skating

WINTER – A LOVE STORY (sort of)

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Dear Readers, It’s been a strange kind of year, post the big C word, in a divided country with so much that doesn’t feel right with our world. Last autumn I finished the writing of a novel I’d worked on for ten years. Afterward, I fell into a self-imposed foray away from writing. Now it’s time to return to the healing  power of creativity (and chocolate cake). I made the chocolate cake yesterday and I will start writing again very soon. Right now I am staring out my back window, looking at the February landscape that inspired the following post in a February a half dozen years ago.  My back garden doesn’t get the afternoon sun so it is still heaped high up the trunk of the apple tree with crusty snow from December. This is a milder February that the one I wrote about when my granddaughter was a little girl, but the sentiments of waiting for spring and honey bees, while hanging on to the hopes of a few more days of skating, remain the same. New tales will come soon – here’s an old one for reflection.

…..It’s a familiar plot – girl gets winter, girl loves winter, girl wants winter to go away. This year I can’t help but be fascinated by this season, to examine all his strong points before I beg him to leave me alone. (Let me make him a ‘he’ for my analogies Kind Reader.) Oh, I’ll want him back – in a muddled accepting sort of way – but not for months and months, and not seeing a way around his strong personality and in-your-face charm.

I have to say it again – I have never, ever, ever seen so much snow in our back garden, which the weather guy backed up saying there is more accumulated snow on the ground this February than EVER recorded. Photo 2018-02-08, 2 25 57 PMIt was a Bing Crosby white Christmas, preceded by a white November, and followed by a whiter still January.  Albertans who can’t not talk about the weather (how else would we warn each other to not drive, to not freeze off our noses, to not slip and fall) can’t stop marveling at all the piles of deeper than ever snow this month.

I share the belief that if you’re going to live with winter for six or more months of the year you have to find some way to embrace it. Skating is my winter passion. It’s the aspect of winter I adore;  the reoccurring memory of my sister and brother teaching me “one, two, three, glide”, the shiny reflective ice on a late afternoon, the sound of my blades swish, swish, swishing, the marvel of my granddaughters learning now, and along with their mom, becoming my new on-the-ice companions.  Photo 2018-01-19, 1 28 15 AMBut even to skate this year I’ve had to work out kinks with my relationship with winter.  There’s just been so much damn snow! We’ve all had to labour just to leave the house, and to clear the walks, and to stay upright (there’s been record numbers of bone breaking falls in the city), hec it has even gotten tricky to maneuver the bumpy residential roads that are packed higher than the sidewalks with all this accumulated snow.

Now all that said – here’s where my fascination comes in – it’s with the wonder of winter – how it’s larger than life this year. I stare out at in from my writing desk, into the back yard, where the snow is heaped up so high on every surface of the garden. Overwhelmed with  the irresistible urge to plow through the deep piles of fluffy whiteness, I invited my five-year-old granddaughter to join me so I might feel less silly, but had to first make pathways for her short snowpant clad legs. We marveled at how it was almost burying the pedestal bird bath, how the berry patch, the flower beds, and the vegetable garden were several feet under all that snow.  We talked about the seeds in the ground that had dropped from flowers in the fall, about how they were way way down below us as we tramped along. “The snow will melt,” she said, “Right Grandma? And that will make the seeds grow to flowers and then the bees will come and make honey. Right?”

Of course, right.

One of the prettiest aspects of this winter time is how when we shut all the lights out at night before bed, the snow glows a peaceful white under the moonlight and into our home from every window. Staring out I think about the flowers, the apple blossoms, and the bees making honey when this is all over, and I can start a new romance with spring…

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Whenever I Want You, All I Have To Do Is Dream

– Everly Brothers, 1958

For years I’ve harbored a dream that I recently imagined I was unbelievably close to executing. Not a word had been posted on my facebook (didn’t want to jinx it) until hours before I was to relish the experience.  When I was a little kid, probably about four years old, my mom, busy with five children, had my older brother and sister take me to the local outdoor rink – back in the good old days when kids could take kids someplace fun. Big Sis got my skates on me, tugged me onto the ice, and directing my brother to take my other hand, they coached me, “One, two, three, glide. One, two, three, glide.” It’s all brilliantly sharp in my memory because I loved it. I mean, I really loved it.

Living in a land where winter snow and cold stretches on and on, I made absolutely certain that my own four kids, Zoë, Cole, Hudson and Lily could skate, so that swishing around a rink with red cheeks and cold toes was a joyful part of the long season. They’ve  left home now, but I’ve continued to lace up and pleasure skate, sometimes with family, sometimes with a good friend, other days just as happily alone, delighting in that push, push, glide across the ice on a crisp winter’s day. And I had a skating dream – the nation’s capital, in Ottawa, Ontario, attempts each winter to maintain the Rideau Canal that runs through the city as ‘the world’s longest skateway’ – how amazing – skating almost eight kilometers through the heart of a metropolitan center.

canal site

It was late in the skating season, but I’d travelled east to assist my sister after she had surgery on her knee, the same sister who had helped teach me to skate. Opting for another traveling ‘first’ I took the train from her home in Toronto, and journeyed four and a half hours north to Ottawa. When I arrived it was cold and dark, but still the weekends possibilities stretched out before me. My husband had flown in to meet me, and sharing a meal in the hotel lounge, where guest’s chatter blended with nostalgic tunes from the piano bar was first on our agenda. I only briefly considered slurping down a bowl of soup, dawning my warm clothes, casting off my sleepiness and hitting my stride with my man – who’d reported seeing hardier skaters gliding over the ice beneath a flurry of new snow.

Waking the next morning so ready to pursue this ice skating dream, I recall feeling sort of jittery. Looking out the window and seeing that snow had turned to rain didn’t squash my anticipation. Even as my husband and I ate our quick breakfast we both imagined that, though it would be less comfortable for us to skate wet, a little water on ‘frozen water’ couldn’t squash our skating trip down the winding canal. We’d been informed that to add to our skating comfort there were warm-up shacks every two kilometers and booths selling hot chocolate and warm Beavertails (squashed cinnamon-y doughnuts).

beavertails

It wasn’t until we walked, skates in hand, to the first entrance to this world’s largest skate way and saw the closed black iron gates and signs warning against going onto the canal did it dawn on us that the canal – open to skating the previous evening was now closed up. Below us the canal looked a sorry state with water puddling over the slushy surface, and piped-in music still playing from somewhere near the empty change shack and closed hot chocolate booth.  A helpful citizen directed us to something grandly called, The Rink of Dreams, a small outdoor rink, kept frozen in some mechanical way. We took a few slushy circles around it as a poor consolation along with a half dozen other disheartened skaters. It just wasn’t the same swoosh, swoosh, swoosh over a long distance of discovery that I’d dreamed of. My good husband stayed cheerful buoying my soggy spirits. “Don’t despair,” he said, buying me a warm Beavertail. The temperature is dropping to nineteen below tomorrow. You’ll get your skate in.”

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Let’s face it, you’d have to be in that situation to be holding your breath and hoping for the temperature to drop to freaking nineteen below – I mean, seriously. We shared a meal with charming friends that night and hey, I know what a lucky woman I was to just be so far from home with my supportive man and good people we care about. Still when we came outside again to icy sidewalks and had to tuck our hands deep into pockets I grinned at the cold night. By now we were well acquainted with the City of Ottawa’s website detailing the conditions of their famous canal.  I even got chatty with a staff member that told me, quite honestly, that it was touch and go at that time of the year, though he added, just the previous season the canal had been open a record long sixty consecutive days.

 

We explored the city in the deep chill, following our friends in out of the cold to browse international art collections in Ottawa’s stunning National Gallery. My husband, still eager for me to do this, encouraged me to stay another day while he went home to work obligations.  I kept my chilly fingers crossed, indulged in another sweet crusty Beavertail, thought about dreams and how we feed them, and with enough hours to skate before my flight the next day checked the city web site again – damn. I’d missed the season, the ice conditions had deteriorated too much to rectify it so late in the year.  My canal skating dream was dashed.  Before hailing my cab I texted my four kids with the big lesson I had learned, “When you have a dream that is weather dependent and you arrive in the place to pursue the dream, you should pursue it immediately.”  Such is life, I came home determined not to pout, and immediately bought a basket of bright spring flowers for the kitchen – blue, pink and yellow primulas.  Winter was ending. It was time to herald spring.

primula 2

 

To read Text Me, Love Mom; Two Girls, Two Boys, One Empty Nest – Candace Allan’s book about the crazy and chaotic launching of her four artisticly inclined kids – Zoë, Cole, Hudson and Lily into the wide, wide world – click here  http://www.amazon.ca/Text-Me-Love-Mom-Girls/dp/1771800712

Best Northern New Year’s Resolution

It took a four-year-old’s birthday party for me to leave behind the malls and rush of Christmas preparations for a few lovely hours of a pass time I am oh-so passionate about.  It’s an activity that I partake in during our long Canadian winter that calms me and makes me glow inside, despite the icy cold, and actually brings some melancholy early in March or April that winter weather is breaking up.   The four-year-old was my daughter’s fiancé’s niece.  Her birthday was a skating party,  and while her uncle and mom assisted her in putting on brand new skates,  I was lacing up my thirty-year- old skates for the gazillith time and already feeling the rush of pleasure my winter sport gives me.

Though neither of my parents skated themselves, on crisp winter days they’d drive us over to the rink  and if the concession wasn’t open, they’d kneel over the snowy parking lot with the youngest of us five kids balanced on the edge of the car’s seat and tie or help tighten five pairs of skates.  The littlest kids would be lifted up high over the heaped up snow around the pleasure rink and then set free to circle round and round the freshly shoveled surface.  Somehow they’d taught my older brother and sister to maneuver over the ice, and then passed on the job of teaching me – to them.   To this day I recall my siblings wool mitts holding mine and the two of them telling me together,” Push, push, glide.  Push, push, glide.”  Who knows which I enjoyed more, being the focus of my sister and brother’s attention, suspended between them on a snowy afternoon, or the exhilaration of a well balanced long glide?

If enough neighborhood kids showed up there might be a game of tag on skates,  or the even riskier Red Rover.  On the best days the concession would be open and music would be playing over crackly speakers so we could skate to Big Girls Don’t Cry, or You Are My Sunshine and warm up our numb toes in a basement room that smelled of sweat, wet rubber mats and watery hot chocolate.  With a nickel we could treat ourselves to a thick sugary square of sponge toffee.

At the recent pre-Christmas birthday party the four-year-old’s uncle and my own daughter gave the little girl lessons with the historic push, push, glide and I took my first strokes of the winter across the even ice.  The morning clouds were lifting, the sun was creeping over the horizon, and our breath puffed out in steamy halos.  I listened to the swish, swish, then ‘tock’ sound of blades hitting against thick ice and thought, for this I will hang onto winter.  Music came on the overhead speakers, Black Eyed Pea’s I Got A Feeling, the sound of 2010, not the sixties or seventies of my youth, but I was okay with that as my grown-up daughter left the others and joined me and together we push, push, glided around and around the rink until we could do just one more circle, and then one more again, before the minus twelve weather was too much for all our fingers and toes.  New Year’s Resolution 2011 – Skate More…push, push, glide…push, push, glide. . .