A Part of My Heritage

When a building is integral to the story of a place, sometimes government steps in and protects it from the forces of progress and change by calling it a heritage site. The home in Salzburg where Mozart was born. The Old North Church in Boston where furtive lanterns warned patriots that the British were coming. Tear down those buildings, and the towns don’t just suffer a loss of tourist money. Losing heritage sites is like losing history, diluting identity. 

You don't have to be a country, or even a city, to have a heritage sites. Everyone has places that played an important part in their lives, their histories. A childhood home where that one cabinet door never closed right. A corner store where allowances were spent on gummy worms. A park where someone knelt and offered a ring. Any place whose destruction you would mourn, because you could never share it with your children, is a personal heritage site for you. 

I'd like to share one of mine.

Place Ville Marie is an office building at the heart of downtown Montreal. It’s 47 stories of steel and sparkling glass, making an cross shape distinctive enough to earn it a place on postcards. A spotlight spins around on its summit after dark, sending out a bright white beam for miles.

At the heart of the cross, a dozen elevators whoosh up and down at an alarming speed, popping ears and making riders reach for something to hang on to. Downstairs, beneath the atrium where the sounds of high heels and conversations echo off the marble walls, is a shopping mall connecting it to Montreal's underground city.

Outside, between the main building and one of its small satellites, is a courtyard with trees and slick grey granite. Every warm sunny day, it’s filled with suits and their to-go lunches from the food court.

That courtyard is my heritage place.

I visited often enough during my suburban high school and CEGEP years, but once I found myself on the McGill University campus every day, I became a regular. Between classes, or before leaving for home, I'd come and sit on the granite ledges, alternating between reading a book and watching the water play on the green statue in the fountain. Sometimes I'd throw a penny into the fountain as I passed, although I can't say that fountain was any better at delivering on wishes than any other. When the weather got too cold for me to sit on the stone, I'd stand at the railing overlooking McGill College Avenue, a double-double warming my hands through my gloves, and take in the sparkling Christmas lights and the scarf-wrapped crowds.

The view is beautiful from that spot. McGill College Avenue, wide and tree-lined, stretches out from Place Ville Marie up to McGill's Roddick Gates and the campus beyond. Behind the university's old stone buildings, Mount Royal looms, its colors shifting over the seasons. I made sure to bring my husband here when he visited Montreal, to show him this little place that means so much to me.

I miss that courtyard dearly, and I always try to return when I'm in town over a weekend. I stay just long enough to throw a penny into the fountain, sip a coffee, and enjoy the sound of my city.

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.

 

A Light Inside

I went to church today.

I made a quick left turn through a gap in the rush-hour traffic and pulled into the parking lot at Saint Patrick's. I hushed the radio, switched off the engine, and sat in the quiet of my car for a minute before taking a breath and stepping out.

A small sign among the early daffodil greens in the front garden said "The Light is On For You," but when I pulled open the front door, the church was dark inside. The space was silent and empty, and I was alone. I paused at the entrance. Dipped my fingers into the small bowl of holy water by the door, a tiny golden bird-bath. Made the sign of the cross, out of habit, without thinking. I used my left hand, the wrong hand, because I still held my car keys in my right.

I walked up the center aisle towards the altar, relieved to be wearing quiet shoes, because even the rustling of my purse against my coat seemed loud and rude. I had come to find the small altar, off in a corner, where rows of flickering candles hold the pains and hopes of the people who set them alight.

The church had small dim alcoves off to either side of the main altar. Each housed a statue and a table holding four short rows of votives. I intended to light a candle beside Our Lady, because it's what my mother does. What all the women in my family do. Tradition and heritage, to ground me. To bring comfort. Not, for me, from faith or from prayer, but from ritual and familiarity. When someone needs help, members of my family light candles for them. When someone needs extra help, we light candles in a church. But there were no familiar saints with compassionate faces to greet me at Saint Patrick's. Only ghosts. I had forgotten that it was the Lenten season, and that some churches shroud the holy figures in purple in the weeks before Easter. I was alone except for faceless human forms wrapped as though for burial.

I chose the altar on the left side, not knowing which figure was standing over me, who would watch over the tiny flames I would leave behind. I folded up a bill for the thin slot marked "offerings" and smiled to myself at how pagan and out-of-place that word seemed in a church. I set my purse down and struck a match against the side of the matchbox, wincing at the abrasive sound. I touched the match to the end of a long wooden skewer, which crackled into flame. Slowly, carefully, I touched the flame to the wick of three candles, side by side, in the front row. One for me, and two for dear friends who are hurting. All of the votives were new, white, silent. Mine were the only ones dancing.

The small padded kneeler creaked as I knelt in front of the shrouded saint. I found myself mouthing dimly-remembered parts of the prayer of Saint Francis. The cadence of my words matched the tune of the hymn from my childhood. Music strengthens memory.

Make me an instrument of peace. Grant that I may never seek so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved, as to love with all my soul. 

I left the candles, sat at the end of one of the pews, and looked up. The vaulted wooden ceiling stretched up forever. The only light in the church besides my candles came in through the beautiful abstract stained glass windows on all sides of me. It was late afternoon, and the sun was low enough in the sky to drag the colors into the church and paint the floor with them.

Despite the comfort I find in ritual, I don't believe in a divine plan. Catholicism lost all credibility for me long ago, through inconsistency, intolerance, and the sins of the church. There is no Fate. Life isn't fair, or unfair. Bad things happen to good people, and I can't accept that there is a deity up there rolling dice to decide who deserves to suffer. There is only life, and what you can make of it, which makes it that much more important.

Rush hour continued just beyond the colored glass. Birds chirped in the garden. The sun was setting, and would rise again in the morning. Tears came to my eyes. I let them fall, finding comfort in the knowledge that the world is so very much bigger than me.

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!

 

Heritage

A part of our heritage.

Say those words to any Canadian in their thirties, and they will either mime a frantic telegraph operator or tell you they smell burnt toast.

No, we're not all insane. 

Years ago, when my age cohort was young and impressionable, a series of short  films were aired on TV alongside commercials for Skip-Its and Ninja Turtle figurines. These "Heritage Minutes" were sponsored by various corporations over the years and were aired on Canadian TV networks as a way to increase the amount of Canadian content we were exposed to. 

Thus we learned about Doctor Wilder Penfield, pioneer in neurosurgery and mapper of the brain, first director of McGill University's Montreal Neurological Institute. 

We learned about the Halifax Explosion of 1917, where a ship loaded with explosives caught fire in the harbour after a collision. The disaster would have claimed more lives than it did had it not been for the sacrifice of Vince Coleman, a telegraph operator who stayed at his post to warn incoming trains of the danger.

While we absorbed Saturday morning cartoons, we learned of hockey heroes, war heroes, inventors and pioneers, all Canadian, all a part of our shared heritage. Those short films have stayed with me for decades now, snippets of them playing in my head, their words waiting on my tongue.

"Johnson, Sir... Molly Johnson."

"I, Emily Murphy, of Alberta, and all Canadian women after me: persons, under the law."

"Missus Trout!!"

I looked these videos up today because it occurred to me that I've forgotten much of my Canadian history. I will need to study American history if I am to pass the citizenship test next year, but much of the Canadian history I learned as a child is beginning to fade. I remember Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain. At least, I remember their names. I remember the Iroquois and their longhouses. I remember Vimy Ridge, and the bright poppy fields of Flanders. But I can't remember the story. I can't explain anymore what Canada is, where it came from, how it changed and grew. I am forgetting my heritage.



If you would like to watch more of these videos, and I recommend that you do, there is a playlist of all of them on Youtube here.

Learning with my hands

I cook like my mother.

I rarely measure anything out, even though I have lovely sets of measuring cups and spoons and am always tempted to buy more when I pass by Pier 1 Imports or Williams Sonoma. I come from a "pinch of this" and "dash of that" heritage. When it was time to learn the secrets of spaghetti sauce, I stood beside the stove and watched my mother pour spices into her cupped palm until the piles of crushed leaves looked big enough to add to the simmering pot. She instructed me on proper measurements: "Cup your palm tighter for the thyme, you only want a small handful." I'm very lucky: our hands are the same.

Her recipes are frustrating, because they include measurements like a "a squirt" and directions like "until it's the right consistency." Unless you've watched the process all the way through a few times, it's difficult to do her dishes justice on your own. But I watched. I watched for years. I pinched pie crusts between my fingers and I dripped sauces off the back of a spoon. I learned.

My spaghetti sauce is nothing like hers, now. But it's incredible.

A consequence of this learning method is that no recipe is safe with me. I intend to follow recipes - really, I do - but sometimes I only have boneless chicken breasts instead of the bone-in-thighs that the recipe calls for, and the substitutions start. I'll use cheddar if I don't have Monterey Jack. I'll toss in skim milk because it's probably a better substitute for cream than my Bailey's Toffee Almond coffee creamer. I'll automatically double the garlic content of any recipe I'm following. 

Of course, the biggest drawback to the substitution game is that I never make exactly the same recipe twice. When someone loves what I've made for dinner and asks me for the recipe, I can lend them the book or forward them a website link, but the version they'll make will never be quite right. I try to explain what I did differently, but sometimes I don't even know. I added more honey to sweeten the glaze, but I couldn't tell you exactly how much, because I flipped the honey bear over and squeezed him until it tasted right. I kept adding chicken stock to thin the soup, but I didn't keep track of how much more I needed.

I've considered being more scientific about the process and trying to write down what I'm doing as I go. I should probably add the honey by teaspoons, not blobs, and I should pour the broth from a measuring cup instead of the box, so I can see how much I have left and do the math. But although I consider myself a scientist, I just can't seem to bring a calculating mentality into my kitchen. My meals are art. Not always good art, mind you, but it's a creative process more than a formula, and I don't know that I can change it. I don't think I want to.

I'd love to cook for you. I have so much fun experimenting in the kitchen, and it's wonderful to share the results with friends. I promise to do my best to give you an accurate recipe if you ask for it, but unless you've been hanging out with me in my kitchen and watching me work, you need to take those recipes with a grain of salt. Maybe two grains. I'm not sure, exactly. Stop when it tastes right.

 Linking up with bloggers who write and writers who blog over at Yeah Write. Pop on over there and read some other great stuff.

 

Home

This is the 23rd 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 was addressing my Christmas cards last week and noticed how many addresses I've had to cross out as friends and family pack up and move to new places. For some who moved almost annually, I started writing in pencil, because I was running out of space on the page for new addresses. I've had eight addresses myself, but I hope that the current one is permanent enough to be safely written in ink.

The Little House

I grew up next door to my grandmother's house, in a tiny red house with a wide porch and a big yard. There was a birch tree that made me sneeze, and a tamarack tree so tall I had to lie down on the ground to see the very top without hurting my neck. We played outside a lot, even if "playing" meant lying on a blanket with a coloring book in the backyard. There was a path to my grandmother's house, through the cedar hedge, and we could run over for a visit anytime.

The Big House

We moved to a different city, twenty minutes away, when I left elementary school. It was a split-level style, with a garage, and a huge backyard for Dad to mow and Mom to plant gardens in. We got our own rooms - mine was gigantic - and there were two living rooms to watch TV in. It seemed like a perfect house, but at the end, there was anger, contempt, and bitterness in that home. Parents on the brink of divorce, and teenage kids feeling the pressure and acting out in different ways. My parents eventually split up and we had to leave the big house. I don't remember very much about the big house, now.

The Loud Apartment

Dad went to live with his mother for a while during and after the divorce. Mom found us an apartment and we all squeezed in. My sister moved out, and then back in when things didn't work out with her roommates. It was a second-floor apartment on a busy street, and the downstairs neighbors hated us. They screamed at us through our floor, banging brooms against their ceilings, threatening us with bodily harm if we didn't shut up. We were quiet, so I don't understand why they were always so angry with us. I think it may have been because we spoke English. The place wasn't really big enough for us all, and my sister was sleeping in the living room. I was going to McGill by then, and I decided to give everyone more space by moving in with Dad for a while, until I could get my own place.

Dad's place

But Dad didn't have his own place. He was still with his mom, my grandmother, while he looked for a suitable condo. I got one of the upstairs bedrooms and stayed a few months, but everyone's personalities clashed and I just couldn't stay. I found myself welcomed back to the Loud Apartment, and sleeping in the living room.

The Nice Apartment

Mom left the Loud Apartment as soon as she was able to. It wasn't a healthy place to live. She found a wonderful third-floor walk-up on a quiet street, a block away from a bus stop and a grocery store. We had a parking space and a square of backyard big enough for a patio set and a garden. We had big windows with wide sills for the cat to sit on and pretty views of winter sunrises through the trees. The neighbors mostly minded their own business. My brother and I each had a room, and my sister had moved out again, so we had enough space to breathe. Unfortunately, there was only one bathroom, which is why I still ask my husband if he needs to pee before I go shower, even though we have five bathrooms in our current place. Habits die hard. We were happier in that apartment. Mom redid the kitchen, put up flower boxes on the balconies. She's still in that kitchen or on those balconies with her coffee every morning. This is the place that's brightest in my memory.

My First Apartment

When I moved to Maryland, I didn't do it the easy way by moving in with my boyfriend. I wanted my own place, to prove that I could do it. I got an apartment near the hospital I'd be working at, and adopted a cat so I could blame the strange night noises on his prowling. I felt safe enough there, despite the loud foreign-language fights in the parking lot at night and the time a drunk guy banged on my door asking to be let in, because he thought it was his friend's apartment one building over. There was a solid deadbolt on the door, and I had a vicious attack kitten to protect me. I set up cable and internet. I paid bills. I did groceries and cooked for myself every night. I dragged laundry down three flights of stairs to the dark laundry room and fought with the coin slots. I did very well there on my own, but I was lonely between my boyfriend's weekend visits.

The Townhouse

I moved in with Dave when my lease expired, and I loved his townhouse. Sure, it was always freezing cold or burning hot in the bedroom, because of a high ceiling and terrible insulation, but we were happy there together. Parking was a creative endeavour because of how few spots were available and how many were taken up by assholes who had driveways and garages they didn't feel like using. We were always either tripping over the three cats or pinned under them on the couch. I tried to girl the place up by planting lavender outside and it grew to monstrous proportions, crowding the walkway with bee-covered purple stems. I attempted to cut and dry some in the oven... lavender is thus now forbidden from all gardens, all soaps, all candles, and pretty much everything that comes into or near our home for the rest of eternity.

Our Home

We chose this house, together, for our forever home. It's too big, and it's too old, and it needs too much work, but we love it. I joke that it's made of bathrooms and built-in bookshelves, with some bedrooms and stuff thrown in. We've been here almost three years now and we've made incredible progress making it into the home we want it to be. The mint green and burgundy paint is gone. The jungle in the backyard is under control and the sick trees were cut down. The silver wallpaper is gone, and the stained blue carpet is now beautiful hardwood. It's familiar now, and comfortable. It feels like us. It smells like us. It's home.

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.

The hills are alive with Mozart

This is the 16th 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.

At first, it seemed silly to me that Salzburg sells itself so hard as the birthplace of Mozart, when it's such a beautiful and interesting city in its own right.

The house where he was born (Mozarts Geburtshaus) has been decorated with huge lettering across the front and made into a museum and tourist attraction. In every little shop along narrow Franz-Josef-strasse and Linzergasse, we found displays advertising Mozart chocolates (Mozartkugeln): hazelnuts wrapped in marzipan, then wrapped in chocolate. Everywhere we turned, there were life-sized cardboard Mozart cut-outs, standing by huge piles of violin-shaped boxes of chocolate. I'm sure they sold other things, but Mozart chocolates were available and on prominent display in every shop we visited. There were umbrellas with Mozart's face on them, and if you didn't like those, you could be more subtle and get one that looked like antique paper with his music handwritten on it.

One thing Salzburg got right, though, is the Makartsteg pedestrian bridge spanning the swirling Salzach river. It is the most wonderful little bridge in the whole world. It's not very big. It's a concrete curve with chain link sides. It's unadorned and coldly functional. But as you walk across it, you become aware that you're surrounded by Mozart's music, quiet but distinct, just floating in the air around you. Even after you've figured out that there are speakers concealed beneath the handrails, it's no less wonderful.

View from the Makartsteg

In the rain, on the bridge, wrapped in beautiful sound, it all makes sense. This is what Salzburg claims as its own. This music, this feeling.

Mononuclear Summer

This is the 14th 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.

Festive plush Epstein-Barr Virus. Awwww.

I caught mono during summer vacation. I never did have very good luck. I didn't even get to catch it from kissing a boy, because I was a dorky, awkward nerd still years away from getting close enough to anyone's lips to catch a communicable disease directly from the source.

Mono is not a fun disease to have. I was exhausted for weeks. I had no appetite. My poor mother would hover over me for any sign of hunger and then race to the kitchen to make me whatever I thought I might want. I remember her putting down a plate of scrambled eggs on the table for me with a hopeful look in her eyes, only to take it away after I ate two bites and declared I was too tired to eat. It's just that the fork was so incredibly heavy. I spent most of my sick time on the couch. I wasn't allowed to exert myself or do any sports - not that I could have found the energy anyway - because my doctor scared us to death by telling us I could rupture my spleen.

Before we knew I was going to get mono and throw my summer away, my dad's boss offered our family the use of his summer cabin for a week. He owned a big piece of land - with a lake - up in the Laurentian mountains to the north of Montreal. Just so you know what we're talking about here, the Laurentians are mountains only in the sense that they are not prairie or tundra. The Appalachians mock them openly and the Rockies won't acknowledge them.

My parents decided I was recovered enough for us to make the trip, even though I was still weak and tired. It was a long car trip and I probably spent most of it asleep in my corner of the minivan, but I was awake as we arrived at the property. We turned onto a driveway, and kept driving for a mile or more before we saw the cabin, the lake, the dock. Never before had I been so far away from everything. When we closed the car doors and stood on the gravel drive, it was quiet. No cars. No voices. No airplanes. Just the birds and the breeze. I guess my parents thought the fresh air up there in the hills would help to revive my spirit, if not my body, and they were right. It was the closest to real mountains that I'd ever been, and it was glorious. Green as far as I could see, until the blue of the sky took over.

I spent some time outside during that week despite being sick, and not only because my parents forced me to. I sat on the dock to watch the water. I walked along the drive, trying to spot deer in between the trees. I didn't see any. There were tiny toads, though, and lots of birds, and not nearly as many mosquitoes as you'd expect. My favorite part was evening, just as the sun set, when the quiet was replaced with a chorus of frogs and loons. That's when Dad turned on the light by the couch, took The Two Towers out of the boxed set he'd brought, and continued the story for us. Listening, I could handle, even with mono.

The Christmas Pageant Where I Was a Beet

This is the thirteenth 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.

What is this thing?

This ornament is an apple. It's hard to tell, because it's the wrong color, and only vaguely the right shape. If I tell you it's an apple, then you can see it, and you'll say "Oh, of course, an apple!" I had a similar problem with my costume for the Christmas Pageant Where I Was a Beet.

We did a pageant every year in elementary school. For weeks, we would rehearse songs and memorize lines. When pageant night came, we'd stand up on long wobbly benches on stage in the cafeteria gym auditorium in front of everyone and endure flashbulbs and overzealous parental applause.

One year, for some reason, it was decided that my grade's contribution to the pageant would be a song and dance routine in which we would play the role of vegetables, stored in the barn over the winter. I don't remember the details, except that the song was in French and we did a sort of happy square dance, celebrating winter.

We were winter vegetables, of course, so nobody got to be anything fun like lettuce or green beans. I was to be a beet. My friends got to be onions and carrots and potatoes, and I was jealous. Those were edible veggies. Nobody liked beets except my weird Dad who liked the little pickled ones that left his fingers purple and his breath vinegary.

After assigning vegetables, the teacher rolled out fabric for our costumes - white crinkly paper. That kind that all huge elementary school banners are made of. The kind that gets drawn on with thick, opaque "gouache" paint and fat brushes. We each got a big square of paper to outline our vegetable on. The teacher had a book of cartoon vegetables for the picky eaters among us to refer to in our artistic endeavors. We each drew our vegetable, then mixed paint to the right shades and slopped it onto the paper. When the paint was dry, we cut out the shape with our green plastic round-tipped scissors, then traced it to make a second identical shape to use as the back. The two halves got stapled together and stuffed with crumpled newspaper to make awesome 3D turnips and squashes that would hang around our necks on loops of twine. I felt better about my beethood when I saw how the potatoes turned out. They looked like lumpy poops.

On the night of the pageant, students lined up in the hallway according to grade, and fidgeted in our dress shoes. There was much shushing. When the previous class was approaching the end of their performance, my teacher led us into the dark gym. Single file, along the wall. Parents sat in rows of folding chairs lined up in the center of the room. Some turned to look at us as we walked past, because our costumes crinkled.

We got to the stage and waited in the wings. The "wings", for our purposes, meant the run of seven stairs and the tiny landing, stage left. The previous class sang their last note, the crowd clapped, and one of the tall Grade Six kids pulled on the rod to close the accordion curtains. There was a whispered commotion as the teachers ushered the other class out via the tiny landing and seven stairs, stage right. We were given the signal to take our places, and the curtains opened again. Time to be a beet.

Edited to add a terrible and embarrassing picture of the costume in question:

Opaque white tights and horrid florals were in fashion. I was not raised Mennonite.

Chocolate Raspberry is a gateway coffee

This is the twelfth 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 never liked coffee until I got past high school.

Coffee was bitter and left a strange taste on my tongue and gross smell on my breath, and I couldn't understand why most adults loved the stuff enough to drag cups of it all over the place.

To be fair, the first coffee I was introduced to was instant coffee. It was Taster's Choice, so at least it was premium freeze-dried coffee granules, but it was still freeze-dried coffee granules. It was what Mom drank, and I therefore believed that's what coffee was supposed to be. After a taste, I stayed away from it. I drank hot chocolate at Tim Hortons, or the frothy, sugary "English Toffee Cappuccino", which I doubt had any coffee in it at all.

Then I got to CEGEP, and everything changed. CEGEP is the extra layer of education we have in Quebec, the bridge between high school and college, where students can graduate after two years of a technical program, or move on to college after two years of what they called pre-university education. I was in the Health Sciences branch of the International Baccalaureate pre-university program, and it was hard. My life became essays and lab reports, projects and presentations. There was always something to write, something to study, something to hand in. I was always up early for class, and always stayed up late to study.

The turning point in my relationship with caffeine was my 8am physics class. Classes that early in the day are cruel to begin with, but a jumble of pulleys and inclined planes on a dusty chalkboard is utterly incomprehensible at that hour. There was no hope of me successfully solving for "x" without the help of caffeine. To be fair, even with its help I barely got through that class, but it gave me a fighting chance.

So I started buying cafeteria coffee in the mornings to help me stay awake. A medium coffee and a giant cookie came to just over $2 and became my weekday breakfast of champions. In the cafeteria, three labeled and color-coded coffee pots sat on hotplates - Regular, Decaf, and Flavor of the Day. That last, my friends, is what shoved me headfirst down the slide into caffeine addiction. Irish Cream, Chocolate Truffle, Amaretto, Chocolate Raspberry, Hazelnut, French Vanilla. That's what did it for me. The flavors. I began drinking coffee because someone invented coffee that didn't taste like coffee. Unconscionable, really, dragging unsuspecting youths into the sad wasteland of addiction by making it sweet and fun. It's just like the packages of candy cigarettes from my youth, except that I hated those chalky things and never took up smoking.

But what's done is done. Chocolate Raspberry got me started. Then I transitioned to French Vanilla. By the time I was at McGill, I was pounding Tim Hortons double-doubles with my Timbits without even thinking about it. I walk around with a travel mug of the stuff. It leaves a gross smell on my breath. And I love it.

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.

Interdit

This is the seventh 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.

We selected a small bottle of Bordeaux with a screw cap, because we didn't have a corkscrew in our backpacks. I knew that we probably weren't supposed to drink wine in the park, despite the fact that we were in Paris, and we were planning lunch in a Parisian park. As far as I was concerned, wine seemed compulsory for the occasion. Europeans drink wine like water, right? France practically invented the stuff! They give it to their kids! Besides, we could claim ignorance of the rules if anyone declared our bottle was interdit.

It was a perfect day. Not too hot, and just cloudy enough that we could look up at the Eiffel tower rising into the sky beside us without blinking at the sun's glare. I pulled the baguette from its crinkly paper wrapper and tore pieces off for us while Dave opened the package of Brie with his utility knife. With the beautiful Bordeaux poured into paper cups, we started our lunch. It was the best Brie of all time.

A moment later, Dave poked me and motioned for me to look up. When I did, I saw a very large man in a military uniform walking purposefully towards us. He made no effort whatsoever to hide the M-16 rifle hanging at his side. Oh boy, I thought. Here comes the interdit. The man stopped a meter away from our picnic and looked at Dave.

"As-tu du feu?"

Dave, somewhat unnerved by the giant armed man asking questions in a foreign language, looked to me for help.

I smiled at him and shrugged my shoulders. "Desolee, Monsieur, je ne fume pas. Lui non plus."

The giant man nodded. "Ah. D'accord. Merci." He turned and walked towards a small group sitting a few meters away.

"What was that about?" Dave asked.

"The guy wanted a light. I told him we don't smoke."

"I am very glad you speak French."

The Chocolate Moose

This is the sixth 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.

Moose on a motorcycle

In Grandmaman's living room, under the squat black-and-white TV, was a shelf that held a small collection of books for the grandchildren. Two hardcover Tintin comic books, one Asterix comic book, an Ou Est Charlie (Quebec's translation of Where's Waldo), and one English book - Too-Loose, the Chocolate Moose.

I have to think that the book was purchased with my siblings and me in mind, as we were the only grandkids who spoke enough English to enjoy an English book. It's funny how, so many years later, I remember the physical book itself more than the story it contained. All I can remember about the story is that it was about a moose who was made of chocolate, and who didn't fit in because he left chocolate drippings everywhere and it made him really easy to find when he played hide-and-seek. The poor moose in the illustrations looked like he was dripping with mud, not chocolate, or at least I thought so at the time. Actually, if I'm being really honest, I was sometimes suspicious that he was made of poop. Hey, I was young. Poop was funny.

The book was square, thin, with a hard beige cover and thick paper pages. It smelled funny. I thought, as a child, that maybe they had tried to make the book smell like chocolate and failed miserably. Years later, a walk through a used bookstore, with its musty bookish smell, still brings back memories of the Chocolate Moose. It brings me right back to being small, sitting on Grandmaman's compact square ottoman, the one with the four hard buttons that made divots in the deep brown faux-leather, quietly flipping through that book while the grownups laughed about grownup things in the kitchen.

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."

It's not real, but it's spectacular

This is the second 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.

This is not an ornament. I am totally cheating.

For my family, the only acceptable Christmas tree was a real one. Not that we ever trekked out into the woods with an axe and hauled back a fir, of course. We were suburbanites in the 80's, which meant we would go to one of the places that popped up in grocery store parking lots in December, pick out the perfect specimen, and crawl back home with an 8-foot tree strapped to the minivan roof. Every turn on the trip home was exciting, as the tree strained against its twine restraints and the trunk shifted slightly left or right, just barely visible through the rear window if you were looking for it, which of course we kids were.

My husband recently talked me into switching to an artificial tree. A "7.5ft lighted Grand Fir with 400 warm white faceted LED mini-lights", on sale at Target and with excellent reviews online, naturally. It's nice. It fits the space. It doesn't need daily watering, or daily chasing the cats away from the nasty tree water. It doesn't drop needles everywhere. It never has any gaps between the branches, because we can fluff them up however we like. We don't need to saw off the bottom of the trunk to make it level and to let it take up water. There's minimal risk of harassment from cartoon chipmunks stowed away between the branches. Most importantly for my husband, it's pre-lit, which means that he doesn't need to fight with strands of lights, untangling them and stuffing them deep into the tree.

I think I'll always prefer the idea of a real tree, but because my husband does most of the work involved with putting it up and taking it down, I felt that I should back down and let him get us a tree that would be easier for him to deal with (I have a similar policy when it comes to purchasing tools or yard equipment). I'm allergic to Christmas trees, unfortunately. Two years ago when we had a real tree and I decided to do the hard work of jamming light strands into place, I ended up with scratches on my arms from the sticky branches. The scratches quickly puffed up into angry welts and my arms itched for three days despite the Benadryl stupor I placed myself in. I guess you could say we bought an artificial tree for medical reasons.

I miss some things about real trees. One is the annual family outing to select the perfect tree. Doing that as a child, I felt like Charlie Brown or Linus, wandering through the brightly-lit tree lot, looking for just the right tree to bring home. We needed one that wasn't too small or too tall, one that wasn't too skinny or too fat, one that had branches in all the right places and that was pliant and fresh. It was a family quest. Each of us branching out, hunting, bending thin branches to test their flexibility, and shouting to the others when a good candidate was found. It's difficult for me to imagine the annual trek to the garage to drag out the Christmas tree box becoming a treasured tradition for our future children.

More than the hunt, more than anything, I miss the smell of a real tree. All through December, arriving home and opening the front door used to mean walking into Christmas. Even before the decorations or tree were visible, the fir smell would get up into my nose and push familiar buttons, making me feel warm and excited for the holiday. My Christmas spirit, it seems, is tied to my sense of smell more than I realized. Maybe a real fir wreath, placed near the door, will awaken that side of my Christmas spirit again.

The tree is beautiful, though, regardless of its chemical composition. A huge part of its beauty, for me, is our precious collection of Christmas ornaments. We each have our own favorites from our younger days (thanks, Moms, for keeping them for us), and we add to them every year as we move through the world together. Every vacation, every new adventure, beings us a new ornament to tie to those memories so that we can revisit them every year as we decorate the tree. And now that our tree is up, and our dear memories are on display, we've got Christmas in the house. No humbugs for me this year.