Winter’s Night

I learned to love winter in my parent’s home. Shadows of the trees swaying on the sparkling dance floor of the front lawn or the mournful song of a nor  ‘easter blowing by the corners of the house were sources of comfort in an uncomfortable season. And of all of the seasons to experience on this side of the country, it would only seem natural to hate it. The winters are harsh and cabin fever lurks in the long hours of night.

It was the time my father was home more often because ninety centimeters of snow covered the gravel pit in which he toiled  twelve hours a day throughout the rest of the year. Winter was the time I remembered the versatility of ground beef; hamburger gravy, hamburger stew, macaroni with stewed tomatoes. It was a time of resourcefulness, the abundance of late summer gardens long forgotten. It was often an anxious time.

But I love winter.

It was in these dark, cold and uncertain months that I developed true respect for my parents. In a little house tucked among the trees of Turtle Creek my father would wake in the middle of the night to stoke the fire, the wood burning smell embedded in the walls. We made snow candy from a simple brown sugar syrup that never boiled fast enough for my liking. It was a competition between my sister and I for the biggest piece dribbled onto the snow packed into a cookie tray. Meals of few ingredients taught me lessons of simplicity and Dad’s incessant singing of the “Po’ Folk Song” a not so subtle reminder that there was more to life. For in those anxious months, the table was most definitely “set with love.”

Please don’t get me wrong, I was not a terribly insightful child or teen. As with most sentiments, especially respect, it is developed with the grace of time for reflection. As an adult I have more ability to appreciate their situation as worries that once belonged exclusively to them have become my adult inheritance.

In their quiet actions I now realize I learned many lessons that I fear I may not be able to pass on to my own children. They never told me to forgive; they showed me in their own relationship the healing ability of such a gift.  The result of which is a mind empty of rotting grudges, with space enough for new thoughts, dreams and possibilities to be cultivated.

They taught me of love in all it’s many forms without realizing they’d done it. They showed me how to keep my heart open and that it was their job to protect it. To watch over me and make sure that I could recover from any mistakes I may have made.  My sister and I have experienced hard winters where a combination of finances, broken hearts and school has taken their toll on our spirits. Our father has told us simply to hunker down with them and that he’d keep the fire going.

Courtesy of Yorke Photography

Rustic Dan

I have already expressed my love of  kitchen/dining room tables. So this spring when my husband and I purchased our first home, I started hunting for the perfect table; one that could potentially fit as much of his large family or mine when they come to visit (please note family I said when).  It was in my search for this crucial piece of furniture that I discovered Dan Fairbairn – Rustic Dan.

Dan Fairbairn

On a warm July morning, I dragged my husband out of bed for a 45 minute drive into Brant County Ontario. It was the first time I had contacted a complete stranger and asked plain and simple “can I come meet you? I think what you do is really cool.”  Charmian was someone I had met some time ago, and knew how wonderful she would be about my crazy idea of wanting to meet people who did such fabulous things. I knew about Gary and his Plain Folk Furniture, because well he’s my dad and he wasn’t allowed to say no to me writing about him. So while trolling Kijiji for a large kitchen table in the hopes of finding a reclaimed wood harvest table, I found Dan’s ad for custom made cedar log furniture.  I was excited but doubtful. Doubtful because “custom made” usually includes hefty price tag and “reclaimed” in today’s design world means “ridiculously expensive for something that was rotting in a farmer’s field.”

I had emailed Dan with what I was looking for, a nine foot dining room table that could seat ten people. He got back to me right away and had no hesitation about creating such a piece and one that I could afford.  Despite my nerves, it was no surprise to me when I arrived at Dan’s home that I received a welcome that was as warm as the morning. He was sitting on his back porch and had his portfolio open and ready for me to flip through. There were well over a hundred and fifty pieces, ranging from night stands to kitchen hutches. I had learned from his website that he had taken a leap of faith in himself and had quit his job to build his furniture full time. From his portfolio I thought he had been doing it for at least a couple of years, but it turns out he’d only been doing it full time since January of this year.

I am always impressed by people who take the kind of chance that Dan has, to follow a dream and push doubt aside. What impressed me even further is how supportive his wife Renee is. She beamed as I went through the photos and admitted to having a hard time letting most of the pieces go. She told me of the bed Dan had created for their home and she could not wait for it to be finished before taking it in the house to see how it looked. She loved it so much that it still sits in their room unfinished.

Raw materials being prepared for a new life.

To construct his pieces Dan uses reclaimed telephone poles and ginseng poles used to hold tarps over the fields as the plant grows. When Dan receives his materials they are weathered and grey. He showed me around his shop, a short commute to the backyard each day, and demonstrated how he brings the wood back to life. He strips them down to the raw golden coloured wood with a draw knife as the log is held in place by a vice. It’s a labour intensive procedure as he strips the wood, sands it and then protects it. Dan custom builds his pieces based on the requests of his customers. He sets out a small design on paper but mainly works free hand as he builds. I asked him who taught him how to work with wood in this manner and I was stunned when he told me he taught himself.

Unfortunately Dan had delivered all his recently constructed pieces the day before I arrived so I was unable to see any of his work until my table was ready. However, I was fortunate because in his shop were a couple of pieces his thirteen year old daughter had been working on. While Dan has taught himself, he is sharing his gift and talent with her.  He has also been taking instructions from his three year old on possible improvements to the aesthetics of his furniture. Dan came into the house one day to find him, hammer in hand, banging on the coffee table in the living room (one of the first pieces Dan had made). While this would send most parents crawling up the walls, Dan took the coffee table out to the shop and continued to distress the wood by beating it with a length of chain link.

A stool being created by Dan's daughter Rachel. When you check out his website be sure to have a look at the comments on the homepage, Rachel leaves a great one for him.

The coffee table that had design help.

Furniture should contain traces of lives lived, stories in the tattered couch and the gouge in the table. Dan made a piece for me that will let me fret less about it’s surface and more about what is served on it and the conversations to be had around it. It was the first piece of furniture, and as far as I am concerned original art, to land in our home. We were fortunate this Thanksgiving to able to have my husband’s family sit around it among our unpacked boxes and bare walls.  A couple of weekends ago  a feast of hot dogs and fries was passed around this table as we hosted a sleepover for eight of our nephews and nieces. Thank you Dan for creating a gorgeous piece of work for us to build memories around.

Our gorgeous table

All decked out for eight awesome guests!

Tick…

Time is my greatest champion and ultimate nemesis. It is a constant that dictates the pace of my life. On occasion I try to ignore time, bury my head in the sand like an ostrich or a small child who covers their face and believes the world can no longer see them. Time always finds me though, it ticks away waiting for me to understand that I must change as it will not. I often reprimand myself for being so flippant with time, undervaluing my relationship with it.

I am impatient for time, while time is comprised of nothing more than patience. Broken hearts loath the ticking of the clock; they know the only cure for loves’ cruel sting is time and it can not pass quickly enough. I know this feeling, but I also know what time brings. For me it brought  more knowledge of who I was, and what I needed in a partner. When I found him, I knew.

I knew that he was my match and my equal; that he would not place me on a pedestal and I would not do the same to him. I knew that in him I would have not only love, but a hand to hold during dark days and a companion with whom to celebrate the rainbow filled ones.  I knew that I would fight with him, but it would not mean the end. I knew it would mean more understanding between us both for each others needs. I was comforted because I was given the time to know.

When I married him, my sister asked, “how did you know?” I said, “I just did.” My husband asked, “did she punch you in the mouth?” He was right, she should have. It’s a completely unsatisfactory answer. I wondered how I did know. I came up with a completely unromantic but fitting answer. I am a woman to owns a pair of voluptuous hips and a smaller waist. The search for the perfect pair of jeans, has been a struggle my whole life.  I have found the perfect pair though, they are comfortable, hug my thighs and do not gap near my buttocks. They cover and flatter me. Finding Paul, was finding that perfect fit, it worked in every manner and I couldn’t wait to get home to him.

The day we made our promises, I told him I had one wish for our life together, it was simple and the words belonged to author Anne Roiphe. When asked what made her feel beautiful in an interview, she answered, “It was mid-December 2005. I don’t know why he said it. I don’t know if it was just coincidence or intuition that prompted him, but about a week before my seemingly healthy 82 year old husband suddenly died, he emerged from the kitchen ready to go to his office, his face clean shaven, his eyes shining, smiling shyly, holding the copy of the Anthony Trollope book he was re-reading and said to me, ‘You have made me very happy. You know that you have made me a very happy man.’ There I stood in my work outfit, blue jeans and a t-shirt. There I stood with my white hair and my wrinkles and the face I was born with, although now much creased by time, and I felt beautiful.”

I wish for this kind of happiness, contentment and time together. Time knew better than I did when I was ready for what the future had in store. It was not my place to know. Although I’ve often contemplated about paying someone to give me clues. My husband has no desire for a small peek at the future. He says if someone had shown him ten years ago the day we found out I was pregnant, he’d have wondered where his life went wrong. At the time we lived in a one bedroom apartment, I was only three months into a permanent job, we had a ten year old two door car, and ten cents in the bank. A small peek at the future, in his somewhat wise opinion, does not give enough. The larger context was that our money was in a savings account for a house down payment, a new car, my job was more than secure, and we had agreed we would try for a baby.

Now, with impatience and worry of the unknown,  we wait for time.  Just as we waited for time to bring us each other, we wait for time to bring us this person.

The First of New Beginnings

Road to New Beginnings

He had on nothing but a towel. His hair was a shade of blond unknown to adults, and the waves in his hair demanded a hand be run through them. His eyes were a piercing blue and focused on something I could not see. His skin was still visibly warm from exercise, soon to be remedied by the soap he was carrying in his right hand. He lived in the room next to mine for the next year, and over a decade later, I cannot recall his name.

I was eighteen as I walked passed him in the second floor hallway of Joy Kidd residence; a newly minted adult, striking out on my own for the first time.  My covetous look at this vision lingered a bit too long as my sister ran into my back spilling the contents of the hip-huger laundry basket she carried.  For the next hour she and my mother helped me pull all of my most valued possessions from the trunk and back seat of the family Oldsmobile. They piled my things to one side of the seemingly small dorm room.

I was anxious for them to leave. I was ready to shed my high school self and did not want witnesses to mock this attempted change.  When they were gone, I sat on the unmade bed and cried. I consoled myself by sorting through all the new possessions that would help me create this person.  A terrycloth robe, shower flip-flops, a set of luggage, and the new clothes contained within; a new being ready to slip into them all. I had cut and dyed my hair, a drastic change from the meek and mousy girl that left Turtle Creek.

Just as my confidence was building, a six and a half foot tall Bermudian popped his head through my open door. What surprised me the most was his red hair and milky freckled skin.  He sported a t-shirt and long shorts, accompanied by a bright smile that immediately put me at ease. His name was Anthony and he lived across the hall. It was also his first year and he was making his way around the house getting to know everyone. In seconds, another head adorned in a ball cap poked through the gap between Anthony’s shoulder and the door. Dallas was from Sussex, half way between my old home and new.

These two faces were to be familiar ones in my room for the next eight months. It is not until this moment that I understand they were there to get a look at the new girl on the floor, to assess and judge her.  And it has been years I have regretted the drifting of these friendships in the semesters that followed. While I was able to shed the hair and old clothes, the shyness that plagued me at fifteen remained my silent torturer. Fear of the wrong thing to be said, or to not be approved of was the reason behind the silent girl who read her Psych textbook with unnecessary diligence.  I would not find the person I sought to become for many years, and by then, I needed to be someone else.

Summer Drifting

Summer Drifting - Cape Enrage NB

Well, there you have it; summer floating away on me like big fluffy clouds on a warm evening breeze. My summer to do list is collecting dust and has been sadly left unchecked. Summer days were an endless supply as a child. The community where I grew up was populated by my mother’s aunts and cousins which in turn meant it was littered in the summer with their grandchildren and children.  We made proper use of our rural setting and the large lawns that are the privilege of those who choose to live among the trees.

When my sister and I were small we were strictly instructed to hold our mother’s hand when we walked anywhere, whether it was my grandfather’s, Aunt Bernie’s, Aunt Theresa’s, or any other home that held a relative of some kind. As we got older we were allowed to run ahead, but she would holler “stay in the dirt!” I think sidewalks are a sign of sophistication now. There was a well worn path in the small ditches and brush that ran along Route 910 from the Burrel Road straight to the dam that supplied the city of Moncton with its water. A two kilometer radius for us to find someone to have an adventure with, and adventurous cousins we had in spades.  I often think of my cousin Liv as the ring leader guiding our bikes to the down the abandoned road to the reservoir pool caused by the spill over from the dam. There was usually a bunch of us, a gaggle if you will, who would make our way down the main road, through over grown paths and into a clearing where we would have our picnic.  I never did find out how she knew how to get down there, but we sure knew our way out when the Forest Ranger caught us.

We walked or biked everywhere. When I got to the Olsen road I peddled as fast as I could to avoid the crazy, yappy dogs that would come out of nowhere. They would bite at our heels and I feared them to no end. They were the biggest obstacle between me and my cousin Verna. With my cousins Verna and Heidi we built forts from found pieces of wood and picked the biggest blueberries in the pit at the end of the Cole Road. In the winter this pit served as the most dangerous and daring of sliding hills. It was filled in some years ago which makes me wonder if those drop offs were really a humongous as I thought.

On days that were reserved for the beach, I would be awake in my bed when my father got ready for work. I would try to assess from the breaking dawn or the cry of crows if it was going to be a sunny day. Could I hear Mom making sandwiches for everybody or just Dad’s lunch pail; was that ice for Dad’s water bottle or the Coleman water jug we would bring with us? These would be the questions running through my mind as I drifted back to sleep and dreamt of the rain ruining my day. When the sunlight pierced through my window, the excitement was overwhelming. She then had on her hands two little girls dancing around, running this way and that trying to pack everything they would need for a day away and getting caught up under her feet every minute in the process.

Family Archive circa 1982

I now understand why she would never tell us until the day we left that we were going camping. The avoidance of endless questions pertaining to our departure date and the over packing of clothes, books, crayons or anything else we could cram into our pink and purple duffle bags, is one more reason she is an evil genius.  These trips too were packed with the appropriate number of cousins, meaning the more the merrier. The more remarkable of trips were the ones with my Aunt Kelly and her three little girls and my teenaged Aunt Amy and one of her equally moody teenaged friends. Remarkable not because they were more fun than any other camping trip, but that we always somehow managed to get rained on. It always seemed to be the last night we were there and then we’d have to pack up wet gear.  And with inevitable timing, my Aunt Kelly would always be late for our departure. My mother’s sigh would get heavier with each five minute interval that passed; her growing frustration with her sister showing in her furrowed brow. These are the stories usually laid out at family gatherings in the summer to be reexamined and howled at with laughter by the adult children of these sisters.

Summers were a golden lit reprieve from the cold gray light of winters that highlighted the realities of life in a province full of seasonal workers. As August faded into September, we pulled the string beans, radish, and potatoes from each of my grand parents’ gardens, and it was a bountiful piece of the year. I have always wanted to plant a vegetable garden as a way of holding on to a small portion of these happy memories. I won’t have the space to do so until later this fall, but as a compromise the universe returned to me a little of the love I have frivolously thrown out into the world and it has grown in my belly all summer long.

Homesick

The summer before I moved to Ontario I worked in a small diner in Alma NB. This tiny village is located at the foot of Fundy National Park, my favourite place in the world. I rented a small room in the apartment above the restaurant. Under different ownership, my aunt had worked in the same restaurant and stayed in the same apartment several years before. I couldn’t wait to grow up and have a job like hers, romanticizing it to harlequin sized proportions. While this all proved to be as unrealistic as the fantasy books, each morning the salty, sticky fog drifted through my window carrying with it the scent of freshly baked (and world famous) sticky buns from Kelly’s Bakery across the street.

I had been a waitress throughout university and this proved to be the last summer I would have such a job. I loved the rush that came with a busy day, keeping orders straight and making sure tables were cleared quickly. I admired the campers and the potential for adventure laying at the other side of the park gate. I scanned the crowds as they walked by for the best tourist outfit. To date, the best one I have seen was a woman with a 1980s white and gold lame windbreaker, clam digger pants, a gold lame fanny pack and strappy sandals, and to top it all off, a divine white visor. I am aware of how terribly judgmental this is, but I had to wonder where she was going.  It was a national park after all, designed for camping, hiking, or canoeing and the village was certainly not a place for shopping. It had a couple of tacky souvenir shops and a convenience store where local old men sat out and smoked cigarettes.

The hours in which I could remove my apron were spent on the groomed trails in the park (my first few tips were immediately spent on a season pass), reading on the cliff’s edge overlooking the bay or standing on the ocean floor and waiting for the quick moving tide to roll over my feet and up to my knees. This park is the rugged beauty of my home province exposed in all of its glory. And it is the scenery of this place that summons my homesickness each summer. New Brunswick is a province dedicated to the out-of-doors. The small lakes, tree littered acres, it’s shores that hug the Baie de Chaleurs, Northumberland Straight, and Bay of Fundy, and its slow rising hills that touch the clouds are only a few reasons it is called the ‘picture province.’ This summer will be the first in five that I will not take the road along the Peticodiac River, passing the stops on the Fundy Studio Tour only to question later why I didn’t stop.

Recently my cousin and my sister did just this. I talked with them as they headed home from their hike, filled to the brim with Fundy Take-out as a reward. I had never felt such envy, I almost cried because I not only missed the place, but I missed them; my cousin’s freckled face and my sister’s infectious laugh. Long distance plans, email and facebook have considerably shortened the 1,300 kilometer distance from my family. But it’s a hard pill to swallow when you realize that decisions of your own making mean you don’t feel your mother’s hug whenever you need it. Do understand,  I would not change a decision I have made, I have a sweet little life.  It’s a good reminder to miss my family, it means I have a family, perhaps a tad dysfunctional, that I adore.

The summer I spent in Alma was somewhat of a solitary one, which suited my introvert tendencies just fine. It was something my sister despised in me as children. We were two kids who grew up in a rural area and as one of her few available playmates, I preferred to read a book or colour instead of trying to determine if it was Col. Mustard or Prof. Plum who used the candlestick. Who wouldn’t hold some mild resentment about that treatment? Karma is a strict teacher though, as now I desperately long to over charge her rent in my hotel located rather conveniently on Boardwalk as a lazy Saturday afternoon ticks away.

Cup of Tea?

I started drinking tea in university. It wasn’t for the caffeine; I needed a companion through the late nights of studying during exam period.  Tea remained my loyal companion after I left the hallowed halls of the University of New Brunswick, and trust me, I did not want to leave. What waited for me outside of those grounds was the frightening stage of life known as, adulthood. I had no idea about the punch in the face I was about to get. It wasn’t the paying of bills, finding a place to live or even getting a job that knocked me over in surprise; it was the bullshit that accompanied growing up. I swear the stretch marks I have are not from my sudden physical growth spurt, but scared evidence of developmental growth.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the intricacies involved in the relationships I had built and was building. I made (and make) mistakes, a lot of them, and my naiveté also taught me some important lessons. A hot cup of tea though, has always been something readily available to sooth my ruffled feathers. The simple romantic idea of curling up with a cup of tea has been enough to relieve the pressure increasing in my mind. Holding a warm mug in my hand as the beverage cools provides me the luxury of allowing my thoughts to drift, to sort through events past and present and assess them, remake and replay them with no further harm done. Waiting for a cup of tea to cool is permission to daydream for a few minutes.

Among my family members, tea is always something to be found in their homes. I can’t recall an instance where my mother, grandfather or grandmother has run out of tea. My grandmother’s cupboard always held at least two boxes of King Cole’s gauzy bags.  It is one of the first questions asked to you when you walk in the door, usually on an unannounced visit, “can I get you a cup of tea?” Add an Albert County accent to the question (imagine a Maritime accent slightly countrified, it’s very subtle) and the words almost seem musical to someone who has been living away.

If my mother failed to ask my grandfather this question when he walked through his field to her kitchen, he generally had a smart ass retort at the ready, “well Jocelyn, I would have stayed for a visit but since you didn’t offer me a cup of tea, I’ll saunter back up the road.” This would cause a roll of the eyes and the sigh  my sister and I can now imitate with perfection. She would then take the kettle from its back burner position, pull the lid off, fill it full of water and drop three or four tea bags in. Put back in its place and let it boil. In the meantime she had pulled her red and white Tupperware dish from the top shelf of the last cupboard and offered him some kind of sweet. Before she went back to work it was usually something she had made, since then it tends to be boughten cookies and at twenty nine years of age, I am still thrilled when I find boughten cookies in her cupboard (boughten cookies: cookies purchased from the grocery store, ex. Oreos).

Being asked, “would you like a cup of tea?” is being asked several questions in one. It means, “what can I do for you,” “are you alright,” “are you comfortable?” It’s a gateway question, a reason to sit down and have a chat. So if ever, you need a minute, pop in. I can’t guarantee my house will be clean, but I will have the kettle ready.