text me love mom

All Is Calm, All Is Bright

At this time of year I lean in two different directions, I can be disturbed and made moody by the short cold days of December, or as hours of daylight shrink I can find wonder in the dark. This morning, December 13th, I woke in the still quiet not knowing if it was night or day yet. Slipping out of a toasty bed to quench a thirst, I saw it was seven am. I had the luxury of sleep while some of my community were making toast in their kitchens, or heating up vehicles in the dark. 

      I’ve shared complains about the dreariness of limited hours of daylight, but on this dark morning, with a slip of moon shining through the clouds, and streetlights still on and reflecting off the snow, I felt the dim light differently. Today in Calgary, Alberta where we live there will only be daylight until four-thirty pm, and even less tomorrow. So, what was it that struck me standing in my bare feet with the door open to the outside, noticing rabbit tracks across the yard in the remaining moonlight?

       My Christmas to-do list is daunting; order the turkey (darn get that turkey!), finish shopping for this gift and that one, check supply of tissue, ribbons and bows, wrap and wrap and wrap, make cranberry sauce and butter tarts and shortbread, find the perfect tree, decorate the imperfect tree we get, make guest rooms look inviting instead of like store rooms for miscellaneous, and on and on and on. Yet something switched this morning to my “there’s too much darkness, I’m swamped, and tired” psych?

         Could it possibly be the wonder of the season? I’ve recently learned of St. Lucy’s Day – a Scandinavian celebration that takes place today – Dec. 13th ,  marking the end of the longest darkest nights, bringing warmth and hope during winter. St. Lucy Day coincides with the winter solstice in the Julian calendar, and honours St. Lucia who distributed food during a great famine, and so this day celebrates light in darkness, as well as hope and charity. Friends and family gather together to joyously light candles, sing carols and relish gingerbread and saffron-flavoured buns. 

      And so, it was this morning, that I felt that shift, from dreading the long hours of darkness to anticipating the coming together of loved ones. I’m counting the days until our house will sparkle with lit up rooms, the doorway will be crowded with winter boots, and conversation and laughter will ring out around that yet to be decorated Christmas tree. This year we’ll have the gift of a new grandson coming home for relatives to adore. We’ll break bread (and butter tarts) with those we love. And in the darkness, there will be an abundance of light. 

A toast to American Thanksgiving and Kids Coming Home

In honour of American Thanksgiving I’d like to repost a blog I wrote some time ago celebrating the tradition of young adults coming home from college for the first long weekend break. In it I shared a glimpse into our household during a Canadian November reading break and my eldest returning to the noisy house of siblings she’d left behind.  So I give you this from Text Me, Love Mom; Two Girls, Two Boys, One Empty Nest – only the nest wasn’t empty back then – just reeling from the departure of the eldest…

It went like this :

And so we had Zoë with us for her short fall reading break.  On the Friday and Saturday nights the house filled up with family and three or four of her best friends.  But Sunday, close to dusk, each of my four kids trickled back home from separate outings.   From upstairs I could hear them talking softly in the living room.  Coming down I found them in the dark – the boys showing their affection for their sisters in their odd boy way.  They had dog piled on Zoë and Lily.  It was reassuring to witness them that way, like a big pile of puppies heaped on top of each other.

One of my few friends with children older than mine had warned me that Zoë would have changed.  “I know it hasn’t been long,” she said, “but trust me, she’ll be different, more grown-up.  You’ll see.”  I had been nervous.  I didn’t want her to change, or even grow up particularly.  I would still rather spend a small part of my evenings driving her to piano lessons or to her girlfriends’ houses instead of e-mailing her in Vancouver or fighting for phone time with her long distance boyfriend.  But my friend was right.  My eldest daughter was different.  Oh, she didn’t have a total epiphany or anything.  She didn’t say, “Mommy I’ve realized how burdened you’ve been looking after us four kids.  Put your feet up and let me vacuum up the nacho crumbs before I massage your tired shoulders.”

But she was different.  I noticed that the first evening she was back as we lingered around the table after dinner, bombarding her with questions. It was a look on her face, a quality it was hard to put my finger on, except to say that she had drifted away a little bit.  I had gazed around the room at the others, Cole and Hudson and Lily, and imagined us all reuniting after future ventures.  Zoë swore that she would travel to the far north someday, being captivated by the notion of a trip to Yellowknife of even Inuvik, whereas Cole insisted he was going to snowboard in the southern hemisphere in Queenstown, New Zealand.  Hudson was harder to pin down –I think he aspired to travel back and forth in time, and back then I wrongly viewed Lily as a home body.

christmas bird-1In the upcoming Christmas season I would be happy to imagine them all staying put.  I was going to pretend for the three weeks that Zoë would be home that she had never left.  We would decorate a too tall, slightly lope-sided tree together and Will would insist once more on putting up the pissed-off looking angel Zoë made in kindergarten.  I wanted it to be a holiday season full of my kids dog piling on top of one another, and watching Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, all of us singing aloud to the Sisters’ song –

‘All kinds of weatherWe stick togetherThe same in the rain or sunTwo diff’rent facesBut in tight placesWe think and we act as one‘ [1]

I intended to encourage Zoë to humor Lily and I, and come skating with us on the lake near their grandparent’s property, after which we three would go for steamers, before coming home to whip up a batch of date-filled butter tarts for Christmas Eve.  She’d be impatient to go hang with her friends, (who would happily devour the butter tarts), but I hoped I could convince her to indulge us with a skate around the lake first.  I’d ask, but I promised myself to be a grown-up about it and not harass her to join us – just to ask.  She needed time to reconnect with her same-age peers.  At ages eighteen and thirteen my daughters couldn’t really act as one, but I knew that on Christmas Eve they would raise their voices together and happily sing about it.wooden santa

You hear it both ways.  Some people say girls are easier than boys.  “Oh, no, no, no,” others will tell you, “boys are easier”.  I’m not sure what exactly easier encompasses.  Easier to get along with?  Easier to discipline?  Easier to lose your mind worrying over? I do know that when Zoë went off to study art at Emily Carr – I thought a mother must only feel this out of sorts once.  But a year later I had to launch, as they say in those swishy mother circles, her exuberant brother, Cole.  Kids being kids, no two alike, and all that, there was hardly an ounce of knowledge I could borrow from Zoë leaving our nest when Cole decided to follow suit…

Happy Thanksgiving from your Canadian friends and if you want to read more of Text Me, Love Mom and the rest of all that …please check out http://www.amazon.ca/Text-Me-Love-Mom-Girls/dp/1771800712

[1] Berlin, Irving. “Sisters.” Lyrics. White Christmas. The Movie. 1954

#13 Arrivederchi Italy – We’re Alberta Bound

We are in the final day of our 30 days in Italy and are relaxing poolside rather than walking 10,000 steps.

The southern sun has warmed. We’ve driven for miles and miles around villages and farmland, walked through steep hillside towns climbing to their centres  and grandiose cathedrals.

Strolled through gardens and orchards with even M, a non-gardener, trying to help me identify sweetly scented blossoms. 

  And we’ve dined morning, noon and late at night.  (A 7:30 dinner reservation is early, most restaurants don’t get guests until 9 pm.) We even discovered what Italians do when all the shops close from 12:30 til 4:30 – they go home and cook big meals and rest, before restarting their work day late afternoon. 

    Though we planned this day to be chill  before our return to Alberta’s late spring we don’t sit still. We wander through a museum created from a restoration of La Posta Vecchia, a grand home first built on a then already ancient site in 1640! Destroyed in a fire in 1919 it evidently sat ignored until purchased and restored by the famous magnate J. Paul Getty in 1960 with the guidance of the archaeological societies of Etruria. But then, presto(!) – artifacts of all kinds, including finely crafted mosaic floors were discovered under the basement dating to the … hang on … first and second century AD!!

Trying to get our heads around that we took a beach walk along the shores of the Mediterranean. I had to pause and consider the history of what we’d just seen – trying to feel the spirits from 2000 years ago!

It makes me want to cry and be happy at the same time. Being close to works of art so ancient makes me think we have to get the most out of our time here on earth, create art,  put down our iPhones, lol, love the ones we’re with,  and be present for each other. It’s what we have.

As we watched the fishermen  on the rocky ledge I couldn’t stop considering how I might make life at home  more Italian.

I’ve decided I need to build a stone wall, install huge (maybe ancient – 1st century) terracotta planters, shine a light up my apple tree, plant a lemon tree (ha!), drink all my future cappuccinos from a pretty pink china cup, eat more bread and gelato and somehow be thin, wear pungent floral perfume and gaze at it all through popular crazy-huge black rimmed glasses. Prego. Prego. We’re soon to be Alberta bound. 

#12 ‘I Must Go Down To the Sea Today’

Do you ever feel as if you’re in a dream? You’re having an experience so foreign to your everyday life you wonder how you came to be where you are? Those were my thoughts seated with M on the sunny terrace of an ancient stone farmhouse, eating an Easter Monday lunch, looking over the green hills of Basilicata, Italy, while being serenaded by the most charming group of folk singers. 

   I closed my eyes to absorb it all. We left that comforting lunch of vegetable lasagna, grilled meats and fresh picked oranges to drive down the ever winding roads of Southern Italy towards the sea and Apulia. 

(M is getting accustomed to these Italian drivers, where they hug each others speeding bumpers until they make their daredevil passes. ) 

Farmhouses were on theme that day. We stayed in a romantic recovered farm property, at Masseria Montenapoleone, on part of a plain of centuries old olive groves.

The food this trip has been exquisite but made so by the atmosphere. We breakfasted on a terrace surrounded by a stunning array of geraniums, rose bushes, cacti and fruit trees and were hardly able to put down our iPhone cameras to eat our poached eggs and cream filled croissants. 

   Despite the beauty surrounding us we ventured out each day to hillside and seaside towns. 

       One day it was to visit Alberobello, famous for  the funny circular peaked roofed houses (called trulli), another to climb amongst the stairways of Ostuni, stepping into the magnificent basilica. We paused at cafes to refresh ourselves with gelatos or a cool glass of vino. 

     Other days we traveled to the seaside towns of Monopoli and Polignano a Mare. Staring out from the stone walls at the Adriatic Sea, I felt so far from my foothills home in Calgary. It was the end part of the trip where I had a greedy need to smell more Alpine roses, enjoy more pistachio gelato, and gaze longer at the sea. 

#6 Greetings Cheek to Cheek

On a sunny afternoon M and I wander the Baroque city of Noto single file, as the sidewalks are comparable in size to Canadian curbs. A crosswalk is barely a suggestion. Ie. drivers might consider slowing here, but hey, probably not. I lag behind M, staring at the array of doors that personalize the look-alike  storied townhouses constructed hundreds (and hundreds) of years ago, remembering to glance up, so as not to miss the boxes of geraniums, the ancient swirly cornices, and ok this seems silly, but even the crisp laundry flapping in the Sicilian breeze looks artistic, rather than messy to my foreigner’s eye.

We pass containers planted with small wonderfully cheery lemon trees. I’m a sucker for the popular sunshiny lemon-printed fabric and worry about how many pretty tablecloths,  runners, and cloth shopping bags I’ll go home with? Thank goodness the shops close from noon to four preventing me from purchasing a pile of them. 

The highlight is strolling Noto at night with the shop doors open, and locals calling out greetings to each other, Salve! Buona Sera! When they meet, they touch each other cheek to cheek. So much energy and enthusiasm but M and I wonder what do they do during those four hours in the afternoon? 

  What we don’t question and want to emulate back home, is the Italian talent for outdoor lighting. It’s another world after dusk, eating our pistachio and stracciatella gelato under the illumination of the ground and twinkling accent lights brightening  churches and historic walkways.

From the grand steps of the Cattedrale di San Nicolo – I wonder, can I light up my Canadian poplar tree and lilac bushes to shimmer from the bottom up? Prego, I’m going to try. 

#4 Take the Cannoli

My husband, a guy not always crazy about organized tours suggested one dull winter day, as we planned our month long Italian adventure, “Oh go ahead, book us a few tours.” Prego. I picked one I’d love. And one he’d love. Mine was for our second day in Palermo, Sicily  and was fantástico! Discover Sicily has been an exotic, sometimes scary adventure. It has a rich history marked by centuries of conquest and influence from Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans. Our tour was called Ten Tastings of Palermo and went beyond our expectations in culinary delights!

Mercato di Ballaro

The aromas! Oh the tantalizing aroma’s! And the vivid colours! Michelangelo, our guide with a company called WithLocals, was too good to be true. It sounds corny but it was as if we’d met an old friend – an Italian history foodie-type old friend – our kid’s age,  but stay with me! 

   He described Palermo as being layered like a lasagna. It’s Sicilian cuisine has been influenced by Arab countries, the French, Spain, Greece, and North Africa and to explore this Michelangelo took us to the historic Mercato di Ballarò. Located in the Albergheria district.

Our first delight was a piece of fluffy Arabian style salted bread hot off the grill. Our taste buds were awakened. From their we let him deliver us through milling customers to a booths selling tuna crouquettes, and lightly battered asparagus, mushroom, and artichoke where described the artichokes as as being as big as a baby’s head. Michelangelo then insisted we’d never tasted egg plant parmigiana if we had eaten it in Sicily. So true – it was an alluring mouthwatering mix of the ‘aubergene’, tomato sauce and gooey cheese.

Sicilian Artichokes

From there we stepped through a bottleneck of people, to an open area with American music blasting, and all ages of folks dancing and laughing in a square crowed with food booths, and plastic tables and chairs. Michelangelo called out an order to a  woman behind another grill and soon presented us with our last plate of hot delights.

Since our arrival in Palermo we’d noticed people everywhere, seriously everywhere – sipping on bright orange drinks, resembling orange Fanta – but not. It’s an apéritif known as an Aperol Spritz, a mix of Aperol, prosecco, and soda water. On that sunny afternoon we discovered its refreshing appeal to accompany our thinly battered, crispy fried sardines and the best ever lightly spiced potato croquettes. 

With our bellies bursting Michelangelo suggested we stroll to a wide seaside boulevard when we walked amongst local parents and grandparents pushing little bambino’s in fancy Italian strollers, kids on scooters, cruise ship passengers, and dog walkers of decidedly Italian dogs. 

In the afternoon sunshine, we were treated to creamy Sicilian gelato and the popular cannoli. Prego.

The tour I booked with M’s heart in mind won’t be for a few days, but here’s a hint – ‘leave the guns take the cannoli.’ Ciao for now.

Rome: Awe-Struck Jet-lagged Wonder

April 2025. We’re here in Rome, Italy! I’ll skip past the actual travel days, with sleepy boredom in an airport lounge and then almost missing our connecting flight having miscalculated the distance to the gate in Frankfurt’s insanely enormous airport. And I won’t go on about my vow against airplane breakfasts (icky icky eggs) or the usual circadian rhythm mess of a 30 hour day. All the same, the triumph of Rome is so alluring that its wonders were magnified by the state of our stunned jet lagged brains. Jumping ahead eights hours with only poor sleep and a bunch of niggly naps, heightened the marvel of that first mixed-up day of sleep deprived sight seeing.

With clearer  heads we could have performed speedy searches on our phones to name the monuments, to pin point the cathedrals,  and understand the streets direction,  but that would have subtracted from our awe struck confusion. 

The coliseum

From the fresh squeezed morning orange juice to the midnight cocktail on a six story rooftop, the day unraveled in a winding, blur of awe. We tread over cobblestones trying to follow that blue dot on google maps, stood stunned  before ornate fountains, magnificent cathedrals, and ancient (like really, really ancient) statues of the likes of Neptune and Caesar.

And why so many leather goods shops I pondered, buying a cute little purse I didn’t need, (though who couldn’t use one more cute little purse) while trying not to be run over by scooters and motorbikes, ubers and taxis. Like sheep we followed a crowd to St Peter’s Basilica mesmerized by a single guitarist serenading us with the Beatle’s tune ‘Here Comes the Sun’. Lingered before  midcity  architectural digs, pizzerias, and pubs all the while listening to the  sing song-y Italian spoken around us. 

Time travel archeological sight

There was an afternoon nap, before our dinner of fat olives, rich gnocchi with ragú sauce and then chocolate topped  basil gelato. Fantástica. But the highlight was the nighttime stroll home.  Rome is amazingly lit from the ground up, cathedral windows, marble fountains, and tall cypress trees glow in the black night.

We walked slowly, well satiated, our feet tired, staring up at seagulls flying in and out of the light. It was ten pm as we lined up for pistachio gelato, then relied on Google maps blue dot to end our circular route through narrow alley ways with curious closed shops. In bed with closed eyes,  I still viewed marble angels, Roman gods, and the wide rolling Tiber River. Tomorrow we’d set more exact goals of  historic sights. And throw coins in that fountain. 

30 Days in Italy – (but first prune the apple tree)

A burst of energy happens the morning of a big trip. There I am rushing to have an extra key made for our mailbox, because I’m certain my adult kids will lose mine checking the mail in our absence. I’m slurping a cold latte while buying mini toothpastes and tiny deodorants at the drugstore, then back home pruning our apples trees – chopped branches falling into the snow. Crazy I know, but the jobs been on my pre-trip to-do list forever, and our return will be past the date that pruning is advised if I want to come home to dreamy blossoms.

(more…)

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. 

I Like Where We Live

Here’s a thing to think about – because we are at a certain age and stage – friends and family ask me, where do you think you’ll retire? I feel as if I’m supposed to have a dream location – a little casita in a safe Mexican town with a red tile roof and a balcony overlooking the Bay of Banderas, or somewhere familiar and loved, such as our family

cottage in the Shuswaps – with its copper roof, and wide patio overlooking the blue-green lake. New or familiar, it’s the process of getting to this vision that has me flummoxed. 

            I like where we live. Plain and simple. My parents bought this property on the edge of the city, in 1966 when I was seven years old. The house was brand new and had lots of room for our family of seven. They’d purchased it, but because my dad was employed far out of town, they had to wait to move. My mom, a person who never drove, was anxious to begin the transformation of the big yard from unadorned soil to a landscape both pretty and useful, and so had some of us kids help carry spades and shovels from the old house, a long walk away. Not having transportation wasn’t going to prevent her from getting started on constructing flowerbeds and a wide vegetable garden and preparing places for shrubs and flowering plum trees. 

         My husband and I bought this home and garden from my parents when I was thirty years-old and our four little kids, age one, three, five and six, needed more space then available in our small rental.  It wasn’t until the year 2000 when our youngest was ten, that we felt ready to renovate, and update the home no longer anywhere near the city’s edge. The house had good bones and my parents understood updating, still my mom was practical and penny wise, and must have looked on aghast as we expanded into the yard and added granite and tile, gas fireplaces and two more big bathrooms. 

        Oddly, both my parents were more at ease than I was when the giant evergreen out front had to go. They said they might have also added the big deck if they were staying. Their new smaller home had one. In the twenty-six years they lived in that new house my mom grew splendid roses, lined her deck with pots of geraniums and nourished her own raspberry patch.  A year before she died, she helped us dig up her prize English rose bush and transplant it to this yard. I pause beside it some evenings to feel her spirit. It isn’t just that conveyor of soft pink ruffled blossoms that grounds me here. What makes me like where I live is what remains from those early days of my mom creating the garden we love – the tall over-reaching lilacs with the first fragrant blooms of summer, the dainty bleeding-heart blossoming in the shade, the nan king cherry bushes she made tart jelly with, the mass of lily of the valley on the shady north side.

            I feel rooted to this spot on the earth when I picture my seven-year-old self climbing the hill from our old neighborhood. I remember sitting on the steps, eating our brown bag lunch of ham sandwiches and home baked cookies, drinking from the hose she’d set up and watching while she watered her new seeds and skinny raspberry plants that still line the fence. A new family could move into the house, I suppose, but I don’t want anyone else to mess with what grows here. And so, I imagine, we’ll stay.