Catch a falling star leaf

Are all superstitions delusions or proof of impossibly magical thinking? I think superstitions can be useful metaphors. Take lucky pennies (and I do, at every opportunity). I found five last weekend, and I saw them because I was not rushing, I happened to look down, and I was willing to stoop to scoop them up. The Resident Fan Boy is fond of saying that luck is preparation plus opportunity. A lucky penny illustrates that nicely. If I'm with someone, I hand it to them, saying: Find a penny, give it away; have good luck for the rest of the day. That's not magical thinking; that's a reminder.

So every autumn, I try to catch falling leaves. It's actually devilishly difficult. If the wind is high, they whoosh above my head. If the wind is low, there are few leaves that appear to drift lazily down, but dip and slip off in a random directions even as I reach. Others fall in scores just where I'm not standing. See, I read in a book in the school library that every leaf caught while falling is good for a wish. I aim for six leaves each year, three leaves per the two most desperate desires from my own personal Mirror of Erised. (Check Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets if you don't catch that reference. That J.K. Rowling knows some dark truths about the human psyche.)

Thus, every tree becomes a tree of dreams: fiery ones, crimson and scarlet ones


and golden ones.

And what prevents me from catching leaves? Sometimes someone is approaching me and I feel too self-conscious, sometimes I simply don't have the speed or agility, sometimes I don't want to trespass or get run over, sometimes my arms are full, and sometimes a child is holding my hand. See? It is a metaphor...

This morning, I made the time to catch leaves, but I always seemed to be standing in the wrong place. As I made my way down the hill, a gust blew a shower of them across the street, and I swept my arms towards my chest, looked down and two golden maple leafs were clutched to my left collarbone. I kissed each and made my wishes, tucking them in my breast pocket. A few minutes later, an ash leaf sailed by and I simply reached out and snatched it from the air. This brings my total to four because last week when I was taking most of these pictures (in fact, it was while I was taking this very picture), a leaf swooped down and landed on my left shoulder. I tell you, my friends, in all my years of leaf-catching and wish-snatching, that has never happened before. Nor is likely to happen again.

Oh, and as for my Mirror of Erised wishes? They may be on their way, but no signs yet. And if I tell you what they are, everyone knows they'll never come true. (No, nothing to do with David Tennant...)

I'm gonna wash that man right out of my basket

"As the first day of the year goes, so goes the year," intoned my husband, as we trudged down through horizontal snowfall to the bus stop. I got really worried about this ten minutes later, as I stood blinking back tears, gazing into the window of one of the neighbourhood's recently bankrupted coffee shops, wondering why I persist in leaving the travel planning to him. A bus eventually showed up and we made it to Atonement on time, our choice for this year's New Year film. Therefore, I am refraining from doing the Resident Fan Boy's laundry today, as he has just told me that there is a superstition which holds that washing someone's clothes on New Year's Day will wash that person out of your life. Which means, I guess, that you should offer to do laundry for your bêtes noirs today.


This has been the sort of Christmas that Ottawans like to imagine is typical of their Christmas. Less than half of our eight (oh gawd, 8?) Christmases here have been white; the rest have been grey, kind of khaki, and usually icy. The Resident Fan Boy and I made our way through the streets from the movie, there being little bus service on this eighth day of Christmas. I cursed myself for failing to bring my camera as we waded down a deserted Sparks Street where a quartet of naked black statues gamboled in the swirling flakes, past the nearly whited-out tomb of the Unknown Soldier, by Laura Secord standing forlornly like the little match girl, only far better clad in her empire-line coat and bonnet. Story-book flakes continued to dance down on tobogganers at McDonald Gardens Park ("If we were half-decent parents," I remarked, "we'd be taking our children tobogganing instead of pissing off to movies.") and people with the countenances of pilgrims parading down Charlotte and over the St Patrick's bridge, shouldering snowshoes, cross-country-skiing paraphernalia, or snowboards.

Atonement, all in all, seems a splendid way to start the new year. I think the Resident Fan Boy found it a tad depressing, but I'm with Stephan Moffat who has Sally Sparrow in his Doctor Who episode Blink declare: "Sad is happy for deep people." Moffat may be full of it, for all I know, but sad good art doesn't depress me, while bad art invariably does, no matter how upbeat.

Anyway, Atonement: splendid cinematography; Keira Knightly acting like Helena Bonham Carter for the first half, and Winona Ryder for the second; five glorious minutes of Vanessa Redgrave; and a plot which, despite zigzagging back and forth (which would drive my mother wild), is enthralling and plausible --- except for one bit and by the end of the movie, you know why this is so. Oh yes, and I'm not sure what James McAvoy's character would be doing deep in the war and ready to be evacuated from Dunkirk four years after the initial events which are supposed to have occurred in 1935. Not-so-upbeat artistic license, perhaps?