Time Stands Still

I wish I painted. Even photography can't always do justice. I'm at the lake this week with the kids, and we are spending our days swimming and canoeing and reading. And last night, sitting down by the campfire, I looked up to see Anna and Grace standing beside the cliff, the lake and trees and sunset behind them, and I wanted to paint.

The sun shone into them, flickers of light that encased them in mellow gold. Grace wore dark denim jeans and a yellow peasant top and Anna had on pink shorts and an aqua shirt that I would never have imagined together, but that really worked. As they stood together, their blonde tresses flying in the breeze and their tanned, laughing faces relaxed and happy, the rosy glow from the fire before them and a streak of scarlet behind as the sun descended in the sky, I had one of those moments where you just want to capture it forever and never let it go.

I had neither camera nor brush and they'd I'm sure be rolling their eyes if I told them how, in that instant, time paused for me, and I drank it all in greedily, ignoring the smoke that got in my eyes, the haunting call of the loons on the lake, and the deer flies (oh, the deer flies) that flew around my head looking for fresh flesh. Knowing I could not make time really stand still, I wanted, needed, to imprint it on my memory.

Two girls, with the world before them. And nothing to hold them back.

Lessons From My Weekend

I spent a fabulous weekend in Toronto with some friends I've known for, oh, twenty odd years or longer, ever since university. We don't see each other very often, though I mentioned them here last year, and I came away from my weekend having learned some very important lessons.

1. I have no (as in zip, zero, zilch) sense of style - though after catching some show about how not to dress on TV late Friday night, I do know that feathers in your hair are taboo, and so are skintight catsuits. Not that I ever wore feathers or skintight catsuits.
2. I drink way more wine than either Leanne or Julie.
3. I like eating at gourmet restaurants such as Far Niente.
4. Having seen how much people buy and what the prices are at some shops, I realize I am in the wrong tax bracket.
5. Shopping in the right company can be fun although I find it hard to buy (see #1 and #4).
6. Books are still more important to me than clothes, which probably explains #1. Also I don't find it hard to buy books. Quite the opposite in fact.
7. I have willpower. Despite desperately wanting a Kobo, I know it is on Andrew's Christmas list for me, so I resisted. I did not however resist picking up The Exile. So limited willpower might describe it better.
8. I would like someone to turn down the covers and leave chocolates on my pillow every night.
9. I should probably at some point consider having my hair styled and/or wearing makeup so I can look as polished and sophisticated as my friends.
10. Despite my fear of city driving, I was able to navigate my way into the heart of downtown Toronto and back out again with ease, with aplomb, with - dare I say - grace. And without a GPS. And I am remarkably smug about that small feat (though was very happy to see country roads again).

Vacation

What is summer without a relaxing week at the cottage? I blogged about it last year, about the cottage itself, the boating and the campfires, and really, nothing has changed much since then, so I won't repeat what I already wrote - though I could wax poetic about that kind of week forever.

This year, we did all the same things. The kids can leap off the rock into the deep water without life jackets now so that was new. Eagle Island was still there with pools of cray fish, and the two loons that give the cottage lane its name still call mournfully across the still lake.

Morning and evening canoe rides, three-times-a-day swims, constant food, campfires (and marshmallows), and exploring the forest and rocks (and finding a wasp nest that stung Erik 15 times and he was so brave).

On the weekend Andrew came down, and the whole family came Saturday for a surprise birthday party for Anna (which she said was the best part of the week).

My favourite part: that moment you get standing on a warm rock in the sun, gazing into the cool sunlit lake, right before you dive. Knowing that it will feel so cold when you hit the water, and so exhilarating once it is done.

So Much To Do...

...Before the end of the summer.

• Hike on the Canadian Shield
• Dive into a clear lake
• Take my girls on a long bike ride
• Star gazing
• Family Fun Adventure
• Camping Trip with the kids
• Waterslides
• R&R at the Cottage with BOOKS
• Chase a sunrise in the canoe
• Chase a sunset in the canoe
• Marguerita Party at the pool
• BBQ at the Beach
• Highland Games
• Williamstown Fair

Better book a couple of weeks off...

Thanksgiving at the Cottage

Usually, we play host at Thanksgiving and enjoy having the family over for a day at the farm. But this year we went to the cottage for Thanksgiving and spent the long weekend walking through the woods, canoing on the lake, and sitting cosily by the fire with Andrew's parents, grandmother and brother & family.

Anna wrote a play, and the kids had a great time making costumes for us all as we acted out the story of how Thanksgiving came to Sherwood Forest. Erik was Robin Hood.

And my three got to play with their cousin, running through the golden trees on this last, long, perfect weekend before the cold weather really sets in.

Thanksgiving is my favourite holiday of the year. There's something so simple and wholesome about it. It's about family and friends, and serves as a reminder of what is truly important.

Cannonball!

"Cannonball!!!"




That was the shout resonating across the lake a hundred times a day, as the kids (wearing lifejackets for my peace of mind) hurled themselves down the path, onto the huge rock that juts out into the deep water of the lake, and launched themselves into the air with a blood-curdling cry that would have done battling highlanders proud.

Ah, those quiet, serene moments of cottage life.

Books, books, books

I had three goals for my week at the cottage.

1. To have fun with the kids

2. To relax

3. To read books

1 and 2 were easy and remarkably complementary. And as I have raised a family of readers, #3 was achieved too. I read every morning after the canoe ride and breakfast. I read before lunch. I implemented Quiet Time for 2 hours after lunch and read then. I read after swimming, after boating, after fishing. And after the kids were in bed, I read again, in companionable silence with my mother-in-law, Liz, who is as avid a reader as I am.

I read 8 books. Anna read 3. Erik read a bunch (but some of them were graphic novels, which I as a purist only partially count). And Grace read with all of us.

On the Land

The cottage is stone and cedar, built halfway up the cliff on a ledge of rock so that we are amongst the treetops looking down at the ripples of the lake as the water breaks around the curve and face of the earth coloured stones.

Coffee on the deck, looking down towards the lake, was the perfect start to every morning at the cottage. The day stretched out ahead, no need to plan because at the cottage there is always time for everything.

Anna and I would start off with some yoga, stretching and balancing on the deck or on the flat cliffs behind us. We'd walk the dogs, and throw some balls for them to retrieve. The day would be spent on the water - fishing, swimming, and in the boats - but in between activities, we'd be up at the cottage eating, resting, playing games, reading. Me, the kids, and Grandma.

And after the last canoe ride, after the last dive off the rocks, we'd eat dinner and have a campfire (over the ashes the stories are told/of witches and werewolves and Oak Island gold) until night fell and we could head back up to the cottage to put three sleepy kids into beds and Liz and I could stargaze with a glass of wine.

At these moments, there is no malevolence in the universe.

On the Water

The first day at the cottage, it rained a little, and the lake was grey and pockmarked with raindrops. We swam anyway, the water cool and refreshing against the humidity of the day, and then sat on the rocks listening to the water rippling - a different kind of peace from the breaking waters of the ocean that I enjoyed a week earlier.

In the afternoon we raced off the rock and cannonballed into the deep clear pool of water below.

And in the evening, we watched the loons sail across, and were lulled to sleep by their cry echoing across the lake.

The next day we swam at first light and it was cold and clear. We dried on a rock under the morning sun, and then Erik and I went out in the canoe, slicing through the water away and then back to shore. The two of us went back out at sunset, farther this time, around the islands and back. Then we joined the girls diving into the sunlit depths, the surface warm, and the lake cool beneath.

It became an early morning habit for Erik and I to slip away in the morning sun that lit up the lake like a pathway. Sometimes the girls came with us, sometimes with Grandma in the paddle boat. Sometimes Grandma took the kayak out beside us and we explored the lake and the islands. At dusk one night, we all went out in the canoe, the laughter and voices of the children rising over the rhythmic sound of paddles in water. We pulled the paddles in and hushed as we got closer to the loons.

In that moment there was a lull, a peace, a sigh. As if the universe was breathing out slowly.

The Cottage

Lichen and moss, and granite and pine
Water lapping and sun,
And really, really wet dogs.

Hemmed in, protected by rock and stone
We walk down dappled paths across a
Sunlit carpet of pine needles to the lake
Pristine and calm
Down steps carved out of the Canadian Shield.

Kids cannonball off the rock which juts into the lake,
A shallow bay on one side and a gentle slope to shore
And deep clear water and a clean drop on the other
Cool before the morning sun's heat
Warms up the water and reflects it back, golden.

The smell of sunscreen, wet hair in tangles - getting blonder in the sun
Coffee outside, the steam rising in morning's chill
Browned faces, hungry stomachs
A splash, a shout, a shared laugh
Damp towels slung over shoulders, dancing barefooted over pebbles
Wet swimsuits and life jackets hung
Over railings to dry.

Week Away

The kids and I just returned from a week's vacation at the cottage. Hemmed in by the rocks and trees and lakes of the Canadian Shield, we had no cell service, no computer, no contact with the outside world unless we chose to drive into nearby Sharbot Lake.

It was bliss!

For 8 days we canoed, swam, ate, fished, explored, read books, kayaked, played games, had campfires, and then did it all over again.

Lots to tell, lots to show.

Wind Broken Stones

Where the earth shows its bones of wind broken stones

and the sea and the sky are one

I'm caught out of time, my blood sings with wine
and I'm running naked in the sun


There's God in the trees and I'm weak in the knees

and the sky is a painful blue...

Stan Rogers, 45 Years

Why even try to describe how the ocean makes me feel when Stan's already captured it perfectly...?

Girls' Reunion

These ladies are the main reason I went to the Maritimes last week. (The dog is just an extra....couldn't leave itzy bitzy Mitzi out!)

I've seen Julie in Montreal, and visited Leanne last time the kids and I were in New Brunswick three years ago, but I haven't seen Shari in about 9 years, and the four of us haven't really had a chance to hang out without husbands and children since the early days of university.

~

This year seemed like a good one to remedy that. I said it was a joint birthday celebration (hence the bracelets) - but some of us (won't say who, Julie) are a little sensitive about our age and don't do birthdays, so we just "got together."

And shopped for books. And ate cheesecake. And drank wine. And ate dinner. And talked. Until 2am.

~

And I coveted Julie's naked fairy that sits on top of her piano.

Brilliant evening. We should do it again sometime!

Marrying the Sea

I took a book of poetry with me on the plane to the Maritimes last week. It’s called Marrying the Sea by Canadian poet Janice Kulyk Keefer and Melissa lent it me because of the namesake poem of romantic love she thought I would especially like.

I did. But it wasn’t that particular poem that moved me most. It was another. A poem about tumultuous passion, tormented yearning and devastating heartbreak. I read Isle of Demons on the plane and got stuck, reading and re-reading it, the words like a whip cracked across my heart.

Almost the first thing I did when I saw my friend Leanne for the first time in years was thrust the book at her. You have got to read this poem, I told her. And she did, getting lost in the 16 or so pages it took to follow the plight of the young French noblewoman whom legend tells was abandoned on an island, with the lieutenant she met on the way to New France, when it was discovered that they were lovers.

At supper the young lieutenant
speaks of snowfields vaster
than this sea we cross – each tree
a cathedral. Even the birds,
he tells me,
sing in a foreign tongue

I doubt I’d have been able to withstand the double seduction of such language and the ocean together, and though she offers up prayers amid her tumult

…Seal my ears
With your white silence

they are no match, in the end, for the calms you cannot guard against.

I could taste the salt on my own tongue long before I landed in Saint John.

Brine enough in the wind. Brine enough for me in the poem.

The Virtuous Blister

Returning from a wonderful four day vacation in New Brunswick catching up with a bunch of friends, I met up with my cousin and her friend from England at the airport in Montreal, and we got home to the farmhouse around 9 pm at night where, after tucking the kids in four times to make up for the nights I missed, we sat and chatted. And not being one to suffer in silence, I regaled the company with the story of the blister I got on my toe from walking along a sandy beach barefoot.

Andrew peered at me over the rim of the glass of scotch he was sipping. (And the violin began playing softly in the background.)

Don’t expect sympathy from me, he said. You got your blister walking along a beach on vacation while I was here with the children working.

I have a blister too, he continued. My blister came from getting hay down my boot while I was piling it in the barn. After I mowed it, raked it, baled it, tossed it, by myself.

My blister, he told us, is a virtuous blister. Unlike your lollygagging, beach walking, vacationing blister, mine came about from hard work….

...and as anyone who knows Andrew well can guess, he was off on one of his amusing rants that leave his listeners in puddles of tears.

I hate it when he makes me laugh like that! It's not very ladylike to snort wine through your nose.

March Break in Quebec City

We had a terrific time in Quebec City over March Break. We drove into Levi and crossed on the ferry giving the kids a first hand look at the ice floes drifting down the St. Lawrence and getting the best view of the Chateau Fronenac going.

I love old Quebec - it's where Andrew and I met for one thing; I also have a good many memories of my time living in this 400 year old city. I could have wandered the old streets for hours.

The kids thought that was great - for about five minutes.

Still, they liked the battlefields and we took the dog for a long windy walk over the Plains of Abraham, after watching a great multi-media show about how the city was settled. Kids like bloody history, so they were enthralled by the knowledge that both General Wolfe and the Marquis de Montcalm died after the battle.

They also liked the caleche ride through the city gates, although it almost ended prematurely when Anna lost her hat in a gust of wind. Good old Dad ran after it all the way down a cobbled hill and then back up again. Whew!

But the real hit was the aquarium where polar bears caught fish, a playful walrus played tag with us, and a multitude of sealife could be observed.

And that was it really. Fun filled days in Quebec.Yup! That's pretty much how we all felt at the end of it all.

TV Challenged

We don't have TV at our house. Or rather we have a television, but only for movies. No TV channels. This is not for any smug holier-than-thou reason, but because I can't stand the constant droning and mediocre programming. And because I always feel worse after I've watched TV - like life and energy have been sucked out of me. And because I never have time to watch TV anyway.

Still, there are plenty of people who don't understand. Like the cable guy who refused to accept that we could live without being plugged in to TV. Or well meaning family members who knowingly told us we'd cave once the kids got older. Or the friends who tell us of all the educational shows their kids are watching.

None of it sways me. I barely notice we don't have it anymore, and the kids don't seem to care. But I had to laugh last week. While we were in Quebec City for March Break, we booked adjoining hotel rooms. And the kids were thrilled because there was a TV with channels in their room. It was mostly in french, but they didn't care - they happily watched TV every evening before bed. The night before we left they watched a hockey game, and I laughed again when Anna, needing to get something from another room, shouted out How do we pause this thing?

OMG, my kids are TV-challenged!