Today I’m hammering away at my computer in my office with its rectangular windows with their rectangular venetian blinds overlooking a landscape filled with other rectangular concrete office buildings under rainy skies and I get a text from Debbie: “Thinking of you. Taking pictures of lupines in Parry Sound.”
It’s a nice thought – that a bunch of bobbing, wild lupines make your friend think of you. And that she tells you so. And that at least she is standing in a place where they are.
I know she is remembering these, which the two of us took to admiring daily at my father’s cottage a few years ago.
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These days more strangers seem to be smiling at me on my walks to work. It’s probably because last week I was listening to the wonderfully charming audio book, “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society,” and this week I’m listening to David Sedaris read his stories. I’m grinning and snorting and chuckling (and sometimes crying) all the time on my walks to work these days, and finding many passers-by with open faces smiling back at me. Reminder to self: Smiling at strangers always pays off – and it doesn’t even have to be intentional.
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Summer hasn’t even shown herself yet, and still, people are already complaining about the weather. Maybe all of those people are the types that ACTUALLY LIKE seemingly endless winters with seemingly endless snow and ice and seemingly endless strings of -25° days with whipping winds that hurt your whole body when you go outside. Me? I prefer a season with lupines.
One misty, moisty, morning,
When cloudy was the weather,
There I met an old man
All clothed in leather
All clothed in leather,
With a cap under his chin.
How do you do?
And how do you do?
And how do you do again?
It’s deepest, darkest winter. Technically it’s not the darkest winter; that went by a month ago and I am starting to notice the longer days and I'm grateful for that. But it’s deepest, darkest winter in that there are months of it behind us and months ahead. This past week we’ve been in a big freeze. And while winter walks usually feel good with cheeks glowing healthy pink and the hearty inhalation of great gobs of oxygen, recent blustery days have made it really unpleasant to be out.
I’m actively not complaining about the cold. In other parts of this province and most of my country it’s much colder than it is here. My Australian friends are enduring the worst heat wave they’ve ever had. In a cold snap you can make yourself more comfortable; in a heat wave there are only so many clothes you can take off. Cold is invigorating; heat is energy sapping.
In winter I miss the light more than anything. These days the subtle progress of daylight’s lingering over the street feels like a blessing; I want to reach out and grab it but the million colours of twilight elude me as exit the work day, moving westward ahead as I walk toward home. I miss the explosion of colours in the other seasons; winter's twilight is a jewel on the mostly monotone landscape.
The light has gone when I get home. I turn on the stove light, all my life a symbol of comfort. A symbol of the best thing about deepest, darkest winter – how good it feels to get home.
I don't take a lot of pride in working on Bay Street. I dig the historical address, but I don't work for, or associate myself with the suits that surround me on the sidewalks every day. I despise the big banks that own the area and who happen to be among the richest companies in Canada who hold the citizens of this country under a great big ugly warty thumb.
But like that kid I mentioned yesterday who squints her eyes to create watercolours on the night, I'm a sucker for the big mother Christmas decorations trying to out ostentatious each other in and around the towers. I love the big shiny Christmas down here.
Is that wrong?
Walking through the newly landscaped Clarence Square Park on my way home; looking back toward Wellington Street. It's a substantial improvement to that little part of the city, and includes a large, fenced dog run and numerous new trees. My enjoyment of the one-minute walk through it mornings and evenings is enhanced too.
It's rainy and blustery here, but nothing serious so far. The sky doesn't give any indication of the size of that cloud formation, which swirls over a large part of the Atlantic and a significant part of America.
I'm itching to get home tonight, but I stop and think about how small I am, how small my city is, in relation to that cloud.
Oh how I love a misty morning. I walk the long way down Wellington just to see those towers languishing behind the low hanging clouds.