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Note: this was first posted 7 years ago. Tomorrow, two of those grandchildren arrive, their first flight as “unaccompanied minors” and everyone else will follow, in stages, filling our house for the next month. Swimming towels are washed and stacked in a big basket, ready. And I’ve learned my lesson: always wear a bathing suit under your clothing…

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A perfect day. Sunlight, ocean, the voices of my grandchildren, the beauty of my children and their partners in the water. We all drove down the Coast to take Angie to the plane for her flight back across Georgia Strait to Victoria and we had time for a picnic at Trail Bay. Kelly noticed the blue mountains across the water and I told her that was the island where her other grandparents live, the ones she’ll see on the weekend. We’d gone to a small pebble beach, the tide low-ish, rocks warm in the sun. I knew my older son Forrest would swim; he keeps a life-list of water: rivers, lakes, ponds, and oceans. And I thought the children would wade. But then Cristen went in, buoyant in the tide. Then Brendan. John stripped off his shorts, took off his unders, and put the shorts on again. (We’d already had our morning swim in Ruby Lake so when we were getting ready to drive down to Sechelt, we both agreed we wouldn’t bother taking our bathing suits. Famous last words.) I was dying to swim but there I was, in a linen dress. What to do? Oh, Mum, said my daughter, swim in your underwear. So I did. Off came the dress and who was to know the sports bra and striped underpants weren’t a bathing suit? Well, I think it was obvious they weren’t. But I didn’t care.

It was so wondrous to swim in that mild green water. To let yourself be carried out a distance, then lifted back to shore. To look at the blue mountains beyond. I haven’t felt like this since I swam in Portugal, said Forrest. Not so alive in the water, so buoyant. And me? Maybe not since Crete. The children found rocks, a few shells, one fell and cried, three went into the water, and afterwards we walked along the shore for ice-cream. When we came home, I took out the compost and saw a weasel in one corner of the new compost box, looking back at me, its eyes bright and alert. It slipped out of the box but when I brought the children out to look for it, we saw it in between the two boxes, waiting for us to leave. I think it might have a den under the box; it might be feeding its young on the mice that come for the seeds and vegetable parings.

Last night my children and their partners went out for supper to Egmont while John and I cared for our grandchildren. They ate a simple supper, had their baths, and we read them stories before bed. We sang songs. In Arthur’s room, I tried to remember the words to “Five Hundred Miles”. My favourite version the one Roseanne Cash sings on The List, her album of songs from her father Johnny’s list of essential country songs.

All these years and all these roads
Never led me back to you
I’m always five hundred miles away from home
Away from home, away from home
Always out here on my own
I’m still five hundred miles away from home
I’m still five hundred miles away from home

Later I read in the kitchen while the outside lamp was softened by moths. When the kids returned from Egmont, I went to bed and listened to them laughing downstairs. John was already asleep. They live so far from this home but still they return. Today Angie turned to me as we sat on a log watching the others swim and said, I don’t want to leave. I knew what she meant. They’ll all be gone on Saturday and the house will be tidy again, but quiet. Away from home, away from home, always out here on my own. I am that woman swimming in her pink striped underpants in the deep generous ocean, looking at her family on the shore.

Yesterday I swam in the rain. It hardly matters because of the nature of water. John, who always comes with me and mostly swims, sat under the shelter of the big fir on the beach in his rain jacket. But in the water, it was like swimming at the beginning of time. Heavy mist over the forest and hills on the other side of the lake, the islands draped in mist as well. Two half-grown mergansers hopped off the log and first swam, then flew away from me. Are they the same ones who I saw a month ago, hovering near the shore, perhaps abandoned? That morning I called to them, saying Where’s your mother? and a man on the beach, setting up towels for his small children, said You are their mother now.

The baby loon follows the mother’s sleek
Body for months. By the end of summer, she
Has dipped her head into Rainy Lake a thousand times.

At one point, a boat appeared out of the rain, not too far away, and then disappeared again. No sound. Someone fishing, maybe, motor cut, or barely running. The faint call of a loon far far down the lake. The eagle we often see making its slight to the end of the lake and back was being chased by crows who are nesting in the big trees at the south end and then a couple of crows chased a raven too. The raven briefly croaked somewhere near where we park.

John under the fir, me swimming in the rain. The drops made tiny splashes as they hit the surface of the lake. I was the only one in the lake, I’m pretty sure, other than fish, mergansers, geese, that distant loon, and maybe an otter or two.

Robert, you’ve wasted so much of your life
Sitting indoors to write poems. Would you
Do that again? I would, a thousand times.

Theresa, you’ve spend so much of your life swimming in this lake, back and forth, catching raindrops in the hollows of your eyes, while an eagle flies over, a loon mourns the end of the world. Would you do that again? I would, a thousand times.

Note: the lines are Robert Bly’s, from “Ravens Hiding in a Shoe”.

From Irene Deitsch”s Tussie-Mussies: A Collector’s Guide to Victorian Posy Holders: “A ‘tussie’ is a nosegay, which is a Middle English word for a small group of flowers held together in a little bouquet. ‘Mussie’ refers to the moss that was moistened and put around the stems of the flowers to keep them from wilting. That’s why they’re called tussie-mussies.”

1.

A bench by the front door, holding scented geraniums, fuchsia, a rose that is supposed to cling to the netting against the wall but has ideas of its own, a bowl of ferns, an orchid, and some verbena. Above, unseen here, is a hanging basket of geraniums, lobelia, some ivy-ish creeper, and small petunias. This area is beloved by tree frogs who often leap in surprise when I water the pots.

2.

Another corner is bracketed by tomatoes, the ones to the left taller than me (I’m 5’6″), with many green fruits hanging in the shade of the leaves. This area gets hot in summer! And there are tree frogs here too, often on the surface of the soil. The tomato plants on the right are potato-leaved, a new variety to me this year — not the leave type but the fruit: Pink Berkeley Tie-die. There are 20 plants up here, 5 in the greenhouse, 8 in boxes we call the “cucumber boxes” but which are little protected boxes with glass windows facing south for the cooler months and netting now instead, to keep deer from grazing on the plants. There are also 10 more tomato plants in the vegetable garden. They’re slow this year but when they begin to ripen, we’ll have bowls to pick each morning, and in late summer, I’ll make roasted tomato sauce to freeze in jars, slow-roasted halves to freeze in containers to have on pizza in winter, and other preparations to take their goodness into the cold months.

3.

Summer’s tussie mussie would be dull without basil, particularly the lettuce leaf one I’ve grown to love most. This tub was planted with seeds I bought at the heavenly Bolhão market in Porto. It’s one of the most civilized markets I’ve ever known, the vendors kind and helpful — two women who were squeezing fresh oranges into single glasses agreed to fill a two litre jug for us in 2024 so my grandsons could have it with their breakfast at our beautiful suite nearby — and what I thought was so admirable was the wine merchant who poured your choice into proper glasses so you could sip from it as you wandered from stall to stall, stopping to buy sheep’s cheese with fresh rosemary, candied fruit, dark chocolate, pastéis de nata to have with that orange juice, and seeds of every kind.

4.

This morning as we drank our coffee on the upper deck after our swim, I counted 5 different species of bumble bees, though the one only I know for sure is the yellow-faced, the one you can see in the middle of the photograph, deep in the oregano, their own tussie mussie patch. For a month now the oregano has been loud with bees, so many that the flower-heads are often more bee than blossom. Aphrodite created this particular herb for joy, happiness, and protection; its Greek name ὀρίγανον means “joy of the mountains” and if you’ve ever hiked in Greek mountains, you’ll remember it, also filled with bees. 50 years ago when I was young in the Greek mountains, I remember sitting on a rock surrounded by flowering rosemary, oregano, thyme, and dittany of Crete, also an oregano, but with a more potent scent. Did I feel joy? I felt everything there.

This morning I want to share two harmonies that have made the days sweeter.

1. From Edora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings, which I’ve been reading before sleep over the past 3 nights, a passage where the author remembers visiting her maternal grandmother in West Virginia:

That summer, lying in the long grass with my head propped against the back of a saddle, with the zenith above me and the drop of distance below, I listened to the mountain silence until I could hear as far as the faintest clink of a cowbell. In the mountains, what might be out of sight had never really gone away. Like the mountains, that distant bell would always be there. It would keep reminding.

It took the mountain top, it seems to me now, to give me the sensation of independence. It was as if I’d discovered something I’d never tasted before in my short life. Or rediscovered it–for I associated it with the taste of the water that came out of the well, accompanied with the ring of that long metal sleeve against the sides of the living mountain, as from deep down it was wound up to view brimming and streaming long drops behind it like bright stars on a ribbon. It thrilled me to drink from the common dipper. The coldness, the far, unseen, unheard springs of what was in my mouth now, the iron strength of its flavor that drew my cheeks in, its fern-laced smell, all said mountain mountain mountain as I swallowed. Every swallow was making me a part of being here, sealing me in place, with my bare feet planted on the mountain and sprinkled with my rapturous spills. What I felt I’d come here to do was something on my own.

2. A ravishing duet, Johnny Cash and a young (23!) Linda Ronstadt singing “I Never Will Marry”, a song I used to sing my children when they were small, and still hum from time to time when the mood is right:

You are sitting here with us,
but you are also out walking in a field at dawn.

This morning I was remembering the dead. Our parents, a few dear friends, the 3 dogs who graced our lives, and passed on far too soon. I was remembering how I’d prepare visits–fresh sheets on the beds, one of the quilts from the basket on the trunk. Bread rising in the bowl that came to us from John’s mother. Wine chilling in the fridge. This morning I was awake early, watching the light come in through the white curtains. All night a solar lamp we’d set up on the eaves of the sunroom glowed like a smudge of moonlight. And there was a moon too, and the morning star.

You are in your body
like a plant is solid in the ground,
yet you are wind.

There are days when this is true. There are days when I feel the dead living through me, when my skin feels transparent, when old love and pain for things said, or not said, are close enough to touch, palpable as the tendrils of sweetpea I’ve been coaxing into their netting.

We have so little time, it seems, to live and to ensure another generation. When I let the cat out after his breakfast, I could hear a robin singing so stridently that I knew it was the last song, the end of the season. As I swam my quiet laps in the lake, swallows were mating, also the end of their season. In our house, the beds are all made with fresh sheets, a homemade quilt, extra pillows, and sweetpeas in tiny jars. There’s light enough at dawn for those arriving, for those leaving.

Note: the lines are Rumi’s.

Nearly two years ago, I told my Edmonton grandchildren I would make them each a quilt for the new house they would be moving to. I made one for my granddaughter first and it took most of a year. (I was busy with editing my book as well as other writing.) And then I began to think about Henry’s quilt. It was a bit of a puzzle, what I could do with the colours he sent in the form of a bar graph. I thought about them, tried to imagine them as a quilt. I’d already used the bar graph trope for his sister’s quilt (she also sent a more carefully constructed graph with her favourite pinks and purples):

I realized I could use a traditional block for Henry (and I sort of wished for a tiger beetle!) and decided that as Henry loved walking around our house and asking his grandfather questions about what it was like to build it when we were young and full of energy, a log-cabin quilt might be best. It took some time to find the colours I needed, his, as well as some blue to make the quilt pleasurable to work on — because the fabric store in Sechelt closed and Dressew in Vancouver (my other source) closed — but eventually I accumulated what I needed, including an organic cotton batting and soft blue flannel for the back. Here is the top I pieced together in the fall.

I know I’ve written about it before but I like to think about these projects in a narrative way: what was asked, how I responded, what it was like to select fabric, to think about design possibilities, and then to stitch. I am not very proficient at the piecing; everything is a bit cockeeyed. But what I love best is the actual quilting, by hand, with sashiko thread and big-eyed needles, using a wooden hoop to keep the surface taut. And this morning, as it rains outside, a much-needed rain, I am working on the final borders of this quilt for a young boy in Edmonton.

I think of all the women who’ve worked on quilts for luxury or out of necessity. For love. And how we sew ourselves into the work we do, we stitch our hope, and our wonder — that a young boy who was born yesterday, it seems, but who now claims that tiger beetles rule and who will settle this quilt on his narrow bed in a new room, will not know the hours of time it took to make.

I am interested in every tangle of thread and rope and every possibility of transformation. I am interested in the path of a single thread. I am not interested in the practical usefulness of my work.
–Magdalena Abakanowicz

I too am interested in the path of a single thread as it moves across the blue borders, in and around the cabins created with strips of cotton, the sashing between them, the thread that spirals, follows a path that becomes a river, a tendril, a long meandering trail through deep blue,, completing the journey. If it is also useful or practical, so be it.

Enjoying: how the morning swim is never the same. Today the air was cool and the water was too. Last week, during a heat wave, I realized the water was almost too warm, I was longing for the late April days when I couldn’t feel my toes. So this morning I swam, looking west at the islands, the hill beyond, an uncertain sky above, and enjoyed every stroke, a breeze ruffling the water’s surface. Just as we arrived at the lake, a woman, a man, and 2 dogs were walking back to their car. You will swim? the woman asked, and Yes, I replied. Every morning! There are 2 kinds of people, she said. The ones that won’t swim in cold water and the ones who will. I am the first kind, she said, and they are the second — pointing to the man and the dogs. Two kinds of people, dogs included.

Reading: I almost never watch television. I think I have the wrong metabolism. I can’t take tension, the anticipation of danger, the way the music will suggest horror or violence. But sometimes I do like reading a mystery and there’s no one better than Tana French for creating atmosphere, letting events unspool slowly but surely (and scarily), and for building suspense in an organic way, as naturally as bog cotton and spruce. Over the past 3 nights I read The Keeper, putting it down for short periods when the sense of threat felt too overwhelming, then returning, reading ten more pages, looking away through the dark windows.

Remembering: the loon swimming very near me yesterday, shadowing my strokes in the cool water, watching, close enough for me to see the intricate pattern of its collar.

Anticipating: when I’ve finished my garden chores this morning, I’m going to set up my summer dye studio. The table is folded away, the basins tucked under some shelves, the hotplate in its box inside. I have a basket of scoured cotton and linen and last week at the thrift shop, I found 9 beautiful monogrammed damask napkins, some of them with small stains, and I have a plan for them.

Appreciating: the letters and conversations about The Art of Looking Back. I loved seeing it on the Tyee’s summer reading list! And in the hands of my Czech friend, and my friend in the Netherlands.

Making: jam (rhubarb and ginger), banana bread, lamb tagine, excellent sourdough bread with Artemis, my trusty starter, pesto sauce with the beautiful summer basil, and every evening, salad with our gorgeous greens — deer’s tongue lettuce, kale, arugula, magenta spreen, mustard, huge leaves of Italian parsley.

Eating: raspberries, raspberries, and more raspberries. Yesterday I was picking them and for each one I dropped in the colander, one went in my mouth. For their first week, we say we are going out to pick raspberries. And then we say we are going out to pick the frigging raspberries. But in winter, when I take a bag of them out of the freezer, I will bless each one, frigging or not.