Tastes like spring

"Well, Kimmy, winter's over."

My husband D said this to me about a month ago. We were on our way home from slogging through thigh-deep snow on a sledding expedition with the kids in nearby Tout's Grove. D isn't one to err on the side of optimism, so this uncharacteristically positive statement took me by surprise. Especially since just the day before, he'd announced loudly to no one in particular that he was "sick of all the (insert naughty word) snow."

D is better known for his annual "summer's over" announcement, which he makes in the laconic tone of an undertaker around the second week of June. This is before summer solstice has even started. I know. He's a little weird.

But on that day, the "winter's over" comment was particularly weird. I wanted to remind him that we'd just spent the better part of three hours towing 80 pounds of soggy children up and down a very steep incline, not to mention the impressive twelve-foot hill of snow in our backyard. It had a surface the texture and hardness of crystallized brown sugar and the wind froze the bottom half into chunky moguls that rattled my spine every time I had to toboggan down it with one of the kids. Even when the sun shone, the air was still cold enough to make me understand brass monkeys and their unreliable nether regions. I couldn't even take down our Christmas decorations because they were hopelessly frozen to the lawn. How, exactly, did my beloved husband figure winter's end was nigh? Being the wise wife that I am, I decided to do what I do when he says summer is over: roll my eyes and keep quiet.

At the risk of receiving bloggy hate mail, I will admit that winter is my favourite season. I'm never in any hurry to see it go, no matter how freakishly cold and snowy it's been. But last week, after I shuffled the kids off to the bus, I turned my face east and drank in the sunshine for a moment. I decided that a walk was in order, something I hadn't been doing regularly because it felt like the wind would peel the skin off my face if I stayed out longer than twenty minutes. But there was no wind that day. None. Freaky for a place like Someday Farm, which is possibly the windiest place in the Bruce.

I scaled Mount Someday and headed south past the stables. At times, my waist was the same height as the fence line as I crunched along the wind-packed snowdrifts. Occasionally I'd hit a sinkhole and plunge in up to my thighs, all the while thinking what delicious coyote bait I'd make if I couldn't heave myself out again.

Coming around the bend behind the stable, I spied a cosy little hollow between the pine trees that guard the east entrance to the property. The drifts on either side sparkled in the sun. I sank down gratefully, tipped my head back to let the light wash over my face and smiled. I heard the wind sigh above me in the pine trees, just like my son does the moment before he falls asleep. Crows chortled briefly somewhere behind me until a beautiful, holy silence enveloped me. I took a deep, long breath of March air and thought I caught a hint of maple sweetness, a touch of smoke. I pulled a hand out of my woollen mitten and touched the snow. For once, the cold didn't bite my skin.

Maybe D was right. Despite the looming presence of Mount Someday and the disappearance of our fence lines, the air felt different. The sun was brighter. The snow glittered instead of squeaking like tormented mice under my boots. When I huffed myself out of the hollow and walked back to the house, a whirl of finches scattered into the sky above me; I hadn't heard their sweet gossip in months. It meant that the robins and red-winged blackbirds wouldn't be long in arriving to gobble all the berries off the ash tree. And that would mean only one thing: winter would be over.

That night, I washed dishes while D and Carman chatted at the kitchen table behind me. "Wasn't the weather nice today?" I said with a grin over my shoulder at the brothers Lowry. They eyed each other and Carman raised his eyebrows. Oh crap, I thought. My shoulders and triceps began to ache with phantom pain at what I knew was coming next.

"Well, Kimmy, I guess that means it's almost sapping time," Carm said.

Winter's over, indeed.

Red and Purple Stones

A cardinal sang outside my window nearly all day yesterday, on Rose's birthday. I've always thought of cardinals as my mother's spirit bird, and we hardly ever get cardinals at Someday so I smiled, and sighed, and smiled again.

I used to think about grief as something I needed to get over. Now I think of it more in terms of a necessary experience, something we all go through at one point or another in our lives. I've come to realize that it's a process without an ending. And I'm learning to be okay with that.

Although I hate cliches, I believe in the old adage, "time heals all wounds." They can heal cleanly, or they can fester for a while and heal in a slow, painful way. There are always scars in the end, faint though they may be. I don't mind, though. I like a little reminder of my battles.

Here's what I did to embrace my grief yesterday, on the anniversary of Rose's birth, of the day she left us, and became a part of us always:

- made a giant dish of pasta with all my favourite things in the sauce (wine, olives, sundried tomatoes, asparagus, garlic, cream)
- ate an obscenely large piece of the chocolate birthday cake Ruthie brought me
- read two chapters of my book in the stillness of an empty house
- walked the beach for an hour and collected all the red and purple stones I could find
- sat on the pier and watched a loon dive and surface while seagulls wheeled in the sky above us
- collected ingredients for a double batch of granola and mixed them with my hands; savoured the grainy, nutty, maple fragrances as the granola browned in the oven
- bought a very good bottle of wine, dropped blackberries into our glasses and drank deeply with D

But I suppose it's not how long you grieve for, or even how you choose to do it; it's for whom you grieve, and how you plan to keep them alive in your consciousness. I found a small purplish-rose coloured stone for Rose; I heard her cries in the voice of seagulls, felt her breath on the wind, her weight in the bag of stones I carried to the car. I see glimpses of her when I close my eyes.

For now, it is enough.

Stupid, sandwich-stealing wind...

I've told you before how freaking windy it is up here at Someday farm. And damn, I hate the wind.

You'd think the winds would come howling over the lake, but no: the winds come mostly from the south. They scream across the south field and whirl right through the hole in our tree line (thanks, faulty septic system) to pummel us as we attempt to get anywhere from our back door.

Today, we're having gusts up to 54km/h, but it feels more like 100km/h, the way my hair was nearly torn off my head once I managed to wrench open the screen door. Giving me the mother of all bad hair days wasn't enough though: that pesky wind proceeded to blow the top layer of granola right off my bowl of yogurt!

To add insult to injury, the wind decided to steal my lunch this afternoon. I thought I'd gotten smart: I scurried from the house to the office with my sandwich and salad sheltered under my coat. Apparently I am not smarter than nature. The wind flipped open my coat, and made off like a bandit with the top slice of bread and the last two delicious pieces of summer sausage I'd managed to find in the fridge. My half-sandwich is now decorating my muddy lawn, and will no doubt become a prize worth fighting over for our nightly parade of critters.

Damn you wind! If I didn't know better, I'd think you were in league with the raccoons.

Laundry Therapy

It's hard to believe I lived as long as I did in the city without a proper clothesline. When I first moved in to my little house in Waterloo, I quickly got my then father-in-law to remove the scarecrowish clothes-hanging thingy that was rusting to death in the backyard. It was so ugly I didn't even stop to consider that it might be useful. Instead, I went to Crappy Tire and purchased a retractable clothesline, smugly attaching it to my deck that very evening. I would be helping the environment, saving money and electricity and generally looking very granola with my fancy new clothesline.

Sure.

I realized after the first time I tried it that I'd made a terrible mistake. The line was 20 feet long, which only provides enough room to hang a few sheets and maybe one sock; I owned a king-sized bed and a heck of a lot of socks. I had to climb up on the one rickty stool I owned to attach the line to the maple tree in the back yard every time I wanted to hang laundry, which meant enduring the amused looks of my neighbours. (They used their clothesline to exercise their cat and dried their clothes in a dryer) My line also had to be forcibly retracted once I was done, kind of like winding up a really long, tiresome yoyo.

Worse, the darned thing would never stay taut. It'd inevitably droop into the flowerbeds or a pile of doggie doo. Once I even came out to find my dog asleep in the middle of my white sheets as they dragged across the lawn.

Imagine my absolutel delight when we moved to Someday and I saw my new best friend: 60 feet of glorious double line, complete with a concrete landing from which to survey my domain while I hang my clothes out. It even came with those metal pulley things to keep the lines tight when you hang really heavy towels on them. Hallelujia!

I adore the smell of sheets that have been hung outside to dry, so I can't get enough of this clothesline stuff. Clothes just seem cleaner to me after they've been soaked in an afternoon's sunshine. Plus, you leave 'em out overnight during a heavy dew and voila! Hello extra whiteness and brightness, all thanks to Mama Nature. And yeah, I found that out through sheer laziness one night when I was too into my book to go take the clothes off the line.

A baby on board means more laundry than I'd ever envisioned, especially since we use cloth diapers. But I love the poetry of Jade's wee clothes waving at me from the line; the pinks and blues and yellows become a rainbow of pastel colours that make it worth all the trouble and time of hanging them up.

And instead of listening to the dry humping sounds of my 15 year old dryer, I hear the cedar waxwings peeping in the apple trees and crickets sing in the alfalfa. I get to feel the wind muss my hair, the sun glow on my face, and cool, damp sheets against hot arms and shoulders on those scorcher summer days. Instead of gazing at damp cement basement walls, I watch monarch butterflies flutter crazily across the lawn. It's lovely.

Sure, tossing stuff from the washer to the dryer is less time consuming. Yeah, you have to wrestle with heavy sheets, learn the art of the clothespin, search for dropped socks in the thorny roses. And since Someday is always windy, my brother in law, the UPS guy, and a visiting neighbour have all rescued clothing that's tried to escape. Sometimes it ends up in the cornfield, or on the hood of my car. Once my brother in law brought me a stray t-shirt, then pointed to a pair of my dainty underthings lying in the middle of the lawn. "You dropped something. I ain't touching it." But I think hanging laundry builds character in a way that spending too much time with a big white dryer in the depths of the basement never can.

Now the question is, what will I do when the snow flies???

Scared silly at Someday

They (e.g. the weatherfinks) have predicted -20 weather for the next few days, cheerfully adding "or -30 with the windchill!" Apparently exposed skin can freeze really quickly in this type of weather. My dad called this morning to inquire whether I knew what to do if my pipes froze. Egads.

Now, as I've mentioned before, I don't mind the cold. I can handle frigid temps and I am not one of those people who refuses to wear winter gear for fear of looking unfashionable or goofy (D bought me my very own pair of insulated coveralls for Christmas two years ago, thank you very much). I love snow - the deeper the better! - and I can even handle the isolation the mixture of the elements enforces on people living in the country. What I cannot handle is the scary, scary wind.

Yes, I know what you're thinking: who in their right mind would move to Bruce County, home of windmills galore, if they don't like wind? Call it temporary, self-imposed ignorance. Sheltered as we were in Blair's Grove last year, I really had no clue just how windy it actually is here. I have tried to get used to it, but can't seem to lose my suspicion that the wind is somehow out to get me. I don't know what I'm expecting - to be swept up like Mary Poppins and flown to Detroit? Like all irrational fears, being scared of the wind is a bit ridiculous. But I'm telling you, when it blows up here, I cower like a dog in a thunderstorm and want to creep under the dining room table.

It is howling and shrieking outside my study window like an angry banshee as I type this with trembling fingers. It has tossed our Christmas lights askew, knocked over my nice new light-up deer and shredded pieces of the steel barn roof. Neko doesn't even want to go out in it, which is the ultimate sign of impending doom. I can see one member of my gang of Blujays huddled in the pine tree outside, looking perturbed. Even the thick branches can't shelter him from these crazy gusts. His little feathery cap keeps flipping over backwards, reminding me a bit of my Dad's old comb-over flying up when we'd go skiing.

No likey windy. Going to go and turn up the stereo now to drown out the banshee sounds. How I am going to summon enough bravery to feed the kitties or get the mail, I'm not too sure...

Memorable Moments of Christmas 2008

Song: "Shimmy Down the Chimney" - sung rather lasciviously by D thoughout the holiday season, but most often when I am trapped in the car with him. I never realized how suggestive that song actually is, which is just wrong for a Christmas tune.

Food: Chinese food on the 24th. Shortbread that tasted like disappointment (wretched cookie press!). Crisp gingerbread biscotti that Neko got the burnt ends of. Thanks to Jaime, I whipped up her grandma's recipe and recreated the taste of my childhood with some peanut butter balls. First time I've done holiday baking in a few years - but Someday's big, airy kitchen lends itself nicely to domestic activities so I think I'll be baking again next year.

Sound: the scary, powerful, relentless winds that have pummelled Someday almost daily since November.

Smell: pine, cedar and fir, thanks to Mr. Christmas Tree and various fresh branches we hung throughout the house.

Annoyance: Neko gobbling down not only D's king-sized Mr. Big chocolate bar (right out of his stocking!) but also his sacred bag of Lindt chocolate almonds. Naughty doggie.

Gifts: D's fancy new hockey stick from Dad, which he clutched like a kid whilst watching the Junior World Cup game. Dad's new hockey bag, which will replace the decrepit, vile thing he's been carrying around for the last 20 years. Our snowshoes, a study in irony as it rained buckets for three days and melted all the snow. My pendant, a memento of Rose, with rubies for each month she was with us.

Laughs: C not bothering to change out of his barn clothes and wearing the same grubby purple sweatshirt for Christmas Eve supper, Christmas Day brunch and Christmas evening supper! (I'm pretty sure he did it just to bug me) Attempting to take a photo with Neko wearing a Santa hat; dogs just aren't meant to be clothed. Playing highly competitive games of crokinole with brother & sister in laws. Knowing my nephew woke my sisters up at 5:30am to unwrap his gifts. Putting the last deocoration on the tree, gloating over its turquoise and silver beauty, then realizing I'd forgotten to put on lights.

Memories: walking with D through a deserted Blair's Grove with Neko on Christmas night and feeling like we were the only living souls around for miles. Watching old home movies of the boys and their family. Making breakfast for the Lowry clan on Christmas morning and watching D and C pay the price for gorging themselves on crepes (they're more filling than they look). Teaching D to play cribbage on the old table at Dad's and letting him feel smug when he beat us. Waking up on Christmas morning together for the first time in our bedroom at Someday.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it - HOLY CRAP!

I love snow. There, I said it. I'm not ashamed of it, either. So, nyah.

Usually when I say that sentence out loud to people, I get massive eye rolls and dirty looks. A lady actually shook her fist at me once. It's pretty rare that I get a "ME TOO!" or meet a fellow winter-lover who wants to high-five me.

I cannot understand folks who continue to live in Canada but moan and bitch for five solid months about winter. Some, like my wise older sis, recognize their aversion to white stuff and move somewhere warm, like Australia.

But all you winter whiners who stay put and poison my fun - you hate winter? You detest driving in slush? You like snow "at Christmas" and then want it all gone? Well, guess what? We live in CANADA and this is how it's been for eons. Better suck it up, snowflake, cause until global warming takes over, it ain't gonna change. Really don't like it? MOVE! Us winter-lovers will be happily rid of you.

Okay, I know moving isn't a particularly realistic solution, but I wish people would at least quit their constant complaining. Why moan about something that isn't going to change? Then again, a professor once told me that whinging about the weather "is part of our Canadian identity." I shudder to think that might be true.

At any rate, after two raw, blustery days here at Someday farm, the skies cleared around 10am this morning. Snow sparkled on the fields, every branch and berry on my ash tree was coated with dainty snow-lace, and the sun warmed my office through the south window. Winter heaven! Of course, that all changed at approximately 3:30pm, when the skies darkened and began to dump a fine, sugary snow that knocked off all the pretty, feathery stuff. I just checked the weather network and was informed that Bruce county will be having massive squalls all weekend - resulting in possible accumulations of 50 cm!!! Holy crap!

Sometimes one must be careful what one wishes for. But I'm quite content to put on my thickest coat, goofiest hat, and clunkiest boots to brave the snowbanks. There are barn cats to be fed, a winter-loving dog to walk and bird feeders to fill. Why fight winter? Embrace it and it just might grow on you. (Or at least it will fill up your mouth with snow so you can't complain anymore!)

Who taught the trees to sing like the ocean?

Yeah, I wrote a really cheesy poem back in my poetry-writing days with a similar title. But it came back to me today on my noon-time walk with Nekes. I struggle with my vow to try and embrace the fact that I now live in the windiest part of Ontario, and weeks like this one - gusts up to 75km/h! - test me to my wind-hating limits. You'd think the 42 windmills dotting the countryside would have given me a hint about what to expect. (I never said I was the sharpest knife in the drawer...)

In Waterloo, distant highway 86 traffic was the white noise of my life, always in the background but never intrusive. If I really faked myself out, I could pretend it was the sound of waves - who knew that traffic and happy, calm waves would sound so darned similar?

I'm learning how different country background noise is from city noise. I know that seems like an obvious point, but what I mean is that it's probably about the same amount in decibels, but the quality of the sound up here is so different. The only thing I really miss from the city is the train; growing up in New Hamburg I could hear the distant whistle as it floated in my bedroom window, living in Waterloo it rattled my windowpanes and vibrated the floor under my toes. Here, I have wind to do all that.

There's been a roar in the air for the past three days: wind grappling with the trees in the grove and wrestling with the waves on the lake. It's constant. Unnerving at times. Like it's trying to get in, pick me up and hurl me off into space. On Monday night, the dull growl outside the bedroom window escalated into a sudden, angry ROAR. I lept out of bed and fled to the living room couch where D was coming down from his weekly hockey game high. He had paused in mid-spoonful of rice pudding and his eyes were as wide as my own.

Him: "Did you hear that?"
Me, cowering in the crook of his arm. "YES!"

Later we heard about the tornado warnings. In January! Good Lord.

White Gold

Well, I got my wish - 3cm of the white stuff. Winter at last!

The first snow has always been an event that makes me jump up and down like a kid, much to the annoyance of various co-workers and friends. Why is it that so many people who hate winter live in Canada? I suppose that we all need to find something to complain about, the weather often being the most convenient subject. Still - how can anyone hate snow? So it's cold. So it's damp. So you slip and fall on your ass occasionally. Why not embrace the beauty and uniqueness of every snowfall? It's not like hating it is going to make it go away.

I'm trying that theory with wind. I have a strong dislike of wind; its rough caress is like getting a bear hug from someone you don't like, and it does horrifying things to my hair. But I figure if I embrace it back rather than stiffen up when it comes to get me, I might actually learn to like it.

Neko and I went for a walk on the beach in the midst of the sleetish stuff that was falling from the sky yesterday. It was like a thick wet curtain slapping us in the face repeatedly. My pants and shoes got hopelessly soaked, but I didn't care. Neko just shook and slobbered. That dog is content no matter what it's doing outside. So I took my cue from her, squared my shoulders into the wind, snuffed great deep breaths of that slightly fishy Lake Huron air and enjoyed the way the slate-grey sky and water kissed each other at the horizon.

Long live white gold.