Thinking: about the bundle of linen I have stored away for an early September dye vat and how when I look up at the sky as I’m swimming my morning back stroke, I see all the blue possibilities: a line of white like a zipper, deeper when the water is reflected, and oh, the grey-blue of the kingfisher passing right over my head.
Reading: I was awake in the night this week, reading Mark Haddon’s amazing Leaving Home: A Memoir in Full Colour. At first you don’t see the narrative in linear terms, because it isn’t. He’s composed the book in sections, which seem to be random. Or at least not exactly connected. But then you see the way he’s echoed his life, his relationship with his parents (spoiler: they are awful), his wife, his own mental health issues, his attempts to find a way to write the way he needs to (and his section on making historical fiction is just wonderful), how he’s inserted illustrations — photographs, his own drawings, other images — and how the reader puzzles through them, finding a strangely beautiful coherence. Some parts are laugh-out-loud funny (his history teacher, his gruesome description of a pilonidal sinus, a condition I also suffered with as a teenager), some parts left me weeping quietly, head turned from my sleeping husband.
Enjoying: The company of my son, daughter-in-law, and two grandsons, who come to the lake with us every morning, who help prepare great meals, and who have helped with some difficult jobs: staining a bit of the cedar on the tallest part of the house, splitting firewood. I love hearing the thock of arrows hitting the target when they’re out on the lane, shooting a bow, and then hearing the excited account of bulls eyes, or close.
Finding: 4 1/2 yards of dark green (almost black) dupioni silk at the thrift store yesterday for $9. I have in mind a project, which I know I am too careless to carry out well, but maybe I’ll rise to it. Or not.
Anticipating: Another month and a half of morning swims. I’ll go each day, I’ll swim my slow kilometre, and then one morning I’ll know it’s time to head to the pool. This morning I was doing a kind of casual math as I swam, trying to figure out how many kms I’ve accumulated this summer, and I lost count, but since mid-April I’ve been in the lake most days, apart from 5 days in Edmonton, and 5 days in Gatineau, and 3 days on the Island. Some days I’ve gone twice, or at least I’ve had an ocean swim on top of the lake swim.
Eating: Maybe the signature dish this summer is the simplest: blackberry ice-cream. Two cups of frozen blackberries in the food processor with a tablespoon or two of brown sugar. Whir them until they’re kind of crushed. Then add heavy cream, maybe a cup in all, drizzling it in and pulsing the food processor until everything comes together. It won’t hold. Don’t even think about freezing it. Have it on galette or in waffle cones or in a bowl. You won’t be sorry. You can add other fruit — it has to be frozen — like mango or raspberries or peaches. But somehow the simplest is the best.
Hi Theresa. I’d love to ask you a question about the old house in Mill Creek, Edmonton. Not spam, I promise. Thanks!
What a refreshing thing to read such positivity and joy in quiet reflections of a life well lived.
Right now there is so much for feel joyful and grateful for!
It’s been a pleasant surprise to find that after not walking three brisk miles every second day, as I do at home, it wasn’t at all difficult to get back to once I came back from a week at the lake, where walking for exercise wasn’t thought of.
I don’t swim, but enjoy it vicariously through you!
-Kate
I used to love long walks but then I had a health issue ten years ago and found it difficult. So I began to swim more seriously than I had before. Then the health issue was resolved and I still walk, though not as avidly (apart from trips away when we walk for hours), but I continue to swim!