Shoosh!

Outside the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, snow bundled on the staircase leading to the grand foyer. Cold blistered stars popped in the sky. The Rideau Canal shivered beside the building, its ice as cracked as my fingertips at the tail end of winter.

Round and round

He drives me to work and picks me up every day. The mornings are often silent journeys.

Dawn came on

The wind was up before the sun. It picked up snow and tossed it around, rearranged it into drifts, bullied it off rooftops, pushed its way onto the porch, shoved up against the front door where it waited with the morning news.

Knitting is good for writing

Writing is like scrapbooking. This is what I thought as I began my latest knitting project this morning, a frilly little cardigan garnished with loops that form a fringe on the collar, sleeves, and hem. In between muttering imprecations as I manipulated the yarn around my finger which formed a third needle on which the loop was held, my third eye got going, too, and the mind began to juice up with ideas. That’s the beauty of knitting when your mojo is working.

Ashes to sawdust

Sawmill Creek got its name legitimately. Back in 1823, one of Ottawa’s earliest pioneers constructed a sawmill on the south side of the Rideau River where the creek empties. The settlement grew from the timber trade along its other river – the Ottawa – but logging, lumberjacks, and log-drivers built the communities to the south of the Rideau, too.

The gathering of the fam

Shoe lasts, Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, Canada

For once I thanked my feeble gut as I leaned on the powder room door, playing with five tiny light switches lined up like boxed lozenges, each one serene in their sole purpose to illuminate the sink, toilet, mirror, or room. I was avoiding the long dinner table outside – where my ears had been plugged with memories lost on me – eager to elongate time alone.

Outside the door the clan had gathered, a blend of Irish-Italian sugo. Mangia meets slàinte and it was loud. The bathroom was quiet except for the sound of clicking buttons.

Standards

Lounging in bed this morning, I avoided writing a poem that won’t quite pull itself together, about crows de-roosting at dawn. While not thinking about it, two things occurred to me. First, I really wanted a cup of coffee.

Curled under my duvet, fists balled under the pillow, head wrapped in a turban of duvetness with only my face exposed, my nose was cold. This morning it was -14 Celsius and swaddled in an amniotic sac, I dawdled getting out of bed. My husband had left earlier for a long-distance cross-country ski so there was no chance he’d intuit my longing.

The apple doll years

Apple doll

Two decades ago a social worker told me it isn’t unusual for adoptive moms to experience grief when their daughters reach puberty. She said as our kids enter their reproductive years, many adoptive moms are approaching our apple doll years. We watch their lives blossom while we become fruit leather. The wise social worker said we might grieve again our own losses all those years ago. Loss of fertility, loss of genetic continuity, loss of the child we wanted but couldn’t have.

Black creek

The snow glows as it falls. Today it’s soft and thick but sometimes it’s thin and pointy and dry like a skinny man with wispy hair and a trying argument that swirls in circles, stinging me. My dog twirls in circles just before he poops and he clusters all four paws together as though he’s balancing on a ball. Around and around until it comes out. The snow keeps coming, covering it all.

Intentions

This is an embarrassing confession: I am not well read. I used to be before I went to university. Before university, my favourite activity was inactivity: lying on the couch with a hefty book. I read Gone with the Wind and all the Narnia books; I read The Martian Chronicles and Jane Eyre. I read Hawaii and The Source by James Michener, On the Beach by Nevil Shute and East of Eden by John Steinbeck. I discovered poetry through Leonard Cohen who took my name and turned it into a song. Maybe it wasn’t a consistent canon and maybe it was the depth and breadth of a creek but it was flowing fast feeding lots of little fish and otters and watering the grass and trees on the shore.