Brought up short

As we head into the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, our first in Victoria for nineteen years, it's occurred to elder daughter that this is her first Thanksgiving without her family ever.

Damn. I wish she hadn't reminded me...

Am I Demeter now?

The RFB and daughters - October 2005 - Beechwood Cemetery, Ottawa, Ontario

The days when her ball wasn't working

From my journals of 21 years ago:

"Elder daughter (age 5 1/2) talking to herself as she knocks toys around the living room: 'No one knows how she could do the world's greatest hockey goal . . . . Maybe it was because she practised a lot at home . . . . Her sister was always chasing her around . . . . Now she sat on her ball, thinking about the days when her ball wasn't working . . . . Then she hit the ball . . . .'

"This morning, she climbs into the bed and whispers to me, pointing at the ceiling: 'I can see my dream up there . . . . A person is putting out fruit . . . . It's gold, so it must be my dream . . . .There's another of my dreams next to it . . . . Can you see it?'"

Slightly used

It's difficult to gauge just how old she is; from across the coffee shop, she looks quite middle-aged. My mum's eye knows that the baby she is cradling hasn't been here long.

I'm delivering my cup and plate to the grey wash bin at the back, and so I pause at her table:

"Now that person is brand-new!"

She looks up at me and smiles and the years fall away from her face.
"He's two weeks."
"He's gorgeous; congratulations!"

She resumes her rapt perusal of his sleeping face.

I remember that.

Today, the Resident Fan Boy and I are attending yet another parents/teachers conference concerning younger daughter's plans for next year. Wish us luck.

Above the town that never loved me

I was looking out over the grey waste that is March in Hades when this song came on the radio.


Ruth Berhe is from my birthplace, Edmonton, Alberta.  She will be twenty-one this summer.

(Oh, and the young lady who wrote out these lyrics is unaware that Wendy's last name is "Darling".)

The blackberries came out to say goodbye...

Geese gotta fly

As the year rolls past the equinox in this part of the world, you may hear a peculiar sound like someone cleaning a window. That's your clue to look up and see the lop-sided "V" of Canada geese heading south.

Each morning the long bus-ride to younger daughter's school takes us past the southern edge of the enormous Experimental Farm that sits near the centre of the Ottawa-Carlton area. These days, the fields are filled with breakfasting geese. As we passed a huge flock this morning, two geese flew in graceful figure eights above, and, as if there had been a signal, several dozen suddenly took off to join them. They seemed to circle wildly; one geese nosed up like a jet plane, realized he was alone and swung back. The bus proceeded down Baseline before we could see if the "V" emerged.

Another sign of the equinox is that the sun rises directly in line with our kitchen window and sets opposite our living room window, revealing how long it's been since I washed the windows. Probably since the last equinox. But having the sun lined up perfectly east-west also guides me in which direction to gaze today. Eldest daughter left at the crack of dawn for a school trip to New York City. I spent the afternoon tracking the progress of her bus on the Google maps, and this evening, I searched out web-cams of Broadway and pictures of Ellen's Stardust Diner where her group had dinner tonight before trotting off to the Gershwin Theatre to see Wicked, the perfect musical for adolescent and just-post-adolescent girls. She gets to see two more Broadway shows, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a host of other things before returning late Sunday. I try to content myself with gazing out from interminable bus-rides at the unusually lush Green Belt this early autumn coming after a wet summer. Oh, if I had wings...

Eternity is Now

Some years ago, I was sitting with my mother at a concert, battling back panic. I was starting a new teaching job the next day, and, as usual, felt unprepared and guilty for doing something as frivolous as listening to music in a place where I couldn't possibly make lists. As the singing flowed over me, a phrase suddenly came to me: Eternity is Now. I knew this as a ballet set to Mahler, but the phrase is far older than that. Fearing the morrow, I wondered how the present could be everlasting (I was much younger then), and had a vision of us all in the concert hall, enveloped in a golden column stretching up to infinity and down to forever.

I have five days left in Victoria. I don't want to go back to Ottawa, to the grit, the loneliness, the smells, and above all, my younger daughter's final year in elementary school and all the stress that implies. So I look out of the window at the rain. (You can actually walk in the rain in Victoria; sometimes you can even step between the raindrops.) And I stand in the doorway gazing out at the garden and gulp in lungfuls of clean air, sweetened by the sea. And I call forth that eternal, vertical, golden column. I am here now. I need to rejoice in that.