Saying Goodbye

All the Bronte sisters were writers, I think, though I’m much less familiar with Anne’s work.  It seems that sometimes, things come to your view when you need to see them, and this came to my view today.

Farewell       Anne Bronte

Farewell to thee! but not farewell
To all my fondest thoughts of thee:
Within my heart they still shall dwell;
And they shall cheer and comfort me.

O, beautiful, and full of grace!
If thou hadst never met mine eye,
I had not dreamed a living face
Could fancied charms so far outvie.

If I may ne’er behold again
That form and face so dear to me,
Nor hear thy voice, still would I fain
Preserve, for aye, their memory.

That voice, the magic of whose tone
Can wake an echo in my breast,
Creating feelings that, alone,
Can make my tranced spirit blest.

That laughing eye, whose sunny beam
My memory would not cherish less; —
And oh, that smile! whose joyous gleam
Nor mortal language can express.

Adieu, but let me cherish, still,
The hope with which I cannot part.
Contempt may wound, and coldness chill,
But still it lingers in my heart.

And who can tell but Heaven, at last,
May answer all my thousand prayers,
And bid the future pay the past
With joy for anguish, smiles for tears?

 

And I did need to see it.  Yesterday, I learned that one of the dearest friends I’ve made since moving to Nova Scotia what seems like a century ago has died.  I met her and her husband in my first year of undergraduate studies, back when I was a wide-eyed Political Science major.  Her husband was the campaign manager for a candidate, and from the start, it was clear that they were a team.  They were each other’s biggest fans, greatest supporters, and after a marriage of more than 5 decades, they were still in love with each other.

She held much of my history – she knew when I planned to get married (and threw a wedding shower for me).  She celebrated the birth of my daughter by walking up 7 flights of stairs to meet her (she couldn’t wait for us to get home but also couldn’t get on an elevator, because she was terrified of them).  When my marriage ended, she stood firmly in my corner, as good friends do.  And now, the only thing left for me to do is to say goodbye to her.

I remember (we both remembered) so many Wednesday evenings sprawled on her bed drinking tea and watching night-time soaps, because that was the night of council meetings, and we hung out while her husband was doing his civic duty.  We had the biggest laughs about things that really are unremarkable, but in the moment sparked some pretty raucous snickers.

She might well have been the most honest person I have known, but she was never a person who wielded honesty so as to cause pain.  She was filled with faith, both in humans and in God.  As she grew older, she became more frail, as will happen to many of us.  And if her world became smaller for that, her heart never did.  My life is richer for having known her, and I’m grateful to have called her friend.  My heart is bruised today, and I feel a bit dizzy sometimes as memories flit in and out of my mind unbidden.  But for all that, there’s not a single memory that doesn’t make me smile. 

Since March, we’ve seen each other a grand total of 3 times (thanks, Covid).  But every time we saw each other, and in a few phone conversations, our last words were “Love you…”  I’m gonna miss her so much.

This was my friend:  https://www.dartmouthfuneralhome.ca/guestbook/annunciata-nancy-withers

Rosh Chodesh Elul

 

In keeping with what I have decided must surely be worthy of being a tradition, I had a hike today to mark Rosh Chodesh – the beginning of the new Jewish month.  It was pretty warm out, but I must say, it was more the warm of Autumn than of summer.  I’ve decided not to be sad that Summer is racing so quickly to Autumn, though, because there are still several more months of hiking in good weather ahead of me.

Elul is the month of preparation and shofar blowing (at least, if you can blow a shofar.  I have a beautiful one from Israel, but I’ve never been able to make a sound out of it, not even a sad little bleat, much less the triumphant LISTEN TO ME of a properly sounded ram’s horn!).  Jews are meant to be more thoughtful, more mindful, in this month leading to Rosh Hashannah, the Jewish New Year, and to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  Elul is about teshuvah, or return.  To where are we returning?  To ourselves – to our best, sweetest selves.  And to those with whom we have relationships – especially if they have become fractious, because now is the time to work at making them better, and return.  And repentance.  The name of the month has been understood to be an acronym for the Hebrew verse “I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine;” or straight from the text:

 אלול: אני לדודי ודודי לי — ani l’dodi v’dodi li

“I am to my beloved as my beloved is to me.”

These lines are from the Song of Solomon, and they’re often used at weddings, but it’s at least as likely that its unknown author created a beautiful allegory about our relationship with God.  And that’s the other point of return for this month: we often don’t think too deeply about our relationship with God – it’s just something that is, unless, of course, something happens that causes us to look closely at it (honestly the ‘something’ is often a tragedy; we don’t always spend as much time acknowledging God in the good that still surrounds us).

Today, I went to Crystal Crescent Trail, a place I visit often – there are three beautiful white-sand beaches there, and a boardwalk past them that leads to a trail up into the woods.  The trail meanders in and out of the woods, and when it is out, you are walking on huge rocks, older than any of us, looking at the Atlantic Ocean in all her glory.  What a place this is to sanctify the new month.  I stopped at the first rocky outcrop, past all the beaches, past the sounds of people – just me and the sound of the ocean.  Even the seagulls were happy to just sit and enjoy the sun – it’s as if they, too, know that weekends of summer are dwindling, and so these days are to enjoy.

From my perch overlooking the ocean, I see the Sambro light.  And there was something big swimming out there, but I cannot tell what it was.  Enough to know that it was there.  Here, it still smells of the sweetness of summer – the trail is perfumed with flowers whose names I don’t know, but whose scent feels like a blessing.  It’s so good to be here, to be alive.

When I’m by the ocean, a refrain of “Mayyim Hayyim” is the accompaniment to my thoughts.  Water and life.  One cannot exist without the other.  Indigenous people the world over know this, and so do Jews.  Throughout the diaspora, we spend months praying for tal (dew, or rain) for Israel.  What Israelis have accomplished in a country built on a desert is remarkable.  They knew – as far back as Miriam the Prophetess and even before – that water is life.  And so they found water, deep underground, and freed it.  And they turned a sunbaked country green.

Here in Canada, we tend to take water for granted – we just turn on the tap, and there it is.  We’re surrounded by it, and we have more fresh water than anywhere else on earth.  This is the month of Elul, a month of teshuvah.  And I think that perhaps my first act of teshuvah should be to raise my voice again and question how it is that with this huge abundance of water, there can still be communities in Canada whose water is unfit, unsafe for drinking, and in some cases, unfit for bathing.  Water is life – and how do we value some lives if we don’t care whether they have access to fresh water?  I have no answers to this question, but I’m searching for them.  And if you want to search, too, just consult your favourite search engine and enter “Water Protectors Canada,” or “Water Protectors Nova Scotia,” or even (sigh) “Alton Gas.”  It’ll be worth your time.

Chodesh tov.

Life in a Time of Isolation

With apologies to Gabriel García Márquez, whose Love in the Time of Cholera turns 35 this year… García Márquez wrote, “He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”  Certainly, I’m unlikely to be either as prolific or as profound as he, but notice that last phrase: “life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”  It seems to me that this is just what many of us have learned to do in these past two months, since Covid 19 took over the news and so many people’s lives – I’m grateful that I’m able to work from home, and I worry about those who must still go to a workplace, including my daughter.  So if you’re practicing social distancing, and washing your hands 8,000 times a day, thank you for helping to keep my daughter safe.  (And if you’re not, frankly, what the heck is wrong with you?!  It’s never going to hurt you to wash your friggin’ hands!  And it won't kill you to wear a mask, but it could help someone else!) 

But I digress.  So, how are we giving birth to ourselves over and over again?  If I may wax Biblical for just a moment, it’s kind of like reading the Torah: the way we understand certain passages today may be very different from the way people understood those same passages 10, 20, 100 years ago.  That doesn’t mean, necessarily, that those older ways were entirely wrong.  It just means that we’ve found new ways to understand them, to render ancient texts meaningful to us.  It’s in this way, I think, that we have opportunities to remake ourselves, without ever running away from home and changing our names.  There’s a gift there, if we’re brave enough to open it.  (Don’t worry, I’m not going to go discover the theory of relativity, or calculus, as some previous geniuses have done.  That’s not where my mind goes at all!)

I am learning things about myself, some of which make utter sense – I’d just never really thought much about them.  For instance, I’ve always loved cooking and baking.  My mum taught me to bake bread when I was about 10 or 11, though I’d been watching her work kitchen magic all my life.  My mum was a stay-at-home mum all my life, with the same responsibilities even when she became the first woman elected to the local council in our town.  My dad cooked occasionally, so I knew that men could and sometimes did cook meals, but really, the kitchen was my mum’s domain.  I learned a lot from watching her.

During this period of isolation, I am reminded that one of the ways she expressed love was to feed us: she’d make a favourite meal not just for a birthday, but because she knew you loved it, for instance.  We’d come home from school to the smell of freshly-baked bread.  After I’d gone off to university, there were times that she still seemed to be cooking or baking a lot, even though by then it was just Mum and Daddy at home.  I didn’t quite understand the volume, though I have some ideas now – and this might not have been true of my mum, but I have realized that now (and indeed, in the past), it has also been true of me.  For sure, I express love for family and friends by cooking for them – and in this time of social distancing, I’m going to drop by my daughter’s place today and deliver some of the fruits of this weekend’s labour.  Because I love her, because it’s good, healthy food, made –as my mum would say – entirely from scratch.  But also because this weekend, I have found myself particularly restless, even a little anxious.  Absolutely nothing in my life has changed since Friday, but on Saturday, I woke up and just headed for the kitchen.

I started with tiny cute chocolate cakes.  I have this neat cake pan that makes 6 tiny cute bundt cakes.  It was too adorable not to buy, and the end result here was not only adorable but also delicious...

I mean... look at that tiny cute cake tin!

Out of the oven, waiting for decoration.

Frosted and sprinkled!

Just as some people are emotional eaters, I am an emotional cook.  I’ve joked about “rage baking,” which is actually something I learned early on, when my mum told me that the best time to bake bread was if you were in a bad mood, because you’d knead it better.  She was right!  When I’m busy in the kitchen, it takes my mind off other things – even if those other things are in my subconscious and are niggling thoughts, they are sufficient to disturb my enjoyment of the day, so if I take myself to the kitchen and get creative, it will either dispel the thoughts entirely, or it will allow them to crystallise so that I know what the heck it was that I was worrying about!

I wonder whether my mum also cooked and baked when she was stressed, sad, angry, or anxious.  Was some of that food prep when I was at university because it was difficult after so many years of a houseful of children to suddenly be alone with a husband and figuring out how to cook just for two?  Did she look at her life and wonder whether its meaning was now changed to something she didn’t recognise?  She’s not here anymore, so I can’t ask her.  Maybe for her, it really was all utilitarian, but based on my own experience, I suspect that this is a shared knowledge.

Next up was roasted orange pepper soup.  I am particularly fond of recipes that are easy but impressive, that rely primarily on fresh ingredients (but can be made with things that are commonly in your cupboard and freezer and still be as delicious), and that accept all kinds of modification.  The first version of this soup I made was a curried cream of broccoli, which was and is a family favourite.  Also, bonus points, 'cause it's even healthy!  Of course, the thing with soup is that you can't really make a single serving of the stuff.  So I made my usual size batch, and my daughter will reap some of the benefits!

I chopped up a bunch of orange peppers,
sprinkled 'em with tarragon, and roasted 'em in a slow oven.

I'd sauteed some garlic and onion and added a sweet potato. While the peppers roasted, these cooked.

The finished product involved some mushroom
broth, coconut milk, and my blender.

I was up super-late last night, despite all the cooking that happened yesterday (including the tea biscuits I made to go with the soup!), so even all that cooking - and the consequent cleaning up - didn't clear my mind.  This morning when I got up, I tried a new recipe.  It's called 

Skanus varškės apkepas, and it's a traditional Lithuanian recipe.  It's really quite simple and produces something that's just lovely to look at.  The recipe calls for farmer's cheese, which I couldn't find at the grocery store, so I just used ricotta.  And there are 3 eggs in it, which gives it a sort of custardy/quichey texture (Yes, I know those aren't real words - this is the poetic license of the kitchen!).  I'm better at some Lithuanian recipes than others, that is certain.  And this one is delicious.

The batter. I had no vanilla so used almond. 
And I added nutmeg, just because I like it!

The gorgeous (and tasty) end result.

So I'm learning new things, for sure.  And as far as isolation goes, there certainly are worse ways to spend my time.  Today's lesson, though, causes me to think about my foremothers - my own mum, of course, but her mother, and hers before her.  And my dad's mum, who I hardly knew but remember as a remarkable baker.  There is so much about keeping house that is routine and tedious.  We do some things because we must: we have to eat, after all.  And sometimes we pull out all the stops, because we want to make something special for people we love.  Sometimes, we want to learn something new ourselves and try something entirely different.  And sometimes, perhaps, there's something else at work, and cooking is the magic that helps us sort it out.

The Cat of a Thousand Names

This wonderful thug of a cat joined our little family almost 16 years ago.  In retrospect, he was too young – about 6 weeks old – and that’s probably why he imprinted so well on my daughter.  He practically glued himself to her, and that never changed.  He was handsome and sweet and had the best blue eyes...

For about the first half of his rather long life, he really was a thug.  A pirate cat, if you will.  He went through an interesting phase during which he stole pizza crusts and stored them for later… in our sneakers.  We found out about this peculiar predilection when I found him hunched over on the landing, looking like a chubby, furry vulture… and growling.  It was really weird, and it seemed as if he was guarding something.  My first thought was that he’d cornered a mouse… ugh!  I didn’t want to deal with that, but of course, if there was a mouse, we needed to know.  So I nudged him out of the way and grabbed the sneaker he was guarding.  He was not impressed, and watched me through slitted blue eyes… With great trepidation, I shook the sneaker, and sure enough, something thudded softly onto the ground.  Oh no!  It was a … um… a pizza crust?!  What kind of cat hunts and traps pizza crusts?! Well, as it turned out, this cat…

It might be that Sacha didn't consider himself a cat, which is why we found it interesting that he would occasionally not only tolerate but actually snuggle with another feline resident.  In retrospect, he might just have appreciated the body heat, as he is wedged in above with Dinah.  He was also a bit of an escape artist… once he got a first taste of the outdoors, he decided it was worth investigating, with or without his people.  We discovered this when I woke up one morning and heard him meowing but couldn’t find him anywhere.  Loud though he was, he was nowhere to be seen.  Until I looked out the window.  And saw him on the roof outside the living room window. We lived in a great little flat then, in a funky little place, so the roof on which he was standing there screaming for attention was also the ceiling of our downstairs neighbor.  In order to get him back inside, we had to take off the window screen (thankfully, the windows had recently been replaced, so we could actually do that… and then coax him in (because we weren’t about to go out on that roof ourselves!)  What we couldn’t figure out is how he got out there.  Initially, we thought he must’ve gotten out somehow while the door was open, so we resolved to be extra-careful… but one day, it happened again.  And AGAIN!  Did we live with a Houdini cat??  Finally, we figured it out.  He was hopping on the heater in the kitchen, and wedging his furry little body between the screen and the window frame, much the way that a hamster will sometimes escape between the bars of its cage.  Having figured that out, it was easy enough to remedy, thankfully (but if I’m honest, we only figured it out because my daughter caught him in the act!)

It was in this same funky little flat that I blame him for trying to kill me – picture it.  There was a single step down from our living room to a tiny landing.  Then a single step up to the bathroom.  So there I am, one day, heading to the bathroom, just as Sacha was heading downstairs.  Obviously, I didn’t want to step on him, so I tried to step over him – just go into the bathroom without stepping on the landing at all.  That’s when he moved, and if I had kept doing what I had started to do, I definitely would’ve stomped on him.  So I flailed around, trying not to kill the cat, and wound up slamming into the door frame, which is how I broke my ribs!  (I took him out of the will at that point.)

He would steal food from you – while you were actu.ally eating it.  I was sitting at the table one day, and I had a forkful of food paused in midair, as I was saying something.  Then, to my right, this little grey paw reached up (he had been sitting on a chair at the end of the table, hitherto unnoticed), wrapped around my hand, and veeeeeeeery gently pulled my hand towards himself.  I just sat there I shock, and yet laughing.  The chutzpah of this cat!

And he had medical issues.  As many male cats do, he developed urinary tract crystals.  They very nearly killed him.  But in the end, thanks to good vet care, they didn’t.  He didn’t much approve of other cats and was often unkind to them.  He felt the same way about small dogs.  He managed quite well with big dogs, like Wylie & Ben, the Bernese Mountain Dogs….as long as they understood that he was boss.  For a time, there were red flags – literally! – on his file at the vet, because he did not care to go there.  In fact, it made him angry and very aggressive.  The vet techs would put on gloves, and put a cone on his head just to bring him in to be examined.  It was somewhat embarrassing, but thankfully, when he was around 8 or 9, he calmed down a bit.

It seemed to take a while for him to warm up to Lennox - he certainly missed Wylie and Ben when they were gone, but when Lennox came home, he wasn't too sure of her.  He did warm up to her, though, and they actually spent quite a lot of time snuggled together, frequently grooming one another.  

He was most unlike what you may have heard about Siamese – he really wasn’t aloof.  He was a furry ball of love to his people – and if he counted you among his people, you felt blessed.  He purred so loudly that you could hear him from across the room.  Or over a long-distance phone call, as I often did when I was in Quebec, and Sacha (a Bluenoser through and through) stayed put with his girl. He had a special song that everyone who knew him well could sing to him (and often did, though none so often as Bronwyn).  He never met a sunbeam that he didn’t love, and as he got older could be found sitting not just near, but on heating vents, radiators, wherever he felt most warmth (and he had the singed whiskers to prove it!).

There are a thousand things I could tell you about Sacha, but the most important thing is that he loved and was loved.  He comforted and was himself a comfort.  He was a funny, infuriating, absolutely wonderful cat, and today, we had to say goodbye to him.  There wasn’t much time – just over a week ago, we learned that he wasn’t just an old man with a questionable medical history that had actually left him rather fragile.  Sacha had cancer, and in that last week, he declined much more quickly than we ever anticipated he could.  So today was the last trip to the vet, and I’m so glad I could be there with Bronwyn – this isn’t something that a person should do alone, for one thing.  But also, Sacha had long since lodged himself into my heart, and I am so very grateful I got a chance to tell him one more time what a great cat he was, how handsome he was, how much he was loved. 

Just one more look at a cat and his girl... a girl and her cat... It would have been impossible for him to have loved her more.