a knock at the door

Last week John said, Don’t make plans for Sunday or Monday. So I didn’t. Pack for overnight, he said. So I did. He promised surprises. We left on Sunday morning and drove to the ferry. First stop on the other side of Howe Sound: brunch on the waterfront in Dundarave. Then across the bridge and where were we going? The second surprise. It turns out we were going to the Sylvia Hotel, an old favourite. We checked in to a sweet room with a view of English Bay with windows that opened and a tangle of ivy vines along the sill. It was a good day to walk along the seawall, looking out at the tankers and seabirds and kayaks. There were a few herons far along the beach and crows scrapping with gulls, Canada geese grazing on the sparse grass. When we came back to our room, I lay on the bed with my book, Stepping Stones: A Journey Through the Ice Age Caves of the Dordogne, and was reading about Bernifal when, what, there was a knock at the door. More towels, I wondered? I opened it, not knowing. But it was Angie and Karna, the third surprise! We all went back to the seawall for a walk, pausing in the Sylvia bar on our way back for a cocktail. And then later, we went out for dinner to the Homer Street Cafe, where we’ve had good meals in the past and a stellar one on Sunday night.

So many times this past fall I’ve wanted to see my children. There were things I could have done but I didn’t. It was a difficult time in many ways. But a knock at the door, a walk in sea air, dinner of duck confit, pumpkin gnocchi, various shared plates, a tart with a candle brought to the table in anticipation of my 70th birthday: I felt like myself again. Or at least a better version of the self that has been lost in the shadows. Looking out the window in the middle of the night, the sky smudged with cloud, a pretty moon shining through, I thought of all the birthdays of my life, the sense each time of new possibilities in the arrangement of numbers. 10; 13, when I was training a young horse; 21, when friends in France took me to the casino in Monaco for a glass of champagne; 30, newly pregnant with the daughter who knocked at the door; 60, with its echoes of 21, and the quick run of the last decade when it was hard to hold on to the old years passing.

These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.

In the morning John and I woke to the sound of gulls. We walked the seawall again, before breakfast, before opening gifts, and when I packed my bag later, it felt lighter. When we got home late yesterday afternoon, friends had left a box of flowers and gifts on our kitchen counter. And there were video calls from Edmonton and Ottawa, greetings and birthday songs across the distance.

I have work to do, shadow work, and there’s fabric from Angie and Karna to sew as I take myself into that work, an opera to anticipate from my Edmonton family, warm socks from Ottawa, a bottle of excellent French Chablis from John to sip at intervals along the way.

Note: the lines of poetry are from Dylan Thomas, “Poem in October”