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Note: This was first posted five years ago. It was a dark time, the uncertainties of COVID and a surgery gone sideways for my husband heavy in my heart and mind. But sometimes a piece of music can transport one and provide its own sense of healing.

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Some days are easier than others. For me, for us, for all of us. Yesterday was dark. When we went to pick up mail from the day before, we saw that all the parcel boxes at the community mail boxes had been pried open. This was the second time. Someone has been going around the Coast, stealing parcels from the community mail boxes. In a year when our lives are reduced and constrained, when so many people are depending on Canada Post for parcel deliveries and Christmas mail in general. There was confusion at the Post Office itself when I stopped in to mail my final family parcel. Usually you have a key to the parcel box in your individual mail box if you have a parcel. Or if the parcel is large, you have a card asking you to pick it up at the post office. Can I assume that I didn’t have a parcel in the box that was pried open if I didn’t have a key or a card, I asked. But no one could say for sure. It turned out I did have a parcel card in that day’s mail, for a parcel that hadn’t yet gone out. I wanted to ask if two break-ins in as many weeks meant that the mail person would no longer leave parcels in the community mail boxes but the post lady was already cross with me about a postal code she insisted was wrong on the parcel I was trying to mail so I left in tears.

Tears that were never far from the surface throughout the day. Someone scolded me in the 1st grocery story (long story). I got wet everywhere I went. John was grumpy and although I know he has more reason than anyone to be grumpy these days (paralyzed foot….), I took it personally. In the library stacks I cried. I cried as I loaded groceries in the back of the car from the cart after my stop at the second grocery store, unbagged because the cashier spoke sharply to me when I said I’d use my own bags. You’ll have to put things in your cart, then, and do it out in the mall area, she said. We can’t have your bags on the counter. (I know this. I’ve been shopping at this store for 40 years, and once a week throughout the pandemic. I wouldn’t have put my bags on the counter. But I didn’t want to cry in front of her so I just wheeled my cart out to the car with the groceries heaped in any old way.) Wiping my face with the back of my hand as I closed the trunk of the car, I suddenly stopped. Was that “Wild Mountain Thyme” I was hearing? It was. The older fellow who plays his guitar outside the liquor store, the one who usually plays old Gordon Lightfoot songs, who sings with a world-weary voice, and into whose guitar case I’ve dropped many twoonies over the years, was strumming and singing (behind a face-shield).

O the summer time has come
And the trees are sweetly blooming
And wild mountain thyme
Grows around the purple heather.
Will you go, lassie, go?

Some days are hard. You think of all the people who will be alone this Christmas, waiting for parcels or cards, you think of the cashiers saying the same thing over and over, hoping that someone doesn’t infect them, the nursing staff in the hospitals consoling, consoling (I think of how kind they were to John when he was in pain), the people working in post offices trying to do their best with mountains of deliveries to boxes that are clearly not safe, the families lined up at food banks, and you wish, wish for the beauty of summers in years gone by, the garden flourishing, your loved ones sleeping in every bed in your house, the long pink sunsets, and even the scent of thyme you’ve cut for the lamb you are preparing for the barbecue, enough for everyone.

I will range through the wilds
And the deep land so dreary
And return with the spoils
To the bower o’ my dearie.
Will ye go lassie go ?

Cooking:

The other day I was making candied orange slices for panforte and I made some extras to dip in very dark chocolate as a Christmas treat. The smell of them! And the anticipation of eating one at some point, with a glass of wine.

Listening:

Pablo Casals playing the Bach Cello Suites. The story of Casals finding the sheet music for the Suites at the age of 13 in a second-hand store in Barcelona in 1890 is an interesting one in itself, the music relatively unknown and seldom performed, and this particular score (a 1866 concert edition) much annotated by German cellist Friedrich Grützmacher. I have many recordings of these pieces but this is my favourite, or at least it’s my favourite for a mild day in December when the wind is blowing and chickadees are haunting the feeder.

Thinking:

As I swam my slow laps this morning, alone in the pool for half of them, I was thinking about love, how it sometimes fills the heart to the point of pain. I was swimming the backstroke and thinking about how this time of year always contains every Christmas I’ve known, the early ones when my brothers and I woke at 5, the later ones when my children woke early but waited until their dad put on the Chieftains recording, The Bells of Dublin, the title song (with the bell ringers of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin) bringing our Christmas morning to life. The ones away from home (Ireland, Italy), the lonely ones, the noisy ones, the ones where family and friends, now gone from this earth, ate at our table, the sweet ones, the ones yet to come.

Watching:

I have been watching the Anna’s hummingbirds dart back and forth to the feeder by my kitchen window, the cerise crown and throat of the male brilliant in the grey air.

Enjoying:

The warmth of wood fires, here every day, at the Backeddy the other night, how the heat is unlike any other, reaching the bones.

Finishing:

I thought I’d be finished this current quilt by now, thought I’d be working on one I’ve promised a grandchild, but somehow the stitching is slow (like my swimming), my needle finding a meandering line through the indigo-dyed linen, the rose madder-dyed linen, attaching a little shell button here, and here, and here.

Reading:

I somehow missed Leanne Shapton’s Swimming Studies when it first came out in 2012, maybe because I wasn’t swimming regularly then, but I read it last week, caught up in both the prose and the illustrations: swimming pools, bathing suits, old team members from her time as a competitive swimmer. A very original and fascinating meditation.

Appreciating:

The generous words of those who’ve commented on my forthcoming book, most recently (this morning) Evelyn Lau: https://thornapplepress.ca/books/the-art-of-looking-back/

Wishing:

I wish I had my life to live again, knowing what I know.

Remembering:

The moment, years ago, when I was sitting by the fire and turned to see a weasel standing on its hind legs, looking through the glass doors at me.

Note: I know it’s a little early for a solstice post but I wrote this last year and I realize that the quilt I am now working on uses the fabric I was writing about here. Every day I stitch into the blue swirls. It’s just after 8 a.m. and it’s barely light but at least I have this work to do when my own thinking goes dark.

I was asleep at the moment of the winter solstice, 1:20 a.m. Pacific time. Yesterday was a long day. We went to Vancouver for a medical procedure for John, to the same facility where I went every few weeks for 5 months last year to have my threadbare retinas stabilized and repaired. On our way down the coast, we stopped to pick up our mail from the previous day. Finally things I ordered in early to mid November are beginning to arrive so I was happy to open a package containing a copy of Christine Desdemaines-Hugon’s Stepping Stones: A Journey Though the Ice Age Caves of the Dordogne, recommended to me by Clara Aussel who took John and I to Rouffignac and Font de Gaume in late October.

I was 19 when I first read about the caves in the Dordogne Valley. I wrote a poem about them, tucked away the memory of seeing photographs of animals alive on limestone cave walls, and finally we went to France this fall in order to actually visit the caves. It was wondrous. I felt I’d found my people, the ones who’d given us the gift of reindeer, bison, horses, mammoths. We were only able to visit two caves as well as the Lascaux reproductions but I knew then, and know now, that we’ll go back.

On the ferry from Langdale to Horseshoe Bay and in the medical facility waiting area, I read about the Vézère Valley where Clara took us and where I’ve actually found a little house I want to buy (but probably won’t). I was thinking of how humans make their mark. I was thinking about the night before when friends came for John’s birthday dinner. Amy and I were talking about indigo and I took her to the back of the house to show her the pieces I dyed in September. She was most taken by a 5 m. length of linen I’d twisted and tied. I remember that John held one end of the fabric on the patio while I twisted it as tightly as I could and then tied it with coarse hemp string, hoping it wouldn’t slip or loosen. I was curious to see what would happen when I immersed the length in the indigo vat, 7 or 8 dips, with long oxidation periods between. The linen was wheat-coloured so I didn’t think I’d get a clear blue. And I didn’t. It had sort of greeny underlights, or at least the parts of the fabric kept away from the dye from string were greeny. Here it is, recently removed from the last dip, rinsed, and hanging on the clothes line. (It’s the fabric on the right, with an untwisted middle section, because I didn’t want it to drag on the ground.)

Amy loved this piece. What will you do with it, she wondered. And I wondered too. 5 m. is a lot of cloth. I don’t really want to cut it, though it would make a beautiful quilt, I think. We spread it out in the back room and looked at it closely. You could see water in its movements, shot with light. You could see the inside of an abalone shell. You’ve obviously figured out this stuff, Amy said, and I replied that I absolutely haven’t. I have no idea when I begin what the results will be. And in a way I don’t care. I am committed to the process, though. Each twist, each stone I tie into a piece of fabric (the length second from the left is the result of beach stones tied into coarse cotton), each piece of string I cut and wrap: I am interested to see where they take me. In a way it’s a cave of my own making. Surrounded by blank linen and cotton, remnants of old damask tablecloths (the two small pieces at the far left), sheets, I begin to make a mark without knowing what it will be.

We each held the end of long length of linen across the bed in the back room and brought our ends to meet the other. Women have been doing this for centuries. Millennia. They’ve been immersing cloth in dyes made from roots and leaves, hoping for beauty, for light, smoothing out the wrinkles, folding the cloth afterwards. It’s been a dark year for a whole lot of reasons. I haven’t known how to find the light. though as of 1:20 this morning, it’s coming back. The other night, light shone through the linen we held and folded, it rippled like ocean water, the water I swam in off a little bay in Bute Inlet in April, the water I swam in almost every morning from the beginning of May until the beginning of October, entering Ruby Lake’s green depths, the linen held those moments, and others, and now folded, it waits for me to know what to do next.

This morning I had the chance to look at the digital ARC for my forthcoming book, The Art of Looking Back: A painter, an obsession, and reclaiming the gaze. The designers have done a beautiful job of arranging the material. The text is a series of sections, some brief, some longer, many of them in conversation with a portrait of myself, painted when I was 23. I didn’t expect to write a book like this but a few things conspired, in the way that they do, and I realized that I needed to do this work. It wasn’t entirely a happy process. In the course of writing about a story I’ve held for nearly 50 years, I came to understand that it wasn’t really that story at all. It was far more complicated, uglier, and there were times I wanted to quietly give up. But somehow seeing the portrait at the foot of my stairs filled me with shaky resolve, even though there was pain as well. And shame. I didn’t expect to write a book like this and yet I did. And this morning I looked at the ARC as though at a book written by someone else and I realized that it has substance. The form I evolved to carry the story works. Or at least it feels that way this morning.

What gift of counsel would you give your younger self if you could? I ask that with interest and curiosity. Would she listen? Would you have listened? Would I have paid attention to an older woman advising me to be patient, to care for myself, to value myself? Would I (she) have listened as she (me) talked about desire, manipulation, and boundaries? I wonder. I truly do.

Writing this book changed me, in a way. I feel quieter. I understand how the life that we live can be full of darker depths that we are seldom willing to explore. Exploring them is often a murky process and it would easier to simply leave them be. If there are other people involved, you can’t count on them being understanding and generous, though some of them will be, your own husband most of all.

Note: this was posted in December, 2019. Do you remember the (relative) optimism of that time, just before the pandemic, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine? I no longer send gingerbreads to my grandchildren because they bake them now with their parents.

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I am preparing some gift boxes to mail to the children I won’t see this Christmas. What goes into them: small gifts, boxes of buttercrunch (to be made this afternoon), gingerbread (made this morning),

some homemade items, and this year, rushnyk from Ukraine. Rushnyk cloth is used for rituals and ceremonies; when we arrived somewhere, we would be met with a tray of tiny glasses of horilka, or moonshine, a little bowl of salt, and a loaf of bread wrapped in the most beautiful cloth embroidered with symbolic elements I learned to decode, or at least some of them. They speak a language I sometimes understand. A little. In churches they draped the ikons. They were also a means for women to communicate. They hold wishes, dreams, history, and the cycles that bind us to each other and our homes: fertility, childbirth, harvest, marriage, death, the afterlife.

Sometimes I can’t believe we were actually able to travel to Ukraine and I’ve dreamed of the moment when my relatives came in the door of our hotel, presenting us with champagne and a beautiful rushnyk I’ll use to wrap bread the next time my family is here. Somehow these threads become more important to me as I age and as the occasions for my family to gather become more complicated. The final essay in the collection I’ve mostly finished is about Ukraine—what I hoped to find there and what I did find.

Everything I am remembering is burnished with moonshine, the taste of cherry-filled varenyky, sweet butter on dark bread. Mornings I swam in an unheated pool, the bottom littered with drowned insects, while all around me mist rose from the valley below our mountain slope. The mountains above me, source of the Dniester, Tisza and Vistula Rivers, the upper streams of the Black Cheremosh and the White, the Prut. I thought of those mountains forming a long spine to the Beskids in the Czech Republic, where my grandmother was born, 2 years after my grandfather, though they didn’t meet until 1919, in the badlands of Alberta, she a widow, and him? I have no idea of his romantic history, though in his small archive of papers there are two photographs, one of two women, taken in Chernivtsi, one of whom resembles him enough to be a sister, and another of a woman with a generous mouth, dressed in a fur vest like the Hutsul women wore. Everything I am remembering, burnished with light too faint to read by, like the moonlight that came through my curtains at Sokilske, haunting the room like old history.

–from “Museum of the Multiple Village”, part of Blue Portugal.

Loving:

Does this happen to you? That you open a trunk or a drawer and are surprised to find something you’d forgotten about? In this case, a large length of indigo-dyed (darker than in the photo, and much prettier) fabric, enough for a big project. I spread it over the bed in the guest room to see what it might look like and Reader, I was enraptured. Something I’d forgotten, and now have in mind for a duvet cover because I can imagine sleeping under its beauty, its depths and shadows.

Appreciating:

This morning the life-guards at the pool put on a playlist that might have been created just for me. Imagine swimming to Aretha Franklin singing “Respect”, imagine Otis Redding, Stevie Nicks:

Like a heartbeat drives you mad
In the stillness of remembering what you had
And what you lost
And what you had
Ooh, what you lost

— each song filling the blue space as I swam my slow kilometer and I kept waiting for one song that I haven’t heard in years and it wasn’t on the list so when I came back home, I found it. What would it have been like to glide through the water to Van Morrison and John Lee Hooker’s beautiful duet?

I cover the waterfront
In search of my love
And I’m covered
By a starlit sky above

Yes, I’ve been covered by a starlit sky, most recently standing out in our driveway on Saturday night after returning from supper at the Backeddy Pub, after Joe Stanton singing one request after another (Reader, I confess they were mine: ” Ballad of Pancho and Lefty”,

Living on the road my friend,
Was gonna keep you free and clean.
Now you wear your skin like iron,
Your breath as hard as kerosene.

“Kern River”), and the silver moon caught in the trees beyond our house, the stars close enough to feel their heat.

Remembering:

The afternoon I made two Advent calendars for my grandchildren — teal fabric to hang on a dowel and 25 small felt pockets in different colours, 5 rows of 5, and how that first year I sent the calendars filled with little gifts, but now I send the gifts for their parents to put in the pockets. This year I sent Denman Island Chocolate Santas, tootsie roll pops, chocolate coins covered in gold foil, loonies John polished so that you could hardly tell the real money from the chocolate, tiny flashlights, bath bombs, fountain pens, scrolls of Christmas riddles, origami paper, sparklers, Rubik’s cubes (for two; multicoloured pens for the other two), and other prizes I hope they’ll like.

Wishing:

That I’d seen the grey whale in Trail Bay last Thursday. I was at an appointment and John sent a text with a photograph of the whale spouting and I finished my appointment and walked quickly along the bay, hoping I would see it too. But no.

Reading:

Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s Your Absence is Darkness, a novel that follows 4 (I think?) generations of families living in a rural community in Iceland. It is full of weather, of sheep, dogs, horses, music, an essay about earthworms that changes one family’s trajectory forever, people who are both haunted and encouraged by the past, and it was the perfect book to settle into bed with over the course of a week, four pillows to prop me up, and the curtains pulled against my own absences and darkness.

Thinking:

I am in a position I have not been in for decades, no work-in-progress to settle into, to think about as I swim my slow kilometer, no line to follow, no thread.

Making:

I’ve had in mind some little bags, using velvet and scraps of linen, wool, silk, maybe patchwork with velvet lining, the patches cobbled together in the boro tradition. I brought an armload of fabric out to the kitchen and laid it out on the table but so far nothing is speaking to me. I’m listening, though.

Remembering:

We passed this store in Vila Nova de Foz Côa every time we walked up from our little flat to shop on the main pedestrian street. There were often men standing around outside, talking. Were they discussing politics or house repairs or weather? Who knows. On the day we went into the store to buy a corkscrew (our flat didn’t have one and the kind woman in the little grocery store gave us one to use but we thought we should buy one and leave it in the flat), I’d practised the Portuguese for corkscrew –saca rolhas, saca rolhas — and the man went directly to a wall of boxes and located two for us to choose from. We didn’t need pesticides, didn’t need the sack of alfalfa pellets by the front door; we didn’t need a rake or a coil of pvc pipe.

Eating:

At the Nepalese restaurant in Kew, I loved the dal saag and will try to make it here. At a little bakery in Hampstead, just after we’d been to the Keats House and just before we hopped on a bus to visit Freud’s House, I had the best sourdough toast with soft avocado and a single poached egg, dusted with chile.

Watching:

The sun is going down earlier and earlier. Yesterday we were driving home from Sechelt just after 4 and the whole western horizon was orange with its setting.

Listening:

Somehow I found myself listening to one of my favourite songs led by Dick Gaughan, accompanied by Emmylou Harris, the McGarrigle sisters. Rufus Wainwright, and others. Emmylou breaks my heart (in a good way. I think…).

Finishing:

I’d like to finish this single cloth (two single lengths, actually) I am making, using linen dyed in summer in an attempt to learn more about the dye process. I’ve used indigo (which I’m quite familiar with, although I can never predict the results) and rose madder and sitting with it, a section taut in the wooden hoop, I am back in summer, my dye pot simmering on the little hotplate, the fabric held down in it with a big rock. I am back trying to find in colour a correlative for my wistful sense of the world. I’d like to finish.

Appreciating:

The work done by the team at Thornapple Press as they prepare my book, The Art of Looking Back: A painter, an obsession, and reclaiming the gaze, for publication in the spring. (I love the endorsements…)

Hoping:

As I listen to Emmylou sing, I am hoping that the summers will return to us, warm and sweet, the roses tumbling over the garden fence, bees in the oregano, honeysuckle weaving through the deck railings, scented geraniums brushing my legs as I climb the stairs to the front door.

I will build my love a bower
By yon clear and crystal fountain,
And all around the bower,
I’ll pile flowers from the mountain.