Skating

Life’s Funny

Life’s funny – that was something my dad said. And he’s right – life is funny. In later years he ‘d always tell us, “Thanks for the call,” after a phone conversation, making sure we knew how appreciative he was. And when we were saying goodbye after a visit, he liked to tell us, “The latch key is always out,” reminding us how welcome we were.  I can picture him saying those things while sitting in the big comfy chair that he’d made room for in their kitchen, toothpicks in his pocket, the newspaper on his lap, a cup of coffee if it was morning, tea if it was midday, at his elbow. In this image my mom is at the table counting their daily pills and vitamins into a days-of-the-week container. 

My dad has been gone three years. I wish ‘gone’ met he’d left home, maybe ran away before they had to move into a senior’s residence. But no, my dad has died. I worry my kids or grandkids will forget him if I fail to verbalize all his dad-isms, so I repeat them frequently and pray that they are listening and remembering. 

And life is funny, isn’t it? What, I wonder will they say about me – those kids and grandkids of mine? Will it be my too familiar – love the ones you’re with? (Meaning stop staring at your phone.) Mostly, I hope I’m passing on what my dad passed on, imagining I hold counsel  with much of what he believed in. He was a man of strong family values, maybe old-fashioned (he was born in 1928) but here’s hoping everything is new again. 

My dad believed in taking the family on a summer camping holiday every year. He believed in Sunday dinner and especially Sunday drives. Until he gave up his license at age eighty-six, he would help my mom into the car and together they’d do a thirty-mile circle from their city through the town he grew up in, stopping for egg rolls or ice cream as they drove through the rolling foothills.

He believed in a seafood feast on Christmas Eve and buying gifts, never gift certificates, though he’d cajole my sisters and I into shopping for our mom, on his behalf. He believed in going out for coffee in coffee shops, if not with our mom, then with his brothers. He had strong feelings about how kids should learn to skate and ride bikes, and as a frustrated non-swimmer he made sure all of his five kids were at least semi-accomplished aquanauts.

He believed in a beer with cheese and crackers before dinner, and tea and dessert afterwards. I remember that even on those camping trips in the woods, while mom prepared dinner on a coalman stove, he’d serve up our appetizers of sharp cheddar and crackers. Their after dinner campsite tea would be accompanied by a tin of something sweet from home. He always said chocolate cake should be served with red jello and a bit of whipped cream. 

My dad believed in picnics in the mountains as a weekend treat. We started the same tradition when our kids were babies. It never failed that they would fall sound asleep on the way and be left to dream, while my husband and I enjoyed the peace and our packed lunch. My dad believed you cover a sleeping person with a blanket, even in warm weather. It’s hard for me to resist copying that bit of coziness. 

Have I adopted all of his tenets to pass along? He believed in real cloth handkerchiefs and always had one in his pocket (yuk), and also carried wooden toothpicks. I prefer the plastic variety. He believed in connecting with the person serving you a coffee with a sampling of his wry humor. I’m not nearly as funny as he was, but I do try to get a smile. Who could argue with his stanch believe that family should come home for Christmas. We gathered around a table laden with baked salmon, a still icy shrimp ring, and fried oysters. My mom’s background was Ukrainian and so we dined on perogies, cabbage rolls and garlic sausage at Easter time, but on Christmas Eve my dad crushed crackers with a big glass rolling pin and us kids helped roll the oysters in the crumbs for her to crispy fry for our feast. 

Oddly, my kids don’t care for oysters, at least not cracker coated and fried, but I do them up every December 24thanyway, and talk about my dad and how the family feast meant the world to him.

It’s impossible to celebrate without invoking my dad’s memory and sharing his beliefs with those gathered around. My mom was his north star and his biggest belief was in his love for her. She gifted me with another set of values – the wonders of what she held to be true. Let me tell you about those in my next blog. And remember – do love the ones you’re with. 

WINTER – A LOVE STORY (sort of)

Photo 2018-01-08, 11 25 48 AM

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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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. . .