There was a boy
A very strange enchanted boy.
They say he wandered very far, very far
Over land and sea.

A little shy
And sad of eye
But very wise was he.

And then one day
A magic day he came my way
And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings,
This he said to me:

The greatest thing
You’ll ever learn
Is just to love

And be loved in return.

Like the song says, he was a very wise boy, a country boy, a nature boy.

And he turned a sparkling 82 years on Christmas Eve.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

You’ve been a great teacher!

xoxo

My mother, generally a rather pleasant person, would have felt a little cranky today.

Eighty years old. Ouch.

Art was her passion and faith was her breath. She lived these elements with fervor and a constant hunger for greater understanding.

She was 52 when she received her doctor’s affectless directive: “Go home and get your things in order.” She didn’t really have any idea how long she’d live with ALS, nor how quickly the disease would progress. No one did.

I suspect she cried but I never saw her do so. I was 24, my brother 18. We were adults. We were kids.

Around my mother rallied the great throng of people she’d collected over the years — artists, priests, nuns, family members, atheists, agnostics — all had a place at the dinner table.

They’d fight, debate, argue, quote, recite, pray and ponder. The discussions were a great blessing to her and energized her mind and soul while the disease laid waste to her body.

Her two great creative passions at the time were five-foot canvases of studied, thoughtful combinations of colour and texture; and her electric kiln and potter’s wheel. One of the former could be completed in a year, the latter could produce multiples in a single evening.

She didn’t know whether she had a year so she opted to focus her remaining physical energy into tackling the hundreds of pounds of packaged clay stacked in our basement, and prepared for her final life’s work, an art show and sale whose proceeds would be sent to Mother Teresa in Calcutta.

From September, a month after her diagnosis, until December, the time of the sale, she threw dozens of pots. We saw them diminish in height over the four months, a grim rubric of the inexorable progression of the ALS.

But the fire burned within, fueling the desire to continue her heart’s mission: giving to those forgotten by others.

Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me.

My mother may not have been able to travel to India to serve the poor and the destitute, but following the sale she was able to send thousands of dollars to a tiny sari-clad woman who could.

Saving the world was definitely on her agenda.

But getting old? Grey hair? Wrinkles? Age spots? Definitely not.

The thought of celebrating with her here in Winnipeg this evening, singing Happy Birthday and blowing out eight decades of candles just makes me laugh out loud. She would have been some ticked off.

So ticked off in fact that we don’t even refer to her as ‘Grandma’ around here. She’s just ‘Lyla.’

Yes, she’d have been a little annoyed today. Happy to be here, folks, but let’s just avoid all talk of numbers, all right?

Funny duck. I miss her so.

Just into Manitoba and the sweet little town of Brandon where we stopped for gas and chocolate milk for the troopers in the back seat.

We are heading into that part of the calendar where the nights are very very long and here where skies are big it’s easy to see how very low in the sky the sun sits at this time of the year.

I’ve spent the latter half of Saskatchewan with a seed catalogue: I think I’ve just about got my list finalized but a few decisions on onion varieties are still to be made, as many of them require starting in December. And with B.C.’s cooler growing season those early starts ought to be taken seriously.

Asparagus and onions are probably best bought as bedding plants.

We fenced in the bulk of our property in June against the marauding deer — and with an early coastal start to the growing season — egad! It’s mid-December and I’m already getting ramped up for gardening!

Must be the expanse of prairie and all the silos and grain elevators I’ve been looking at the last 48 hours!

More seasonal challenges from the back seat:

The lad is a diminutive percussionist.
ABCDEFGHIJKMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Present me naught but dual incisors for this festive Yuletide. 288 Yuletide hours
Leave and do an elevated broadcast.

Does your head hurt?

Here now mid-Saskatchewan, just outside of Regina, six hours from Winnipeg, on a beautiful sunny Monday morning.

The CBC keeps us company as we pass other salt-encrusted vehicles, semi-trailers and giant specimens of modern farming equipment.

In the back seat the intelligentsia are keeping us alert with questions stimulated by reading material picked up at the last gas station.

A sample:

Identify the following Christmas carols:

Exuberation to this orb.
Decorate the entryways.
The red-suited pa is due in this burg.
Far back in a hay bin.
The apartment of two psychiatrists.

Anybody?

I’m still working on

Stepping on the pad cover.

I’ll check in later!

This past weekend we left our cosy island and ventured to the big city for Muddy Pause 6, an art sale benefitting the Vancouver Food Bank, initiated and hosted by my friend Sherryl Yeager.

A steady stream of guests circulated through the house Sunday, viewing some magnificent pottery by Allysha Hurd (above). I regret not taking more photos of her work — absolutely worth seeing (and in my case, making a few, ahem, acquisitions).

This was my little corner.

In addition to the fibre offerings created in my studio (aka the basement) were the soaps and lotions manufactured under B.C.’s extremely lenient child labour laws.

This scarf is a combination of wool layered on silk chiffon. The technique is quite popular right now in the felting world, and strives to strike a balance between something that is both warm and lightweight.

I realized at the sale, after having sold a couple of scarves, that I’d forgotten to make a record of my work of the last couple of months.

Handy to have a model at the ready.

This window pane style scarf is a classic in felt-making but I never get tired of it. It’s fun, funky, surprisingly warm and dresses you up — or down.

In pink merino with sari silk bits.

Lavender merino with silk strands you can’t see here.

And a little jester’s bag I edged with a blanket stitch one day on the ferry.

It’s always best when an item can have more than one function.

Combination of two techniques.

Bright. That about sums it up.

And the afternoon’s musical stylings…

They played some chamber-esque Christmas carols for several hours and scored big time with the tip jar.

A sincere thank you to anyone who’s ever given a few coins to a young musician. You’ve helped practice time more than you know.

And in case you wondered what happened to all those turtles…

Butter, sugar, flour, repeat.

Most of the time my dear mother was not that charmed by domestic duties, unlike some of my aunts who could whip up a country dinner for six in the time it took you to unlace your boots, hang up your coat and hat, wash your hands and drag an extra chair over to the wooden table.

Not my ma.

But for some reason, during Christmas season she evinced her domestic diva, her mixing majesty, her baking baroness, her pastry perfection.   

Now this little one is perfectly at home in the kitchen.

I remember still how, pre-walking and talking, she would sit on the counter, watching as I measured and mixed, dipping her finger into every substance on its way into the bowl.

And what I recall most was how dispassionate she was about flavours and textures. Salt, baking soda, crumbled basil, all would meet her tastebuds and she would not react, instead assessing its place in the whole mixture. 

So with our homeschool agenda spreading out before us like an upturned bowl of pancake batter, we spent an afternoon in a most scientific exploration of the properties of melted butter, sugar and chocolate.

Curriculum is tough, my friends.

How do you like her sweater?

It was a gift from a fellow I knew in Gimli, north of Winnipeg.

The Princess saw it on a shelf and as usual when she walks into my closet — “Oooh! Are you going to wear that?” code for “Can I wear that?” 

Oh yes. Back to the cooking demo.

Well as you’ll see there’s not a lot of sophistication in this particular batch of baking — remember, we’re here for nostalgia’s sake.

Will she remember that her loser mother did not make caramel from scratch or will she remember that her mother was so cool she let her unwrap a never-before-seen-in-her-life entire package of Kraft caramels?!

Absolutely the latter! Yeah!

Now for the math:

If I lay out three rows of four groups and if each group has four pecans, and if I used 50 caramels and if each turtle will require approximately one caramel’s worth of, well, caramel, will I need to buy more pecans?

These are most definitely the easiest Christmas candy to make and if you go for the fancy chocolate on top — we used Callebaut chocolate from Calgary — your recipients will swoon.

Turtles on the run.

I will tell you now, do not sample. Do. Not. Sample.

You will not be able to stop.

Just ask the sous-chef how things are going.

She’ll know.

Nothing like a brisk dash through the woods to invigorate the soul and ready the blood sugar for the onslaught of holiday baking!

Saturday morning broke rather early as the family taskmaster cajoled, bribed and jovially managed to convince us that what we really wanted to accomplish by 9 a.m. — more than anything else–was an act of island solidarity requiring us to ease out from warm bedclothes into the frosty morn.

Let’s just say the taskmaster’s day job rewards him more than this particular undertaking…

See these reluctant runners?

They survived! And were happy to tell the tale!

Turns out we were joining Bowens’s annual Reindeer Run, organized by a lovely and ebullient woman, Mary Letson, who owns a fitness studio on the island, and pulls together this run (most definitely not a race) just to get people up (that would be up and out of bed, I assume) and moving in a healthy direction.

These ducks were definitely in the spirit — antlers provided with your registration fee.

The gal in the middle, fourth from the left, is the same woman I bumped into mid-market in Aix-en-Provence.

Cookies, coffee, hot chocolate and prizes for the winners participants!

Homeboy and another girl from his school actually won came in first completed the course before the rest of us sloggers and managed to take home a prize gift of a pre-assembled gingerbread house (“Just add icing!”) and as the first family (in fact we were the only family showing up in its entire nuclear glory) to finish we snagged a box of chocolates to replenish the vast amounts of energy discharged running up and down a couple of hills.

All profits from the registration benefitted the Bowen Island Christmas Hamper Fund.

The taskmaster was vindicated. Maybe we should listen to him more often…

After more than a dark week’s worth of sullen cloud and mould-inducing wet the sky’s single golden orb came out to play.

So too did a class of ten-year-olds.

In behind the fish hatchery where the Princess takes her classes on Mondays (yes, in a little decked-out room adjacent to the tanks of salmon-steaks-to-be; we’re into collaboration and co-operation on our little isle) is a flat! piece! of! land!

On this rocky Pacific outcrop, very few pieces of grass and bushy bits have the luxury of sinking their hairy little roots into anything more substantial that a couple of centimetres of earth.

These few acres of meadow are therefore a popular meeting place for dog walkers and equestrians — there’s even enough space for a white-fenced riding ring.

And on a sunny school day, what better place to refresh one’s lungs than with an impromptu mushroom hunt and soccer match.

And then, when the lunch hour is up, to follow the teacher — and her dog — back to the fish hatchery.

Fish, school… ahhh, I get it now!

At Homeboy’s school they underscore three core values — wisdom, courage and integrity — which thread through the fabric of the school culture.

I hadn’t realized such noble aspirations extended to Hallowe’en.

And while it’s always been easier to go from gal to guy I think a good fistful of bravery is required to go the other way.

Wisdom and integrity we’ll leave for another day.

I think we’ve got the courage covered.

And for the record, the Princess scored nicely with those handing out the treats in her Storybook Grandma (her label) outfit.

My mother would have had a conniption (as we kids used to say) to see herself portrayed thus, hey, Alice?

Bonjour, Natalie! Aimes-te cette jupe?

Je cherche un ami pour la danse mais c’est difficile!

Il est sept heure et demi vendredi soir

J’ai mis mon souliers noirs.

Did I mention there was a French play? And that more than one parent in the room asked if Homeboy was the gal in the pink Lululemon?

That’s my girl, I bragged.

My brave beautiful completely lunatic girl.