The Smashing Of The Bunny

It's a funny thing, to watch an octogenarian grin wickedly as she crushes a chocolate bunny's skull in her wrinkled hands.

The Smashing Of The Bunny is a decades-old Easter tradition in my family. Every year, a large hollow chocolate creature of some kind sits at the center of our Easter table, nestled in neon plastic grass, surrounded by Hershey kisses and Cadbury Creme Eggs.  A bunny, a hen, sometimes a squirrel, quietly waiting for us to finish our plates of deviled eggs and honeyed ham.

Waiting to meet its doom.

A different executioner is selected every year, and each family member has a different signature approach to the job. My brother grips the bunny's ears, and then delivers a sweet right hook to obliterate his belly. More than once, we had to retrieve bunny shards from the kitchen floor. My sister has a clean, top-down approach with the chocolate hens, bringing a swift fist of justice down onto her victim. I am the decapitator, squeezing the hollow neck until I feel a crack, and then lifting the chocolate head high in victory.

When I was first asked to bring dessert to Easter dinner with my in-laws, several years ago, I brought along a lovely chocolate bunny. The family was a little puzzled at first when I explained that after dinner, we would beat him into the chocolate chips from whence he came. Luckily for me, they're more than happy to include my family's strange ways with theirs, and we have had a Smashing Of The Bunny every year since. I'm incredibly grateful.

Because Easter isn't over till a chocolate bunny dies.

 

How Did We Get From Saying "I Love You"

"I married a Canadian - whom I love very much - and she introduced me to a great band called Great Big Sea. And this song is in NO WAY dedicated to her. At all."

We needed this cruise. More than I realized; more than I can really explain.

Different couples deal with stress in different ways. Some argue, slam doors, and seek out space away from one another. Some look so far outside the relationship for comfort or for escape that nothing can be salvaged.

I have always been afraid that stress would pull my relationships apart. My family doesn't have a good record in that area. Almost every one of my aunts and uncles who married found themselves in a hurtful and bitter divorce. My parents' relationship was strained and uncomfortable for years, and ended the same way.

My first boyfriend abandoned me when my parents' divorce made me "too goddamn sad all the time" and "annoying to be around." I see now that it was an unstable and unhealthy young-adult relationship that was a bad idea from the start, but it crushed my 18-year-old self. I dropped out of college and floated through several months in a blur before finding the light again and crawling my way towards it. I went back to school. I tried to be sociable. But things were different. I had witnessed a relationship I thought was the most solid and reliable one in the whole world - my parents' marriage - falling angrily apart in front of me. I had no good role models, nobody to look to for thoughts on a healthy relationship except the columnists at Cosmo and the couples on Friends.

When my husband and I were moving towards our wedding day, I was flooded with conflicting thoughts. Of course we'd last forever - we loved each other so much, understood each other so well, laughed so often together. But everyone must think that at one time, or nobody would ever risk the commitment of marriage. Who could say, then, whether our relationship could withstand all the years ahead, all the problems that would come our way?

It's been a hard year for us. Members of my family, far away in Canada, have been sick and needing surgery. I lost one grandmother, and the other is 98 and fading. I'm far away and can't be there for the ones I love, and the guilt eats away at me. I left my old job, which meant leaving some of my support group behind. Other friends moved away. I'm still striving to find my role in my career and in this world. Arguing with immigration agents. Arguing with health insurance companies. Struggles and loss. I got scared. Scared for us.

I tell my husband, often, how much I love him. I cling to him sometimes when we're in our office together. I drape my arms over his shoulders, my cheek pressed into his beard, as he reads message boards and checks his email. I doubt. I worry, analyzing everything. I ask him again and again whether we'll be okay, whether we'll stick together, all the while hating myself for asking but not always able to stop. His answers are always the same, always reassuring, always patient, always yes, yes, of course, I love you and we're in this for the long haul no matter what.

"How Did We Get From Saying 'I Love You'", by Great Big Sea, is a breakup song. It's about running into your ex after the breakup and realizing you can't find anything in common anymore, anything to talk about except the smalltalk of strangers. It's heartbreakingly sad. My feelings of inadequacy and fear of divorce and loneliness make a song like this really resonate with me.

And my husband played this song for me, at an open mic night on our cruise. Knowing how much I love hearing him play music, my husband found a way to dedicate his performance to me without dedicating the song itself. A little gesture, spontaneous, touching. It meant so much. Maybe we've come from saying "I Love You" to the place where the words don't matter as much as the sentiment, and maybe I can be okay with that. I am loved.

 I'm linking up with some amazing bloggers over at Yeah Write. Stop by and spend a little time reading and supporting the gang!

 

Not Pony Tails or Cotton Tails But Duck Tales (woo-oo)

This is the 24th of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here. Note: it's entirely possible some of these memories are inexact, but I'm sticking with them anyway.

Ducks are sleek and stately birds until they pop their heads under the surface to look for bugs. That's when they tip ass-over-teakettle and wave their ridiculous little tails at you. It's impossible to take a duck completely seriously, and I think that's probably the moral of my life story.

How can you take this seriously? You just can't.

Dave and I had one of those silly "OMG, no way" moments between us when we were first dating, when I discovered that his most beloved childhood toy was a stuffed Donald Duck. In what I thought was a world-stopping coincidence, "duck" had been my very first word, recorded for posterity in my baby book alongside a height and weight chart and a delicate curl from my first haircut. My grandmother, who lived next door to me when I was a baby, owned two geranium-filled plastic garden planters shaped like swans. Being a baby, I wasn't familiar with the phenotypic variations between species of waterfowl, so I excitedly petted them and called them ducks. 

Obviously, fate saw these two duck-admiring children and felt it right to bring them together. Luckily, we had more in common than an appreciation for aquatic birds, and we ended up married and living happily ever after, as you do.

In our home, the duck invasion has been a slow and insidious one. There's the big canvas print of an irritated Donald Duck placed where it can welcome visitors to our home. There's the brown ceramic duck-shaped dish I found for Dave to put his wedding ring in at night. There's the plush robotic Easter Bunny Donald Duck my Grandmaman sent us - he waddles in a circle quacking Polly-Wally-Doodle until you pick him up by his ears and he hollers at you in a true Donald meltdown. There's the duck-shaped teapot Mom gave us as a housewarming gift. There are the drawer pulls Dave chose for the dresser in our bedroom, with majestic mallards on them. There are the happy yellow bride-and-groom rubber duckies who sat atop our wedding cake.

I realize that we're absolutely doomed once we have kids. It doesn't matter if we want the nursery to be decorated with dinosaurs or teddy bears or classic 80s music videos. We're going to get ducks. So many ducks.

But I'm okay with that. There's an expression "Like a duck: calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath." Dave is the duck above the surface, calm and relaxed and with water flowing off his back like there's nothing in the world that can bother him. Meanwhile, I'm paddling like mad and never feeling like I'm out of danger, never getting enough done. I think people who know us see instinctively that if you put the two of us together, you've got yourself a damn fine duck.

WYSIWYG

This is the 20th of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here. Note: it's entirely possible some of these memories are inexact, but I'm sticking with them anyway.

 

 

There's no mistaking the kind of man you're getting when he arrives to pick you up for your first date, your first face-to-face meeting, wearing cargo shorts, hiking boots and a classic Mickey Mouse T-shirt.

Dave didn't seem at all nervous that day, as I walked out to his car and he said hi to me for the first time. How could he be so sure that everything was going to go well once we left the house and drove off? Sure, we'd been talking online almost every night for months, and it felt like we already knew each other, but with an international border between us it was hard to know what kind of chemistry would happen between us in person.

The original plan was for him to come to the Jazz Festival Montreal in July with his brother, and we would meet on my turf and get to know each other. But as the weeks passed, I found I couldn't wait that long. I booked a flight and got myself to Maryland, and the rest is pretty much history. Turns out our chemistry was excellent.

He took me to see the Marines Silent Drill Platoon in DC, and when the marching band began to play, he sang along with the tuba part - boomph, boomph, boomph. I laughed. It was silly, and I thought it was adorable. I knew for sure then that he was being himself, completely and honestly, and not putting on any sort of persona to try and impress me. What I saw was what I'd get, no plays, no games, no tactics. Because really, who would set up a play using the tuba impression? Not this guy.

I've often told people that the tuba moment is when I knew I had to keep him. That's probably not completely true - I don't know exactly when I knew. Maybe it was when we were ignoring the crowds and focusing more on our conversation than on the fish at the Baltimore aquarium. Maybe it was when Animal surprised Dave by settling in my lap and giving his purring approval. Maybe it was when we stayed up all night watching Fawlty Towers. Maybe it was when I said goodbye at the airport that weekend, and cried the whole way to my gate and half the flight home.

I'm just glad he knew he had to keep me too.

Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves

This is the 19th of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here. Note: it's entirely possible some of these memories are inexact, but I'm sticking with them anyway.

They call it the Sea-to-Sky Highway for a reason. You can watch the tides come in along the Stanley Park Seawall while sipping your morning Starbucks, then get in your car and be skidding through snow in Whistler by lunchtime. It took that drive, that two-hour trip from the sea to the sky, for me to finally understand why my sister loves Vancouver.

She moved west a year before I moved south, and it took us all by surprise when she announced her decision. Vancouver may as well have been India - practically the other side of the world. As is probably the case for most families who are given that sort of information to process, we respected her need to shake things up and try on a new city for a while. We supported her wanderlust and wished her luck, but we didn't understand. She wasn't moving for love, or for work, and she'd only been to Vancouver once before. Why leave friends and family behind for a faraway place you barely know? We thought she would likely get homesick or bored after a year or two or three, and come back to Montreal with some great new experiences under her belt. But she didn't come back. She fell in love with the city, and she stayed.

I met up with my sister in Vancouver in October of 2008, and she showed me around her new hometown. We went to her favorite restaurants and cupcake places, watched movies in her apartment, and sat in her favorite spots on the beach. My little sister, all grown up and independent, was doing her thing and making her life in this new place. It was like she'd been there forever. Clearly, it was her element, her town, but I still couldn't understand why she'd left Montreal behind to settle permanently so far away. Vancouver was a nice, welcoming city, to be sure. But Montreal is welcoming, too, and familiar; why hadn't she just moved into a trendy apartment in Montreal and become a success closer to home?

We're very different, my sister and I. Leaving Montreal wasn't something I'd ever seriously considered, and I only found myself saying goodbye when I fell in love with an American and had to move to make it work. I'm risk averse, I'm cautious, I'm more comfortable when I know my place in the world and what's expected of me. But my sister has always made her own place, always made the rules bend to fit her better. I think that's why she had to leave the familiar behind and try something new.

As much as I wish she lived closer, I think I understand why she decided to stay in Vancouver. It's the sea. It's the mountains. And having them so near to one another that you can get an eyeful of both with one look up at the horizon. I didn't see the power of the landscape until we followed Highway 99 up out of the fog to visit Whistler, passing some of the most beautiful views I'd ever seen. I understand now why she's decided that Vancouver is home. I miss her very much, but I'm glad she's found a place that she loves, and I'm very, very proud of her.

Yes, Virginia, this is a honeymoon

We were married in April of 2010, and we filed paperwork petitioning for my permanent resident status right away. Dave had to ask the government to let his new bride stay in the country with him. A necessary process, I suppose, but it was (and continues to be) complicated and expensive. Unfortunately, because I wasn't allowed to leave the country (except for emergencies in Canada, and I would have needed special permission for that) while my green card application was pending, we couldn't have an all-inclusive tropical honeymoon, or a romantic stay in Italy. Instead, we had a domestic honeymoon. Not domestic in that I wore an apron and baked bread while Dave watched football with a beer. Domestic as in mail or flights; that is, confined to the United States. Which isn't so bad. It's a big place.

We'd often talked about visiting Shenandoah, and never got around to it. When it came time to plan the honeymoon, Virginia wine country came up on our list of locations. We decided that it would probably be pretty in the Blue Ridge mountains in early May, so we booked a room in a quiet little bed and breakfast. With beautiful vineyards scattered all over the area, it seemed like a lovely, romantic place to enjoy our first married days.

And it was. It was beautiful. We tasted wines at half a dozen small vineyards, and learned a lot about what kinds of wines we like and why. We enjoyed vineyard picnics for lunch and sat on our balcony with tea or wine in the evenings. Our room was cozy, the breakfasts were unbelievable, and the scenery was all I'd hoped for.

It truly was a wonderful week. But... it wasn't a week in Italy. It wasn't an all-inclusive beach resort with snorkeling and sunburns and a butler. It wasn't what either of us had imagined when we first contemplated the wedding and discussed honeymoon getaways. He did his best to create a wonderful experience for his wife: I asked for somewhere beautiful and quiet, and he delivered. I did my best to love it. In the end, though, we were both trying to make the best of an unfair situation. 

We've been to other places since then, notably a fantastic cruise (and another planned), so I know I shouldn't complain. And honestly, it's not that I didn't enjoy my time in Virginia - I truly did. I want to go back, maybe for our anniversary next spring. But I hate that our hands were tied and our choices limited by immigration rules. I hate that I'm made to feel like a criminal every time I need to deal with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. I hate being photographed, fingerprinted, and interrogated. I hate paying them thousands of dollars to look over the same documentation again and again. I hate asking friends to write letters testifying that my marriage is legitimate.

I want to look at this ornament and remember the lovely time we had on our honeymoon. Because we did have a lovely time. I could tell you about the fun we had, and I considered putting away the bad feelings to share only the good ones here today. But this project is about getting inspiration from an ornament, and this is what came out today, as I looked at those little butterflies. Maybe someday I'll be able to put the bitterness away completely and only remember the joy and love I felt on that trip. But this week, I'm sending in a stack of documents (some quite personal) so that the United States government can decide once again whether I'm allowed to stay here with my husband in our home.  And this won't be the last time they demand we prove the legitimacy our relationship. With that pressure hanging over my head, all I can think of is how we were denied a beautiful Italian honeymoon because the government chooses to operate on the assumption that all marriages to foreigners may be fake.

Unphotographed memories

This is the tenth of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here. Note: it's entirely possible some of these memories are inexact, but I'm sticking with them anyway.

Auntie Marilyn made one of these for each of the kids

Most of my childhood memories are attached to photographs. I see a toy, a face, a moment, trapped in an album, and a story wakes up and stretches in my mind.

I have no photos of Auntie Marilyn's basement. I have very few photos of my cousins from that era. But I remember the basement, and the hours spent there with my cousins. It's all vague, fuzzy, but present. She wasn't an aunt, and her grandkids weren't cousins, not really. She was my father's cousin, and we kids used to discuss very seriously whether that made us all higher degree cousins to each other (second? third?), or more removed ones. It didn't matter, but we felt a need to define and label ourselves.

I remember visiting Auntie Marilyn when the cousins were staying there. A steep staircase leading down, right by the side door where we came in. On the left, a few steps up to the kitchen, where the big dog - a Great Dane in my memory but maybe just a Lab in reality - would sleep on a rug near a sliding glass door. Downstairs was dark, carpeted, maybe wood-paneled. Low ceilings. Picture frames.

There was a couch, and a piano. Nobody else we knew had a piano, so this piano was a very big deal. The keys were heavy, like they were made of smooth stone. We played Chopsticks, badly, and loved it. We played hide and seek. I remember wicker, and crocheted blankets, but can't prove they existed.

I'm not sure why I have memories of her place. We didn't go often, and the visits weren't attached to any special occasions. Part of it was probably that I was so happy to have a cousin, third or otherwise, of my own age to play with. I was ten years behind the girl cousins on my Dad's side and five years ahead of the lone girl cousin on my Mom's side, so when Marilyn's grandkids came to visit I finally had a girl cousin to hang out with. That means a lot, when you're twelve. Maybe that's why the memories stuck.

She said duh!!

This is the ninth of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here. Note: it's entirely possible some of these memories are inexact, but I'm sticking with them anyway.

This champagne cork is from February 14th, 2009. We had something to celebrate.

I held Dave's present behind my back. I don't know why I bothered, because he was still in the bathroom, getting dressed after his shower, and he couldn't possibly see it yet. I waited, sitting at the foot of Mom's bed with my legs hanging over the side. She always took the couch and let us sleep in her bed when we visited, and didn't split up the unmarried cohabitating sinners by making Dave sleep in another room. She knew he wasn't just some guy I kept bringing over, and I was grateful for that.

He came in, closed the door quietly behind him, and stood at the mirror to brush his hair into place. I watched him. Mirror-Dave caught me watching, and smiled.

When he turned to me, I brought my hand around and handed him his present - a small photo book I'd put together. With hours of care and effort, I'd assembled a photo timeline of our whole relationship to that point, from our first email exchange to the latest event we'd attended together. I'd called it "The Book of Dave and Jen". At the last moment, before sending the final version to be printed, I had taken a deep breath and added "(volume 1)" to the title. I had worried a little that I might be tempting fate, but it was done and stayed done.

"Happy Valentine's Day!"

I held my breath as he looked at it. He flipped through a few pages, looked at a few pictures.

"This looks great, thanks!" 

That was it? I wanted to take a minute to look through it with him, to talk about the moments I'd included, to reminisce about all our adventures and how much we'd done together! I wanted acknowledgement of all the work and mushy romantic thinking that went into it! But he was distracted. Preoccupied. He put the book down on the bed beside me.

"It's your turn," he said. "Are you ready for your present?"

I nodded.

He put a hand in his pocket. He left it there, and took a deep breath.

"We've known each other for 4 years now, and I can't imagine my life without you." He took his hand from his pocket and opened up a small velvet box to show me a delicate ring. "Will you marry me?" So very simple. No speeches, no fireworks, just a man with a question and his mother's ring in a velvet box.

My eyes danced between his hopeful expression and the little box he held out in front of him. I was entirely unprepared for what was happening. I'd been hoping, for months, that he'd finally make up his mind and ask me, but I didn't expect it to be here. In my Mom's bedroom. On Valentine's Day. Before breakfast.

I was so stunned, so surprised, that I couldn't even figure out what I was supposed to say. So I blurted out exactly what the voice in my head was saying:

"Duh!"

He didn't respond immediately, so in the quiet bewilderment of the moment, I said it again.

"Duh!"

"What does that mean? I don't think you're German."

I laughed. As cool and cucumbery as he was trying to be, his mistake revealed the true state of his nerves. "Da is Russian, not German, silly!"

He threw his arms wide in mock frustration. "I still haven't gotten the answer I'm waiting for!"

I stood up and wrapped my arms around him.

"Yes, of course, yes yes yes!"

"Oh, thank God."

Reindeer prints

This is the eighth of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here. Note: it's entirely possible some of these memories are inexact, but I'm sticking with them anyway.

Potatoes make good reindeer hooves. This is something my parents taught me.

I must have been 7 or so, because I was sharing the purple room with my sister then, and my parents had moved their bedroom down into the half-finished basement space. Before that, all three of us kids shared one small room, with bunk beds for my sister and me, and a crib for my brother. In the purple room, our bunk beds were taken apart and put against opposite walls. I had the window side.

Christmas morning, we woke up excited, as all kids do, and rushed to see what Santa had left us. But there was more than just a pile of presents waiting in the living room. On the floor, making a wobbly circuit from the porch door to the tree and back again, was a set of muddy tracks. Santa's stack of cookies was reduced to stray chocolate chips and crumbs, and a carrot stub sat by the plate. Santa came in for his cookies last night, my parents explained, and one of his reindeer must have come inside with him because he smelled the carrot we'd left him! How exciting!

I smiled and played along, but I knew the truth.

Sleeping was never one of my favorite things to do, so I was still awake when my parents quietly moved the wrapped presents from their hiding place and stacked them under the tree. I heard the noise and tiptoed to my door, inching it open just a crack. That's when I saw Mom on her hands and knees, pressing something carefully to the floor. She crawled backwards a few inches and pressed it down again. One by one, she laid down a trail of reindeer hoofprints, crawling backwards across the floor so as not to disturb the fresh paint. Dad stood by the tree, crumbling a piece of the last cookie onto the plate. 

The next morning, after we opened all the presents, I went to throw out the carrot stub. In the trash sat half a potato, cut to look like a reindeer hoof, stained with paint.

The best game you can name

This is the fifth of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here. Note: it's entirely possible some of these memories are inexact, but I'm sticking with them anyway.

Hockey jersey from local New Brunswick team

Hockey doesn't feel real here. Sure, there are tons of loyal Capitals fans around, judging by the personalized license plates, but this isn't a hockey town the way Montreal is. I miss my Canadiens. I miss listening to the games in French, and I miss watching them with my brother.

We loved making jokes out of the players' names. Plekanec was one of my favorites. Good ol' Pleck-a-Neck. Zednik and Kostitsyn were pretty good too, because of the high consonant concentration. And when the team gives you someone with a name like Bouillon, they're asking you to have fun with it. If he looked strong during a game, he was Bouillon de boeuf - beef broth. If he was playing badly, he was Bouillon de poulet (chicken broth). Inevitably, when Bouillon scored, we'd make his name into "Boo-yah!" like a couple of dorks. As for the player named Bonk, every time he scored a goal, we'd bonk heads. Naturally.

The year before I moved to the States, the Canadiens made the Stanley Cup playoffs. My bro and I put on our team jerseys and settled in his room to watch a game on his TV. He sank into his big green easy chair and I flung myself onto the unmade bed. The music at the arena drowned out the TV announcers' voices. Spotlights tracked across the surface of the ice. Player after player was introduced over the loudspeaker to the roar of the crowd. The Molson Centre* was packed with excited fans who'd been lucky enough to score themselves expensive and hard-to-get playoff tickets. It seemed as though everyone, in every seat, was waving a white towel emblazoned with the team logo. My brother stood up and left the room for a moment, returning with two white washcloths. We whirled them for all we were worth every time our guys rushed the opposing net.

I can't quite get myself as psyched when I'm watching a Capitals game. Even when the Habs make the playoffs and I have a chance to see them play on TV, I don't pull out my jersey. It feels silly when it's just me. I hereby declare that the next time the Canadiens make it to the playoffs, I will pack my jersey and a white towel, and head home to Montreal to watch a game with my bro.

*It's the Bell Center now, but I can never seem to remember that name.

Night Owl

This is the fourth of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here. Note: it's entirely possible some of these memories are inexact, but I'm sticking with them anyway.

 

I surveyed the yellow options and selected "Dandelion" from the pack. Slowly, I drew a neat circle, filling its middle in with even pressure. The orb of my sun completed, I reached for blunt-tipped "Orange". It took a sharper point to get the rays just right, so I peeled back the thin paper and twisted the crayon carefully in the sharpener embedded in the back of the box. Humming, I swung my feet back and forth as I drew.

"All right, honey, bedtime." Mom approached the table, cradling her coffee mug in both hands. "Go brush your teeth."

I looked up from my paper.

"I can't, Mom. I have homework."

"In kindergarten?"

"Yeah, Mrs. W wants us to draw pictures and then we're all going to bring our pictures to class tomorrow and show them to the class and talk about them to everyone."

"Well, you look like you're almost done. Five minutes, then teeth."

"But Mom, I have to do more."

"More? How many more?"

"TEN!" I held up both hands, fingers spread, to show her just how many.

Mom put down her coffee cup. The spoon rattled. She sat in the chair next to mine and spoke at my level.

"There is no way your teacher wants you to do ten pictures tonight. You must have heard wrong."

I panicked.

"But I'll get in trouble, Mom! I need to do my homework!" A lip trembled. Tears threatened.

Mom looked over at Dad, standing in the kitchen doorway. He shrugged. Mom shook her head. I sniffed, put a white page on top of my drawing, and started my next picture. A nice juicy red, for an apple...

Three pictures past my bedtime, Mom pushed her chair from the table and stood up.

"This is insane. She's six." She walked across the living room to where the phone hung from the wall. She flipped through the little notebook on the side table, picked up the handset, and dialed. My legs stopped swinging.

"Hello, Mrs. W? I'm Jennifer's mother... I'm calling about the homework that Jennifer's working on tonight. I realize she's taking some classes with the first-graders now, but this seems an excessive amount for her age."

A pause.

"The drawings... she's doing the ten pictures she has to talk about in class tomorrow."

A longer pause.

"Oh."

Mom turned to look at my father, raised an eyebrow, and turned to me. I shifted uncomfortably and looked down at my pile of crayons.

"I see." Mom turned back towards the phone. "Well. I'm very sorry I bothered you."

She hung up and crossed her arms across her chest. I looked really hard at my crayons. I tensed, ready for some yelling. Instead, incredibly, I heard Mom laugh.

"You got me, kiddo. Now put those crayons in the box and we'll talk about this tomorrow. Teeth. Bed. Hustle."

Thankful

Many of my friends made November into an exercise in gratitude, taking time each day to be thankful for an aspect of their lives and to share those thoughts on social media sites. I didn't climb onto that bandwagon, even though I enjoy challenges and I think that this one in particular is wonderful and meaningful, because I was in a dark and bitter place as November rolled in. I didn't feel like I could be genuine in my gratitude.

I feel like it's been a long, rough year, and I will be genuinely glad to shut the door behind it. I suspect that I will feel tears of relief on my cheeks when the New Year is rung in. I sat to write this post today, and at first, all I could think to say was that I'm grateful the year wasn't any worse than it was, but that isn't really in the Thanksgiving spirit, is it?

I am thankful, above all, for my husband. He has been a steady and level presence, as he always is, and he has helped to hold me up. More than ever, this year, I am grateful that we cope with life's rough patches in different ways and that our personalities complement each other. If I'd married someone who was more like me, this would have been an even more difficult year. I am so, so grateful for his love and patience.

I'm thankful for my family back home in Montreal (and Vancouver!). I don't see them as often as I would like, but phones and the Internet are wonderful things (for which I am also grateful) and help us to stay together. I'm glad that my parents are both happy to put their busy lives aside to answer when I call, and are so eager to stay involved in my life.

I'm thankful for all of my in-laws, for being the sort of people who call me family and mean it. I don't think I could have stayed here without knowing I will always have the support of my American family.

I'm thankful for my friends, both online and off. They trust me to listen to their troubles and offer support, and they are always ready to return the favor. I'm especially grateful that they are the type of people who are happy to pick up the friendship where we last left it, if time and work and life's demands keep us apart for a while.

I'm thankful for my home and all the projects we've accomplished in it.

I'm thankful that I now have a job that pays my bills without jeopardizing my health, and coworkers who enjoy being silly whenever they can get away with it.

I'm thankful for the tools I've learned to use against the heavy blanket of depression, and for the progress I've made so far.

I'm thankful that many of my complaints are "First-World Problems". I live in a peaceful country (angry election rhetoric notwithstanding), where I can do, learn, and say what I please, and I always have clean water and access to good medical care. Compared to much of the rest of the world, I've got it pretty good, so I guess a little gratitude is called for. I'll try not to forget that as I welcome a new year.

The note

Dave went on a fishing expedition this weekend, for which he had to be up and out of the house by 5am. When I told him I wanted to get up with him to see him off, he told me that was silly, and he'd let me sleep.

"But I need to kiss you goodbye!" I protested.

"Why? It'll be 5am. You can kiss me when I get home."

I was a little ashamed to admit my reasons. "If... if something happens to you, I won't have kissed you goodbye. I don't think I could live with that."

"Happens to me?" He laughed. "I'm going fishing. For a day. Not even a whole day."

"You could drown! The boat could sink!"

"I can swim."

"But with those stupid boots of yours, you'll sink to the bottom like a rock and meet a watery demise! Never to be seen again!"

He put his hand on mine to reassure me. "We'll stay out of the deep end. I'll be fine."

Not willing to push the issue or to force him to wear floaties in front of his friends, I acquiesced.

"Fine. But can you leave me a note, so I have that to cling to during the lonely nights when I'm mourning your tragic fishing death?"

A twinkle arose in his eyes. "Oh," he smiled, "I'll leave you a note."

This is what I found on the kitchen counter in the morning:

Reads: "Upon my death, please cling here"

Sigh. I married a smartass.

Writing Assignment #2

This week's assignment was a challenge for me. I'm glad, as that's why I signed up for a class - if I'm not challenged, I'm not improving or learning. The homework was to show the class a character, and to use dialogue to help paint a better picture. I hate dialogue. It's hard. Making story people sound like real people has always been the weakest area in my writing. Either they sound stiff and artificial, or everyone sounds like me, and neither of those makes for a particularly compelling bit of writing.

I decided to use a bit of my recent tribute to my grandmother, and convert it into a short scene with dialogue. This way, I also took on the challenge of rewriting a piece in a new way. My teacher recommended that exercise last week after the class heard my piece about the elephants. My classmates thought it seemed too calm and detached for its subject matter, and that the story was emotionless. I'm disappointed, because my goal was to express how surreal the moment was, and I liked the end result. What did you think of it? I'd really appreciate more feedback, if anyone wants to speak up, for good or for bad. Eventually, I will rewrite the elephant story with more excitement and expression, just for the practice, but this class is short and I don't want to present the same story two weeks in a row.  

Here's what I'll be sharing with my class this week.

A Cuppa Tea with Momo

I settled in at the kitchen table, nudging the cat from her nap on the seat cushion. Momo stood by the stove, whistling teakettle in hand, and turned to me as I tucked my purse under the chair.

"Shall I make us a cuppa?"

I opened my mouth to decline the offer, but thought better of it. To decline a cup of tea from Momo was to invite an offer of half a cup.

"Sure," I answered her in what I hoped was an enthusiastic voice, "I'd love some tea."

She turned back to the stove and poured the boiling water over the tea bags in her old Corningware teapot and hummed to herself about what one ought to do with a drunken sailor early in the morning. She lined up two mugs on the counter and very carefully poured the hot tea into them, using a bent finger to guide the teapot's spout. Her tea was always served in sturdy, sensible coffee mugs - never a dainty China teacup for my Momo.

She placed my full mug of tea on one of the woven placemats as she eased herself into the chair across from me, sighing with a smile as the weight came off her tired feet.

"One lump or two, my dear?" She took the sugar bowl in one hand as she lowered the spoon into it, and then shifted her hand to hold her mug as she brought the spoon full of sugar towards it. She clinked the spoon around to mix it in, then reached towards my cup.

"I got it, Momo," I said, gently taking the spoon from her hand and adding my own sugar.

The radio by the window was tuned to the CJAD talk station, and she reached over to turn the volume low so we could enjoy our tea. The calendar on the wall nearby was turned to the right month, I noticed. My aunt was doing a good job keeping Momo organized. Some of the large-print dates were circled in bright red marker. Doctor's appointments? Birthdays? There wasn't room in the boxes on the calendar for all her notes, which found their way onto Post-its and scratch paper stuck to the wall and countertop, everything in bold black marker so her eyes could make sense of the letters later.

"Have you had lunch yet?" She raised a fluffy white eyebrow in inquiry and placed her hands on the edge of the table to help push herself up.

"Oh, Momo, don't worry about me. Please, just tea is fine." I held up my cup with a smile to prove it.

She ignored me, standing with a quiet "oof" and walking towards the fridge to have a look inside. She pulled the door open decisively, rustling the scribbled reminders held onto the surface by round rainbow magnets.

"I've got some yogurt," she said,  holding out the cup to show me. I could make out a blueberry on the label, peeking out from between her fingers. When I made no response, she turned back, burying her head in the fridge, and called out "Carrots! I've got some carrots and there's got to be some dip in here somewhere! What do you like, ranch? Or how about a nice toasted tomato sandwich?"

"Momo, really," I protested. "I'm okay. I'm not hungry. Come drink your tea!"

Unconvinced, she moved to the pantry and moved things around on the shelves until she pulled her hand back out clutching a yellow box.

"May Wests!" She shook the box and the snack cakes rustled inside. I sighed.

"Okay, I'll take one."

Triumphant, she tore open the box, pulled out a cake, and plunked it down in front of me with a grin. She waited as I ripped open the cellophane and took my first bite.

"So," she began, cradling her tea in both hands and leaning her rough elbows on the table, "How's work these days?"

Schrodinger's Grief

October will never be the same.

It's always been my favorite month, without fail, for as long as I can remember making lists of my favorite things.

October in Montreal is beautiful, with red maples and golden birches dropping their leaves to dance in the chilly breezes of fall before being crunched by happy feet. Burning daybreaks made more radiant, reflected in frosty windows and seen through the fog of a warm breath. Autumn colors brought out, in coats and sweaters and corduroy, reflecting the jewel that the world is becoming before it will fade to the quiet grey of winter.

October is for my birthday, for memories of carefully-counted candles in chocolate cake, wished on with closed eyes and extinguished to the sounds of singing and applause. It's for turkey and cranberries, for family and friends giving thanks for our blessings as we enjoy each other's company around a full and crowded table. It's for carving pumpkins and putting tiny Kit-Kats into the outstretched bags of fairies and superheroes.

It's still all of those things, of course. The world goes on as it used to. But this October changed me. I have never known grief before this, and I haven't decided yet how I will deal with it. Much of it is very personal, and I'm not ready to share everything with the world, but there's too much hurt right now for me to keep from writing, and I think it's therapeutic to share, at least a little.

Some moments, I am able to see my loss through the lens of logic, and understand that death and loss is part of life, and thus not fair or unfair, not cruel. It simply is. Momo is gone - nobody took her from us, and she didn't abandon us. She was old, and she was sick. She died. That is the way of things.

But loss stretches into the future as well as the past and the painful present. Once gone, a person can't change and grow and laugh with you. You're left with a static past that will never change unless you start to forget. You've reached the end of the book. There's no sequel, no way to know what could have happened next. That is what I mourn more than anything. That there will be no new memories.

At any given moment, the logic and the pain coexist uncomfortably inside me. It's Schrodinger's grief, both present and absent, the current moment's truth only detected if directly observed. Like Schrodinger did with his cat, I hold my grief in a small box, windowless. I am afraid to look, to examine my grief, because I am equally afraid to learn that it's alive or that it's dead. If I can carry it with me, this box, and never look inside it, maybe I can remain forever in this middle ground between being paralyzed by the pain and forcing myself to forget it while surrounding myself with other joys.

We're not terrible people. Really.

Driving home late one night, Dave complained of a scratchy throat. Being the good wife that I am, I offered him a mint or a Lifesaver to take his mind off the scratchiness. He selected the Lifesaver option, so I dug one of my individually-wrapped, assorted-fruit-flavor sugar rings out of my purse and unwrapped it for him. I held it out for him to take, but he opened his mouth and said "Ahh", with his tongue out.

"Really? You want me to feed it to you?"

He nodded and grunted in the affirmative, tongue still out.

I put the candy on his tongue, at which point he drew it into his mouth and said in all sacriliciousness: "Body of Christ." I tell you, you can take the Catholic out of church...

"Wow, honey, if that's the body of Christ, he's got some serious diabetes."

He shrugged. "Hey, he's made up of all those white bread wafers. Nothing but carbs will do that to a person."

"So, refined carbs were Jesus' downfall?"

He considered that for a second. "Yeah. That and the Romans."

For Momo.

My grandmother, Mabel Mills Blais, known by all as Momo, passed away last weekend. I have been wanting to write her a tribute, but how can I condense a whole life onto this page? The magnitude of that task intimidated me all week and kept me from trying, until I realized that it's not my job to chronicle every detail of Momo's long and fascinating life; at least, not right now. Everyone who knew her has their own version of Momo to remember, and all I can do is share my Momo with you. The Momo who will live on in my memories.

My most comfortable and familiar Momo memories center around her kitchen table, where we'd sit and chat when I came to visit. Standing ready by the stove, nudging one of her rescued feline friends from the counter, she'd ask “Shall I make us a cuppa tea?” Refusing the offer got me nowhere – half a cup was always her next offer, as though the thought of a guest in her home not drinking at least a little tea was unconscionable. Officially, Momo herself only ever wanted half a cup of anything. She just had to drink through the top half to get to the bottom half, that's all. When the tea situation was settled to her satisfaction, she would clink mugs and spoons and shift the whistling kettle while she hummed to herself about what one should do with drunken sailors*. Always sturdy, sensible, big coffee mugs for Momo's tea - I never saw her using dainty teacups. Dainty just wasn't her way. 

Momo's mugs of tea always came with offers of food: cookies, May West snack cakes, toasted tomato “sangwiches”... Despite years of my best efforts to convince my grandmother that I do not like sliced raw tomatoes as a sandwich filling, she offered me one every time I was in her kitchen. I can't decide whether my preference just never registered for her, or whether she was getting a good laugh out of it. I'm inclined to believe the latter. Still, I have to wonder – what if I'd said yes, just to throw her off? Did she keep fresh tomatoes in her kitchen all year, season to season, just in case I called her bluff?

We talked about everything at that table. Sometimes politics, sometimes family goings-on, and always a discussion of something she'd heard on the radio. CJAD talk radio was her constant companion, always droning on in some corner of the house at all hours of the day and night. When her eyes started to go, the radio meant even more to her, and she'd relate stories from the radio programs as though she'd heard them from good friends. Whenever I came to her with a problem or a complaint about something at work or at school, she'd think for a moment and ask “Do you ever listen to Dr. So-and-So on CJAD? They talk about that sometimes. You should call in.” I often sighed, quite rudely and unfairly, when she asked me about the radio programs, because I never listened to anything but music stations and she knew that. It was the tomato sangwiches all over again!

She did watch TV sometimes, most of it absorbed through her closed eyelids while she rumbled the couch cushions with her snoring. If someone tried to turn off the TV while she was installed, she'd wake with a jolt and protest that she'd been watching that, and resting her eyes! And you know, if you quizzed her, she could almost always tell you exactly what had been happening on the screen.

Momo never had a problem sharing her opinions with you or with anyone within earshot. She was a woman who loved a good debate, and would shamelessly shift sides in a discussion if it meant it would keep the conversation lively. Looking back on those moments now, I can't help but think that I've got a bit of her in me. I see all sides of every argument and can play the Devil's Advocate and rationalize almost any position, if I'm given a chance. I see now that all those cups of tea with Momo had more of a role in shaping my personality than I ever realized at the time.

There's so much more. More than I could ever fit here and more than I could ever really relate to those who never knew her. So many little things about Momo and about the big house in Longueuil. The Crayola-red and -yellow tulips in the front garden. The white stone lions on the front porch, who made such comfortable chairs for the grandchildren having imaginary adventures. Holding out peanuts for generation after generation of backyard squirrels (all of whom were named "Chippy"), and throwing stale bread out to the "dickie birds". 

Her home was always a home to all, with family members holding a lifetime, unrestricted Golden Invitation to come and stay as needed. Nobody would ever be turned away - even the Jehovah's Witnesses who came to the door were accepted for a chat, and every stray cat who ever sat on the porch and meowed for food was given love and a warm home to purr in.

We'll miss her. She was strong and opinionated, kind and witty, and it's obvious that her whole family carries parts of her with them. You won't be forgotten, Momo. Toodley-pips, and God Bless.

*Her preferred method of dealing with one was to kick 'im in the belly and bust his boiler, whatever that means, but I can't find a reference to that line anywhere other than in my memories.

Cuppy Cakes a la Momo

This isn't a recipe. It's a fond memory and a sweet tribute to my grandmother, Momo, who left us this past weekend after 91 rich years in this world. I've been working on a written tribute, because I feel it's something I need to do, but this week has been very difficult. The words aren't lining up right, so I turned to food, as so many people do in painful times.

These "cuppy cakes" were Momo's specialty, as far as my siblings and I were concerned. "Cupcakes" could mean almost anything, but when someone said "Cuppy Cakes", you knew exactly what was waiting for you. They never stood a chance of surviving overnight once they were made.

They're just simple chocolate cupcakes, made from a box mix, with holes cut into the tops to make room for homemade, lightly sweetened whipped cream. They always lived on a shelf in her fridge because of the whipped cream filling, and we kids would try to be subtle about sneaking back over to open the fridge door for just one more... Sometimes the simplest things are really the best.

They just seemed like the right thing to make this week.