071-Grandma's hats

It was popular in the 50’s and 60’s to wear hats, and Grandma, first as a young girl, then a newlywed, then a woman away on a busy farm with an increasing brood of children, wore hats until they were no longer popular.

Here, she’s travelling with a small, light-coloured hat.

All the women have hats. (The man is like, shoot, I forgot my hat in the car.)

Accessory hats are also applied in winter. Hats and gloves match.

Here is Grandma looking smart. The hat looks like a wreath of leaves stolen from the tree.

Grandma is a new mom here with very fancy hair. There’s a hint of a dark hat with a polka-dotted decoration.

Grandma seems to like polka dots, because here they are again, only bigger.

Grandma passed along her love of polka-dot hats to her children.

Here, the polka-dots went from the hat to the dress. This hat looks like a small white cake.

The small white cake hat was a favourite.

Even when it was windy and the veil blew up.

Even when visitors had larger hats.

Here is one of Grandma’s winter hats.

Here’s another, with a feather. The feather pokes fun at Grandpa who finds the weather much colder than Grandma.

Here are some of Grandma’s light-coloured hats.

This one has a flower.

Sometimes, Grandma wore a scarf.

Do you know who liked large hats? Grandma’s mother-in-law.

This may be an informal visit, while men are working on a roof, but Grandma’s mother-in-law will keep her hat on.

See? Besides a large hat, Grandma’s mother-in-law is also the only one with sunglasses. Grandma refuses to be outdone though… she’s wearing a bright red necklace.

Here, Grandma sets the limit on her hat size.

070-Puppy diaries

I don't want to write about my dog, but the dog is on my mind. I've googled, just to make sure, something about puppies and work and so I have mentally found commiseration for the thick slices of time that disappear in a day. Look, right now, while I type, my husband has brought the puppy out to pee and descended into silliness, congratulating the pee-on-grass and la-de-dahing "Joy to the world" while hopping about, eliciting a bark from Enzo who has woken up from the nap he takes during our supper. This is what a puppy does to you: it makes you silly. It can also be infuriating. I don't know why dogs like clumps of mown grass, but they do. Piles of mown grass hang about on city lawns like big temptations. Enzo strains at his leash just to get a mouthful. I attempted to make a lesson of it, held him back, gathered a clump of grass and took out treats. I was saying "leave it" in French while two women walked by pushing a stroller and I was crouched down, entirely focused on his brown eyes, repeating "laisse" to a sitting puppy in front of a clump of grass. He behaves for treats, but as soon as the lesson is over and the treats are put away, a mouthful of grass is his immediate quest. Far down the path, I tried this again, with a compacted clump of grass that resembled something like a brown grass cookie. My timing was off, or the leash was a bit too long, I'm not sure, but puppies have incredible speed and are dumber than children, and so he swallowed a bite faster than I could remove it and I had to aim my restraint toward my temper because it flared with all the glory of my Irish ancestry. Dogs are dumb, I tell myself, but they're also smart enough to learn how to manipulate the humans that ambulate around them. Enzo knows how to whimper pathetically for attention.

We go for a morning walk everyday. Some people look at this puppy and melt and say all kinds of sweet-puppy-dog things. Some people count us as another nuisance in their morning routine, and I tend to sympathize more with the latter. People can make you feel inordinately proud of this thing you've added to your life. The other day a man, walking with his wife said "that's the puppy I was talking to you about! He has beautiful markings..." The compliments make me feel strange because while I thank people, I am confronted by the fact that I had absolutely nothing to do with his appearance. I bought him the way people buy tools and accessories. I didn't even pick this puppy... the breeder picked it for us. Yet how many compliments I get for him. Did you know that a beagle won the Westminster dog show one year? Her name was Miss P. Enzo's breeder was contacted for comment on the story and she said, somewhat derisively, that her pups were bred for hunting rabbits, for running for 12 hours, and that Miss P. would probably be ill-suited for the job. The Krpan's who've been breeding beagles for 45 years don't care about looks and I appreciate their dismissal of the superficial. Still, Enzo's markings look beautiful in the morning light.

069-Pom-poms

It was a neat trick years ago to accordion fold eight rectangles of tissue paper and cinch their middle and delicately tease upward and downward sixteen pieces to make a pom-pom. The large rectangles of tissue paper make for impressive statement pieces, hung around a room like un-poppable balloons.

I made these for my mother-in-law’s birthday, in white and pink, and again in multi-colour for a welcome-home party and then just recently I revived the craft like a back-pocket trick for my son's seventh birthday.

I remember being so nervous in those early years when I hosted parties. I was unsure of things and pored over suggestions and decoration ideas and narrowed them down into lengthy to-do lists. I think that early anxiety was necessary purchase for today’s confidence. 

Just last year I threw a party in winter, so people could gather and eat baked cookies and drink a cocktail. There is always work involved, but I get a craving for having people fill the house with chatter and laughing. The memory of it warms me and reminds me that for all the goings on about solitude, I get ravenous for connection too - big simmering stews of it. 

I'm not sure when the next party will be. Getting together is done now in little pieces, here and there, limited by number, duration, location. It's summer right now, and so the lighter diet is something I don't think about so much. But winter will come and then, I suspect, I’ll struggle to sustain myself on pom-pom memories.

068-succumb

I have succumbed to the fatigue of day's routine disrupted. Come, sit with me here in the silence where there is only the hum of the freezer beside me, a dog barking in the far distance, and my fingers on this keyboard. In fact... let me just stop the fingers moving now... (In breath, out breath, in breath…)

Steep rock

I wanted to take more pictures today but I was on puppy duty. Puppy duty is very busy.

067-Puppy diaries

People say that beagles are tricky, they say it over and over again as if our family had chosen a particularly big challenge.

I don't know dogs very well. I used to look at dog owners with their dog-poop bags and pity them. It is a task among others that you do out of love, I know. I just didn't love dogs. And now we have one, and some animal form of love grows like a curious outcropping. It's still a dumb dog right now... our expectations of each other don't always meet: too much or too little, and so the rhythm of our interactions is off and we look like clumsy dancers.

A beagle is small enough to carry in one arm, like a slumpy handbag. A beagle has long dangly ears like comical accessories. I'm teaching it to sit and lie down and stay and leave it and drop it, and it seems to like to learn. When people say beagles are tricky, I start to doubt myself as a trainer and think, “maybe I should be having an easier time with this.” But I've seen different breeds of dog who have no puppy-age excuses for their bad habits and inattention. Which makes me think that somewhere a false cliché was established and that the intricacies of this breed were condemned rather than praised. Part of me enjoys this challenge. On good days, I say to beagle belittlers: “watch me”!

066-Pottery

I’d have to double check this difference between pottery and ceramics, but if you hold in your mind that image of a mug or a plate shaped from clay, fired in an oven, and glazed and fired again, our idea meets in contemplation of this crafted thing, although craft seems to diminish its importance? Craft. There's another word. Associated with art, it is child's play. With writing, it is a life-long pursuit. Pottery-makers have their own designation too, they are potters. They manipulate their pieces in multi-step processes, making something useful out of a fragile material. Paul in a letter to the Corinthians wrote: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels…”

Pottery, like so many hand-crafted items, represents a disconnect between value and price... It is made of base material, requires the use of a specialized high-temperature oven, and for all that, can break just as consistently as glass. Its production requires skill and artistry. I'll have arrived one day when my kitchen cabinets display a complete set of dining ware sourced from local or next to local potters. The local scene abounds in talent. Uppercase is producing an encyclopedia of ceramics!

065-Music

When I think of music, I think of proficiency, not the playing kind, but the familiarity kind. I always feel deficient in this area. 

When I was young, the story goes, the Chinese herbalist my mom frequented recommended she play classical music for my stressed little spirit. I grew up to CBC radio 2 and still find it the most comforting of background soundtracks.

In her memoir, Joyce Carol Oates writes: “‘Do you listen to music while you write?’ This curious question is often asked of writers. The more attentive you are to music, the more distracted you are by hearing music while you try to work. For music is an exquisite art, not white noise. It must be a fairly modern custom to ubiquitously pipe-in music in public places. When did this custom begin? And how will it end? Can it end? There is something offensive in having to listen to music, particularly serious music, as if it were but background noise, or a film score. For music exists in and of itself and not as an accompaniment to anything else. Music is the supreme solace because it is so much more; it is the spiritual counterpoint to the world’s cacophony, essential as a heartbeat.”

Sam Anderson in the acknowledgements section of Boom Town thanked the Sunbathers whose album he listened to on a loop. I don't know why I was expecting something calming, for 30 seconds in, I felt like I was being audibly hosed in a jet of cold water. 

Then again, sometimes a hypnotic beat is comforting. It was on a cold October evening when we squeezed into a car to make our way to a funeral. Emotions were loose and the only thing holding tightly together was the beat from Deadmaus. 

When I need to get through writing, sure, I play music and my taste is of the romantic and emotional kind: Bach, Chopin, movie soundtracks. But I prefer to do creative writing in silence, like Oates, sitting in the garage, feeling thoughts as though they hover in a liminal space. I’ll profess that there is a purity to silence that music interferes. 

As I was saying, my musical repertoire was limited. It still is limited. I have to remind myself to listen to new music, to expand my catalogue of soundwaves. I associate proficiency with the ability to pick an album to suit a mood. I am far from that which is why I must listen as an exercise. Often I am surprised by how enjoyable it is to listen in the way Oates describes, taking any album and treating it seriously.

063-Routine

I'm sitting at the laptop in my studio, which is in fact a desk built into the corner of the garage, a garage which just now has remnants of the BBQ smell of the porkchops Christian cooked earlier. 

I'm at the laptop, finishing a beer and munching on chips I've portioned into a blue kids IKEA bowl reading the latest post in Writing Routines. The interviewee talks about daily contact with her manuscript, about waking up and writing first thing. Something of Anne T. Donahue's sarcastic voice has infected my head and all I can think is "cheese on a cracker I hate waking up to write". I could really go on about disliking waking up, but the point here is routine. 

Summer spreads like syrup over routine. Rigidity is smoothed, right angles are lost in a flood of beach days, swimming pool visits and evening prolongations. To speak of routine, now, in August, is anathema. Nobody, especially not parents with children, wants to hear of your good habits. Tell me instead, they say – not with words, but with shorts and suntans – how you celebrated your kids’ birthdays, what you are doing with the seasonal tomatoes, where you’re going this weekend. Save me from your productivity until September.

And yet, nothing satisfies me more than having something to show for these two months when my husband is home.

062-Righting thoughts

I talked to someone the other day so convinced of their view of things, the grand sweeping view that melds truthful bits with invention and fantasy, that I left the conversation wishing to run out into the street and stop a passer-by, a dog-walker, an evening routine exercise-taker, anybody, to ask them questions with obvious answers, just to reassure myself I had not slipped and lost my sense of reality.

There is this Mr. Rogers quotation that floats around online whenever there has been a tragic event. Surely almost everyone has heard that phrase, “look to the helpers,” given the number of tragic events that have piled up like rotten fruit. It might be argued that a variation on this theme could apply, for adults, in times of confusion: look to those who are doing good, those who are calm, those who are thoughtful.

061-I like

I like those blogs wherein you can catch a glimpse into family life. I defend the voyeuristic taint of that sentence by declaring that these glimpses are more comforting than anything... I don't really care what they're about, as long as the gaze is simple, somwhere between cared-for and unpretentious. Snapshots of our days would include Lego, kids on the couch with a book or an iPad, games with their Dad and the collection of things we do outdoors: play with the dog, eat popsicles, splash in the inflatable pool. My snapshots would be kitchen-themed: our first test of Strawberry Milk from Prune, Niçoise salad with beans from our garden potatoes and tomatoes from the market; pineapple chicken, banana muffins, and rice crispies. They are as much to satisfy my need to nurture as they are to feed the family. But mostly, I have a craving for normalcy. I have a craving for pictures that say "hey! here's what I've been up to! here's a little piece of my world, what it looks like, how it feels and some not very deep thoughts about it. how are you? I hope you're well! here's a recipe!" 

Teju Cole writes about the photography of objects in Object Lesson and concludes this about it: "We look at them for the way they cooperate with the imagination, the way they contain what cannot otherwise be accomodated, and the way they grant us, to however modest a degree, some kind of solace." I find this especially trueof pictures of abandonned places. I'm tempted to take pictures of objects to try to replicate the effect. How do you capture a hovering presence? A recent absence? How do you make a frame around something so that it imparts naturalness... There is a talent to communicating a relaxed feeling. 

You can often find advice along the lines of doing the thing you wish were already done... Of filling a perceived gap. I don't think there are gaps, really, but maybe just not enough of the particular thing I like. 

060-Whiteshell

We took a hike in the Whiteshell today. It wasn't going to rain there, so that's why we picked it. And then it was maybe going to rain, only 60% chance and only in the evening, or maybe late afternoon? We’d be gone anyway. Basically, we tried to plan an outing on a hot day, with cooling water at a location where there would not be rain. Largely, we succeeded. The Whiteshell is stunning and full of sapphire blue lakes. 

We ate a picnic lunch, doused ourselves in mosquito spray and took a hike to the rapids. We looped back on another trail clambering over the rock surfaces of the Canadian Shield and met hikers. The views were very pretty. Our puppy is an eager hiker. 

We came home and the boys were put in the bath, I washed myself clean of mosquito spray and made supper while drinking beer. The stuff we’d packed was put away, everyone was clean and supper was ready: that creamy bacon and shell pasta recipe we like. 

We take a day, make an adventure, and when there are so many bugs, when the dog meets nose to nose with another dog whose owners have thought it was unnecessary to put theirs on a leash, when my son has tears because a bloodsucker has attached itself to his foot and when the scenery is best appreciated fleetingly because of the bugs, again, so many bugs, it's all fine by me if it means I can be home in time to prepare supper and eat it in clean skin.  

My appreciation for nature has an eight hour limit.

059-Double rainbow

On that evening when there was a double rainbow in the sky, I was on my bike, making a 40 minute loop through neighbourhoods near my own. Biking is the closest thing I get to feeling what a runner must feel when they run. 

I was at the farthest end of my loop when it started to rain, golden drops in the setting sun. Then the rain increased and the wind too, and all I could see was gold filigree against the asphalt and thought of breathing in order to chase away thoughts of tornadoes. At the intersection two men were standing with their bikes in the bus shelter, a solution that had so perfectly presented itself, while the rest of us were surprised, doused, bedraggled.

The storm abated and the sky changed. Now my tires made splishing sounds with each puddle. The men from the bus shelter passed me and I was just thinking to myself how the second one might be the father of the first one, when, quick as a sneeze he fell, his bike slipping out from under him, and he, his back on the pavement, wincing at the sky. The younger left his bike and ran back to where I stood and waited. They were a pair with few words between them, and me even fewer. The younger man looked at me and said he thought it would be ok, and so I left.

At the next intersection there was the backdrop of the sky, so full of colour and calm and two rainbows, like the triumph after a saga.

058-Noise

I sit here in my tiny studio with the garage door ajar and the sound of wind, traffic and a distant lawnmower. On the windowsill to my left, the resident spiders have made a graveyard of sucked-dry insects I'll eventually wipe away.

Further than that, the view has triangle pieces of blue sky fringed with trees that sway. Our small deck's white lattice is covered in a grapevine that sends forth longing hopeful shoots in every direction. It is green against the beige northern wall of our house.

I went for a walk in the sunshine and met only a few other people: park workers, a woman outfitted with accessories (water bottle, phone, hat, glasses, poop bag dispenser) and a dog all fastened in various ways to her body, a jogger, a couple on a bench. Boys were at the riverside fishing while listening to music. The wind makes noise. 

Back here at my desk, the freezer hums beside me. It is full of loaves of bread, pizza pops, popsicles and chicken stock. My thoughts are so noisy, I haven't found a clear path to one story. My hands pause between sentences; "What's the story? What's the story?" The story is this: there is a lot of noise.

057-Cilantro

I used to think that eating cilantro was like eating cigar smoke... I don't know how else to describe the effect it had on my palate except one of dusty, but not literal, suffocation. I kept using it though, because some recipes called for it and I was loathe to disobey the cooking and garnishing instructions. 

It's funny how reliably cilantro is maligned. It risks becoming one of those clichéed words in which people categorize themselves: I love everything except capers and cilantro. The Barefoot Contessa herself resists the use of cilantro and Anne T. Donahue writes: “Here is what most of us already know in the year of our Lord 2018: for a very long time, everything has been feeling scary and bad. Everyone’s feelings and emotions are heightened. Most of us are walking the line between cynicism and feeling absolutely bananas, sensitive to the point of wanting to strike down anyone who disagrees about how disgusting cilantro is. (It is extremely gross!!!).” (Nobody Cares, p. 13). I wonder about being so categorical though, considering how our taste buds renew themselves every week and parents of children with picky palates are encouraged to expose their children to new flavours with patient repetition.

Cilantro is inoffensive though... it comes from the same plant family as carrots and parsley and is used in multiple types of cuisine. It proliferates wherever it is planted.

Have you ever paired something and been surprised? Christian and I once dipped fresh strawberries into a glass of oaky wine and thought we had culinary creativity. On a November day when I made Ree Drummond's Butter Chicken and dusted it, as instructed, but still sparingly, with chopped cilantro, the same thing happened. Suddenly we understood the use of cilantro and have since dusted things with the suggested amount, from lentil and corn salads to fajitas.

Did you know capers are in fact little flower buds? I had no idea.

056-Gratitude

I'm touched by this bit of Hopkins's poem that Teju Cole inserts at the end of his essay titled Gueorgui Pinkjassov, which begins: “Glory be to God for dappled things –” This feeling of looking upwards, of finding perspective amid multiple tiny worries, is like taking a long breath.

Cole is not Catholic. When Aleksandar Hemon interviewed him – the transcript of which is included in Known and Strange Things – and talks about existential pessimism, he asks Cole what he believes. Cole answers: “imagination, gardens, science, poetry, love, and a variety of nonviolent consolations.” This is faithfully represented in his essays. 

Gratitude is an expression of confidence. It is professing a belief in generosity. It is saying: “there is enough.” Then, sometimes, I lose the feeling. Gratitude is a stranger. Or worse: gratitude becomes a caricature – an exercise repeatedly recommended by self-help authors that becomes a sort of skimpy inventory; here we count things that have not yet been taken from us: health, eggs and toast, the children’s laughter, today’s sunset. Listing them makes the items subject to disappearance, or forgetfulness.

Writers restore meaning to words. Where gratitude becomes worn, like love, writers who revive them should be blessed. For their effort I am temporarily lifted out of the quagmires of doubt.

055-Puppy diaries

I miss sleeping in on weekends. It was one indulgence I still clung to. Now I wake up at 7:10, Monday through Sunday and take the dog for a walk. 

The quiet and the dog’s incremental improvement hit me once I’m on the pathway. When there are few pedestrians taking their exercise or walking their dogs, I can imagine that I’m a tourist in England somewhere and that the backyards I pass are what you would see riding a longboat in a canal. If you play this trick, even dilapidated fences have charm and variations on a theme are artistic.

(I used to watch videos like these while reading textbooks. It was relaxing!)

054-Wine

The problem with drinking wine is that it makes you sleepy the next day. It became a kind of habit where we'd have a glass on a Friday night, maybe with chips, maybe with popcorn while we watched something on Netflix. It was the way we spoiled ourselves deprived as we felt, since having kids, of going out. Popcorn got in my teeth, so we gave up popcorn. Chips made me feel bloated, and so I restricted myself to only small quantities. How unwillingly we let go of little allowances. How disinclined I was to growing older, to becoming more attuned to the body as it is. The body doesn't care what the mind decides is an allowance, a little bit of freedom, a little bit of letting go. Bottles of wine add up in a year, and so we subtracted them from our spending. You have to get to tricking yourself into deriving a greater pleasure from clear-eyed mornings, a congruence of good feeling and health. I wonder sometimes though, if these things I change for the better are not some form of tightening... tighter, tighter, pop. Or is it just a way of learning a new kind of freedom? A freedom from the tyranny of a clichéd idea. 

053-Puppy diaries

I have had conversations with people about dogs and recognize things I never noticed before, like leashes, and harnesses versus collars. 

Puppies are lots of work. I knew this, but still. Knowing and living are two different things.

052-Reading

I don't know where this idea of reading one book at a time came from. I followed it for a long time, pushing through books in chunks, like eating a meal, laboriously. Then I paired serious reading and self-help books. But lately, given the way the libraries are working, with book requests and pick-ups, starved for the chance to browse for ideas, I ordered a variety of essay collections. 

I always love starting a book, finding out what its flavour is. And so, right now, I have bookmarks in Nobody Cares, Known and Strange Things, Literary (V.S. Naidal), Boom Town, The Power Broker and Harold Brodkey's Stories in an Almost Classical Mode. And this buffet of books is especially pleasing for the contrasts it provides. Caro and Anderson are both talking about cities, but how differently they go about it! Cole and Donahue offer such different perspectives, and even though I might be tempted to grade them on a scale of personal preference, I think that would be wrong. Nobody grades flowers for blooming, comparing a lily of the valley to a geranium... they are so different. Or perhaps, more accurately, I am reticent to write an opinion. When asked “Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing?” for a New York Times “By the Book” interview, Gretchen Rubin answered: “I don’t want to supply the titles of any unfinished books […]. As a writer myself, I know how much work and love goes into every book.” (Link). The interview was printed in 2016 and that answer has always stayed with me.