I’ll start with the statistics today. We are now within 5 minutes of the earliest sunset! Today the sun will be setting, if all goes well, at 16:19. It rose at a late 7:42. That is 26 minutes earlier than the latest one we get to. We still have quite a way to go with that so I won’t dwell on it. But we can be happy about sunset time. We’re nearing the turnaround time. And It’s only three weeks until the shortest day of the year! 26 shopping days to go before the Big Birthday celebration.
Now the rest of this post is about the time of year but it’s personal. I have spent an hour thinking about whether to post it here or on my even-more neglected blog. I decided on here because it is about the time of year and the cycle of the year. And some of you gave me such kind feedback about my Remembrance Day post that I feel OK to do something similar. And so far as I know most of the people who read this blog actually know me whereas the other one goes into the ether and unknown readers or none at all. At least some of the content, though, will I trust resonate with some of the readers. So . . . .
The title is a personal reference, I think. This is the week of the anniversary of my mother’s death. Although she died 28 years ago (almost half my lifetime ago), I dwell, for a time, in a valley of shadows and darkness, deepened by the physical darkness of this time of year and contrasted with the beginning of the “Festive Season”.
I suppose the time of year begins with Remembrance Day. However, I am very conscious of the anniversary of the day on which I last saw my mother, November 19. I never actually remember which day it was she died but it was December 2 to 5. Obviously, I could ascertain it but it is too painful to look at those documents. Each year I enter into a dark time personally about mid-November when for reasons I always forget I feel a little crazy, a little out of control, some discomfort and despair. Even though in recent years I have prepared for it, I always am ambushed by the feelings and have to stop and pay attention and REMEMBER what the time is.
Once December 6 arrives, my personal darkness lifts and I am able to rejoin the celebrations which anticipate the return of the light to the Northern Hemisphere. It is noteworthy that the sunset pauses at its earliest at about December 6 and then begins to move in the direction of light about 10 days later.
This past week I had an odd experience which somehow shifted my thinking and at the same time, I think, compounded this period of darkness and remembrance. I have been trying to ascertain where I will live next. I came across, when nosing around Ottawa region on Realtor.ca, the house in which I lived when I was in Grade 2. That was the first house I lived in in Ontario after my “exile” (my word for it) from B.C.
I had over the previous few weeks been haunted with memories of that place and that year and had set myself the task of writing a description of the house. I could remember some things very clearly but not others. So to find the photos of the house looking just the same on the exterior as it did 55 years ago was one thing but to see all the interior photos was quite another. I was overcome with emotion and a strong sense of affirmation of my memories from that time. The house was very beautiful inside–still has all the original woodwork. I had forgotten the bow windows. It was huge. It had a chicken coop and horse stable attached. It had a large room which was a pantry (painted grey!). The cupboards which lined both walls included bins which folded open for storage of flour. There was a window at the end of the room. I was so impressed that my mother knew what all the parts of this very strange house were for! What really bothered me this week was that I thought of it as an old house when we lived in it but it was built in1910–so it was only 45 years old and I remember it 55 years later and now it could be called old. It was about the same age as my mother and so I wonder if she thought it was old. It was an amazing contrast to the tiny cottage we lived in in Lake Cowichan the year before and the log cabin covered with siding in which we lived in Terrace, before that, and of course amazing compared to the apartment on Powell Street at Jackson. Two people who have seen the photos think i should buy it and run a B and B!
Here is the exterior and the woodwork:
The Manse at Brinston
Upstairs at Brinston
My seasonal memories of this house (there was only one Christmas there) are two-fold. I wanted a particular pair of toy cowboy guns and I got a single gun and was very disappointed. My father woke me on Christmas morning by grabbing my toes and telling me that there’d been a hurricane in the Swiss Village. He had to repeat this many times before I understood, probably because I would have had little idea what a hurricane was. The Swiss Village was a beautiful cardboard village, a set of separate buildings, a friend in Vancouver had sent me and I had assembled. It was under the Christmas tree and the two cats had chased each other during the night and paid little heed to my beloved village. Fortunately damage was minimal, mainly cosmetic, and I did not have to wait for a government grant or an insurance company settlement to repair it. My favourite winter story from there is this one. My friend Brad and I found a cat lying in the snow in a ditch fairly close to my house. I came home and got the snow shovel and took it back to where we had found the cat, carefully laid the frozen cat on the shovel and pulled the shovel home. I was so dismayed and disbelieving when my mother laughed and laughed and told me the cat could not be unfrozen and kept as a pet.
This week also contains the anniversary of the birth of one of my dearest friends. He will be 65 this week. It seems, in some ways, such a short time ago when I was concerned about my father retiring at 67 to move from his profession back to his long-time home city and pursue other employment. That was around the time I met my friend–41 years ago! Now as my immediate cohort of classmates begins to turn 65 I understand the brief span of time we have on Earth.
I did not learn from my father’s experience of retirement and save money as I went along and so like him I face hard choices. I am better off than he was but not as well off as I could have been had I made many small choices differently in these last 15 years or so. And so I remember my concern for him and wonder why I did not learn!
I listened to Bill Moyers interview of Louise Erdrich in the last couple of days. It is a lovely interview as one would expect. She spoke of her father’s correspondence with her. It is the only time I’ve heard of someone speak of such a correspondence as I had with my father. Unlike me though, she kept all his letters. I was embarrassed at university to receive daily letters and sometimes two or three from my father. He wrote every day telling me what he and my mother had done or were planning, how the cats were, what time he fed them, what the weather was like. They were brief notes usually on torn pieces of paper typed with his army-style two-handed pecking which always managed to make some letters red and some black since he liked to have a red and black ribbon in the typewriter at all times, typed quickly enough the keys didn’t always strike the ribbon as planned. (I see in reading his sermons that he did use red for emphasis.) Erdrich described her father’s letters, in terms of content, in almost identical terms. I don’t recall that my father often wrote about world events but I’m sure he did comment from time to time. It was about quotidian concerns. The envelope cover for each of my father’s sermons contains some of the information which the letters did–the date and occasion, the weather, where it was preached, and usually a note about the turnout. Isn’t it amusing and amazing how much we love to COUNT! One of our first communication skills and we sure love it.
On a lighter note, Erdrich read her “instructions” to herself which she wrote to assist her in achieving her writing goals despite having three small children. I seem to have a similar set of instructions when absorbed in a writing project. Basically, the instructions are: let the house deteriorate, only do essential chores, don’t do repairs and don’t do cleaning except the most basic. Of course, she expressed her instructions in a much more poetic way. (The interview took place after her book Shadow Tag was published. I think it’s an excellent read and Moyers raved about it in a way uncharacteristic of him!)
My father was a stamp collector and part of the deal with the letter-writing was that I had to clip the stamps and return them to him and when I wrote, less frequently, I had to use the philatelic supplies he provided me. And so these notes, sent in blue-lined envelopes, would arrive in first day covers or with corner blocks on them, or with singles or doubles–usually hand-stamped in the local post office. I didn’t go to that length in Montreal or London or Toronto. I was allowed to just use the red mailboxes and, in the Montreal of the late 60s, hope I didn’t pick one which would blow up in my face.
Yesterday, I went to Kits to do some essential shopping: calendars and walking shoes. I walked into Banyen Books’ 40th anniversary. Speaking of my cohort!! Then to Choices grocery store–organic foods–and it’s 20th anniversary which they were celebrating with a steak barbecue in their parking lot.
Banyen more generously had a 20% off sale and all their backroom staff working in the store for the day. The owner happened to come to assist the woman who was ringing up my purchase so I was able to congratulate him personally. Before he arrived to assist she had offered me one of his flower photos, describing them as flower mandalas. I said to her, as I rummaged through the stack for one I liked, that he obviously frequents some of the same flowers as I do. I had never thought of my flower photos as mandalas before–at least not consciously. He might not have taken a plant anatomy course he loved above all other courses, though, and he may have spent even more time than I reading Jung and studying mandalas.
I remember the opening of Choices mainly because friends lived a couple blocks from the first one and recommended it and soon I became a customer there. In fact the clerks often comment on my loyalty program card being one of the original ones. If I’d lived here 40 years ago the same would be said of Banyen. However, I certainly discovered it in 1987 if not in 1979 when I was visiting. That store has been such a source of comfort over the years. Yesterday it was not since the cellphone users were there in numbers (even though I was quite early arriving). And apparently it is necessary to have them ring and talk on them even in the otherwise serene surroundings of the bookstore. Nevertheless I was happy to happen on the sale and to be there for an anniversary which is quite impressive in the time of the decline of the independent bookseller. Banyen and VPL are two main reasons for wanting to stay in Vancouver when the plug of a regular pay cheque is pulled from the wall. Banyen is easy to visit. VPL is more priceless, in both senses, and would become harder to visit the further away I go.
Now to go out into some of the sunshine which has blossomed forth as I have been writing. First is pancake breakfast. Perhaps there will be photos later!
Until next time, I remain your friend and Bulletineer,
Sunwatchers’ Daphne
