind of on a moments notice, we buffed up our dancin’ shoes for North X Northeast in T.O. The lease was up on our convenient crash-pad so we felt duly obliged to seize the moment & dance. First night, Lee’s Palace for the ‘alt-twang fest’: O Suzanna, Kathleen Edwards, Jason Rutledge, Jim Bryson, Luke Doucet, Ron Sexsmith, Colin Linden, Bruce Cockburn, Blue Rodeo & a who’s who of musical friends. It was a marathon & when we finally hit the hay at 5:15 a.m. we’d only snagged a quick forty winks when Skye plunked her wide eyed Blueboy on our bed & went right back to sleep. Next night, an intimate set by the enchanting Lily Frost, accompanied by her favourite side-kick Jose Contreras, at the Cameron House. Hiked up the street for down & dirty at the Bovine Sex Club with a raunchy little ‘thang Prya Thomas, then wandered home from Queen to Bloor via Spadina … poking our noses into any venue we came across ‘til we finally stumbled up Skye’s steps to bed. Third night back to the Cameron for the weirdly talented Ford Pier then we snatched a cab home to let Skye & Dyl have a turn. i hung with the sleeping Blueboy & Geo took off again into the night. It was totally exhausting, oddly exhilarating & we really, really did, stand up & dance!
-Mid-august we caught the Wolfe Island ferry for a day of music in the sun: Nich Worby; Young Rival; the remains of Brian Borcherdt (& the talented Julie Fader); Spiral Beach (energetic & somewhat reminiscent of our beloved ‘talking heads’); Basia Bulat, Born Ruffians (new to me & really ‘groovy’); Weeping Tile (crawled out of the time machine with Luther Wright, Cam’s tasty drumming & that delightful Sarah Harmer. Band rocked out in absolutely top form); the rhythmically crazed Apostle of Hustle; & manic jams from Brian’s Holy F!%k (Brian & Graham bend over their eccentric array of musical tools … snag a groove … diddle it, rant & rave … then smash it into smithereens … or maybe, just let it all f a l l a p a r t … a kind of mad scientist thing). But much to my chagrin, Geo figured we should beat the crowd & catch the second last ferry, so we mostly missed Wolf Parade. Good day though in good company: Karen & Dan doffed their leathers, stashed their bikes & joined up to boogie & periodically Jake & pal Lane visited ‘the oldies’ on the lawn. We rode the ferry home together: through a moonless night in a shower of shooting stars!
-Met Ev & Rob Diemert & a coterie of Hudeckis in the charming old church that’s the Dundas Valley Montessori School for a benefit concert: Dyl worked techno-magic on a wild video / light show, Skye worked the bar, clients donated a finger food buffet & lots of musical treats: Stan Roger’s daughter Beth Gould, who sings like a lark, Dylan & owner Tony Evans (together & alone)

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& the soothing Skydiggers’ harmonium. That the illustrious Daniel Lanois was the surprise opening act was just a bonus!

-my birthday gift was tickets for the Weakerthans at the Elixir in Kingston. Pub was jammed with Queen’s students but we wrangled our way right up front, grooved through Jen Grant’s quirky tunes then, o happy me day … i really dug those Weakerthans
-& sometimes Geo trains it to T.O. for a quickie fix, but those are his stories, not mine.

ON THE TURNTABLE NOW: Attack in Black, Luke Doucet, Patrick Watson, Mavis Staples, the Books, Fortet, Two Minute Miracles, Radiohead, Joel Plaskett, the Derek Trucks Band, Califone, Robert Plante with Alison Kraus …