winter days

Today is one of those crisp winter days with just enough light in it to remind us that we are on the ascent to spring. In Victoria earlier in the week to celebrate my birthday, the snowdrops were blooming. I saw a raven carrying sticks across the highway as we drove north to take the ferry home.  I bought two pots of miniature daffodils, one for Angelica and one to take home for the worktable where it sits, full of buds and promise.

While in Victoria, we went to see Little Women, Greta Gerwig’s marvelous retelling of that iconic story of young women, women’s work, and the endless variations of love and responsibility. It was a joy to watch. Like the textiles that filled almost every frame of the film, the story unfolded its rich and beautiful layers. Partly it did this by the way Gerwig deconstructed the narrative and repieced it so that it was not linear but associative. The film anticipates and remembers, sometimes almost simultaneously, the young women on the screen both foreshadowing and echoing who they were and who they become. Each frame was painterly, warm, bathed in the most generous light. And the ending was a delight, watching the book that Jo made of the sisters’ lives come to actual life, before our eyes, and hers.