Tag: Ola Cocina

redux: touch anywhere to begin

theresakishkan2 Comments

Note: tomorrow we begin an adventure that will take us, eventually, to my grandfather’s village in Bukovyna. I don’t think I’ll be posting much, apart from postcards. (I’ll be taking a small tablet and I find it difficult to type text when the “keyboard” takes up 3/4 of the screen.) Every September brings its new experiences and last year’s was memorable. (Press enter.)

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Flying to Ottawa late last week, I kept seeing the message on the screen in front of my seat: Touch anywhere to begin, or press enter. When I fly, I almost never watch the movies but like to have the map so I can see where we are in relation to the land below us. Sometimes I look down to see mountains, tiny green lakes in clefts of rock, the scribble of rivers, quilted fields of Alberta and Saskatchewan, and clouds, lots of clouds. I read the New Yorker this time, drank water, wondered at the baby we were about to meet, our newest grandson Edmond. Touch anywhere to begin.

edmond reclining...

I began simply by looking at him when we came down the elevator to see his whole family waiting. His brother had cards for us, wild exuberant paintings. His parents had things planned: tea (with Manon’s mum Nicole) at the Billings Estate National Historic Site above the Rideau River (Forrest does exhibition development and research for a group of museums in the Ottawa area and this is one of those sites);

tea at the billings estate

some time at the Museum of Nature (where I couldn’t stop looking at the blue whale skeleton, its elegant vestigial fingers, wondering about deep time and how a body changes over the years. Press enter.);

fingers

swimming in the Madawaska River and in the pond at the Caldwell-Carver Conservation area near where Forrest and Manon live; walking the boardwalk at Mer Bleue and talking about frogs, muskrats (I startled one when I was leaning over the boardwalk to look at some bog rosemary), larches, and how one day the little boys might do this with their own children; eating delicious meals, including duck tacos the first night at Ola Cocina with its little tables set up on the sidewalk and lights strung through the trees. There was ice-cream and lots of stories and talking about time, if not exactly deep time, with Arthur at the Madawaska River. (Press enter.)

after our swim we talked about time

There were perfect moments. This one, for example:

a passle of passes

And others, not photographed. The feeling of Edmond’s fingers clutching mine as I held him under the grapes in the backyard. (Touch anywhere to begin.) Watching Arthur sing “Song of the Water Boatman” as his father read him that book at bedtime on our last night in Ottawa.

I didn’t take enough photographs. I wish I could show you what small boys look like when they’re sleeping in their car seats and you stop for ice cream in Almonte or how a face lights up when Grandma draws the faces in the windows of the school bus she has chalked onto the sidewalk outside Ola Cocina. Or three generations of Pass guys walking ahead on the boardwalk at Mer Bleue, their legs exactly the same skinny shape, leaning into each other, deep in conversation. I wish. I wish. Press enter.

Touch anywhere to begin

theresakishkan2 Comments

Flying to Ottawa late last week, I kept seeing the message on the screen in front of my seat: Touch anywhere to begin, or press enter. When I fly, I almost never watch the movies but like to have the map so I can see where we are in relation to the land below us. Sometimes I look down to see mountains, tiny green lakes in clefts of rock, the scribble of rivers, quilted fields of Alberta and Saskatchewan, and clouds, lots of clouds. I read the New Yorker this time, drank water, wondered at the baby we were about to meet, our newest grandson Edmond. Touch anywhere to begin.

edmond reclining...

I began simply by looking at him when we came down the elevator to see his whole family waiting. His brother had cards for us, wild exuberant paintings. His parents had things planned: tea (with Manon’s mum Nicole) at the Billings Estate National Historic Site above the Rideau River (Forrest does exhibition development and research for a group of museums in the Ottawa area and this is one of those sites);

tea at the billings estate

some time at the Museum of Nature (where I couldn’t stop looking at the blue whale skeleton, its elegant vestigial fingers, wondering about deep time and how a body changes over the years. Press enter.);

fingers

swimming in the Madawaska River and in the pond at the Caldwell-Carver Conservation area near where Forrest and Manon live; walking the boardwalk at Mer Bleue and talking about frogs, muskrats (I startled one when I was leaning over the boardwalk to look at some bog rosemary), larches, and how one day the little boys might do this with their own children; eating delicious meals, including duck tacos the first night at Ola Cocina with its little tables set up on the sidewalk and lights strung through the trees. There was ice-cream and lots of stories and talking about time, if not exactly deep time, with Arthur at the Madawaska River. (Press enter.)

after our swim we talked about time

There were perfect moments. This one, for example:

a passle of passes

And others, not photographed. The feeling of Edmond’s fingers clutching mine as I held him under the grapes in the backyard. (Touch anywhere to begin.) Watching Arthur sing “Song of the Water Boatman” as his father read him that book at bedtime on our last night in Ottawa.

I didn’t take enough photographs. I wish I could show you what small boys look like when they’re sleeping in their car seats and you stop for ice cream in Almonte or how a face lights up when Grandma draws the faces in the windows of the school bus she has chalked onto the sidewalk outside Ola Cocina. Or three generations of Pass guys walking ahead on the boardwalk at Mer Bleue, their legs exactly the same skinny shape, leaning into each other, deep in conversation. I wish. I wish. Press enter.

 

imagine the days

theresakishkan3 Comments

Mid-way through our week in Ottawa. The days are filled with deck-building (Forrest and John) —

P1100129delicious meals courtesy of Forrest and Manon —

P1100125sitting in Pressed Cafe and listening to poetry (John, Pearl Pirie, and Catherine Brunet), a lunch with Andrea Cordonier (who came prepared to work on the deck but torrential rain meant we stayed inside and talked instead: a pleasure…), and walks through Richelieu Park where trilliums are blooming and some sort of native lily will be in a few weeks (a leaf not unlike the Erythronium oregonum so I’m wondering if these are trout lilies?). Vanier is a neighbourhood of great diversity — old houses and a butcher and porches meeting the streets and a little Mexican restaurant (Ola Cocina where we sat at a sidewalk table and ate duck tacos which were so wonderful). Across Beechwood is Rockcliffe, entirely different, but we went there, to Jacobsons, to buy divine cheese (La Sauvagine, a washed-rind cheese from Quebec which I could happily eat for the rest of my life) and an elk pate I bought just for revenge (see previous posts about elk eating my garlic during a period of garden reconstruction and ongoing consumption of our orchard).

And imagine violets in the grass like weeds (I have a little bag of them wrapped in paper towel to take home with me to try around our patio, the same bag that brought kale seedlings here the other day and which are happily tucked into the vegetable garden as I write…) and brilliant cardinals in the trees. Imagine every step you take in this house being observed by Matilda:

P1100119

And imagine a bedside table with two new gifts, from Forrest’s workplace (The Museum of Civilization or, no, it’s now the Canadian Museum of History): Sanatujut: Pride in Women’s Work (Copper and Caribou Inuit Clothing Traditions) and The Whaling Indians: Legendary Hunters.