A Little Rash

     The daughter who still lives with us…does that moniker make her sound like the creature under the stairs?  I assure you, she has her own bedroom and bathroom and doesn’t creep out at night to forage for food in the cupboards.

     So, the daughter who still lives with us is in nursing school. I asked for her opinion on a persistent skin rash I have been seeing a doctor about and she laughed at me. I don’t mean to cast aspersions on her bedside manner—she has a superlative bedside manner—so let me explain. Apparently, the consensus among nursing students is that as soon as one puts on a pair of scrubs the general public thinks one is qualified to assess rashes. No kidding. The checker in a grocery store stopped her one afternoon on her way home from work to ask her about the rash on his hand.

     “Well…it doesn’t look good,” she said, “but I’m not a nurse, so I suggest you go see your doctor.” At the time, she was a receptionist at an eye clinic.

     True, she is only in her first semester of nursing school, but she is a CNA and has already passed Microbiology, Advanced Anatomy and Physiology, and is currently taking Pharmacology; so I figure its worth a shot asking her opinion because she definitely knows more than I do. Her opinion was just what it should be:

     “Well…it looks a little red, but I’m not a nurse, so I suggest you ask your doctor.”

Listen to the Birdsong, Dear Fellow!

     I went out for a walk today to watch the snow melt. It is nearly gone. The sound of water running into the drains was welcome. There were other folks out too, walking dogs, soaking up the first drams of spring. We were all cheerful. And we weren’t the only ones; large flocks of Canada Geese were flying overhead. They had abandoned their pert vee formations and were floating in drifts of high joy, some of them floating so high they couldn't be seen—but I could still hear them. They were calling to one another over and over again. It sounded like a honking hallelujah chorus. I imagined them winking and grinning as they bathed themselves in the sun-drenched waves of boisterous blue air.

     It was too nice a day to go back in the house and fold laundry, so I played pickup sticks with the river birch in the front yard. It is a game we often play and after months of snow on the ground the birch tree was eager to win.

     As Irish Mise commented yesterday in response to a glum quote I posted by C.S. Lewis: “Listen to the birdsong, dear fellow!”

     Delighted to oblige.

painting of Canada Goose available on Etsy by Goosi

Waiting for Spring

Patience is the Art of Waiting

Waiting for Spring

Waiting for green

Waiting for blue

Waiting for frost to melt into dew.

Banish the snow

Barren with cold

Banish the winds that shiver and scold.

Breath of the sun

Quickens the earth

Husks that have slept are bursting with birth.

  

First comes the leaf

Then comes the flower

Heralds of spring will trumpet the hour.

Waiting for green

Waiting for blue

Waiting for frost to melt into dew.

                                   ~ Nib of Nib's End ~

     “I’ve always found this a trying time of the year. The leaves not yet out, mud everywhere you go. Frosty mornings gone. Sunny mornings not yet come. Give me blizzards and frozen pipes, but not this nothing time, not this waiting room of the world.” 

                                                                           ~ Attributed to C. S. Lewis ~

My Picture Gallery - Steel Engraved Stories

Renewal of the Lease Refused
Painting by Erskine Nicol - Engraving by Robert Bell

     Mr. Mawkins sat motionless behind his paper-strewn table, a flinty expression engraved on his features. The face of the Man of Business was cunningly fashioned of flesh, a mortal flesh that was subject to the heat of the sun and the frost of winter and could be burnt or bitten respectively; but the heart, buried beneath layers of linen and silk and skin and bone, was quarried from stone. Grindstone to be precise for it had been formed by countless revolutions around an axis of Trade and could be measured in stone weight. Therein lay the foundation for the flinty face. The heart, being of such rigid quality, would outlast the flesh and sink into the grave untouched by either the warmth of human kindness or the cold comfort of commiseration.

     Farmer Goggin stood close by, hat in hand with his eyes bent meekly upon the carpet beneath his worn boots. His own breast was weighted with the passions that only the desolate can know. Blighted potatoes had blighted his hopes. There was no food for the children. His rent was in arrears. And now, at the bottom of the barrel, the renewal of his lease was refused as were those of his neighbors. Potato plots would become grazing land and Lord Dollarhide, living across the sea in London, would still get his rents. Mawkins would have his share of the business, of course, and more besides, while Farmer Goggin would bend beneath the burden of the grindstone and make shift to endure, somewhere, somehow...

The Foundling
Painting by G. B. O'Neill - Engraving by P. Lightfoot

     My husband and I found these old copies of 19th century engravings in an antique store not long after we were married. Renewal of the Lease Refused hangs in my reading corner in the front sitting room. The Foundling hangs in my powder room. Neither of them makes me happy, but both of them draw me in and make me think about other people in the world. The stories they tell could sit on the shelf with the likes of Nicholas Nickleby, Oliver Twist, or The Grapes of Wrath.

Snow Talk

     A couple of weeks ago, an African man who attends our church said that in his language there is no word for snow.

     On the other hand, the Inuit and Sammi people of the Far North have many. They have lyrical words to describe all the variations of snow they experience and not because they are poets. Their language has evolved to suit the ideas and needs that are most crucial to their lives. Among many, many others, there are words to describe softly falling snow, salt snow, drifting snow, snow that is good for driving a sled, snow that makes pictures in the air.

     I get it. I have a few words of my own for the stuff: sugar snow, soapflake snow, glitter snow, and as I sit here nursing a sore shoulder after clearing another five inches from the driveway and walks—wretched snow.

     I shouldn’t complain. I don’t really want to live in a place that has no word for snow and most winters are not like this one. After sweating it out on the driveway yesterday, I enjoyed my stroll through the pure, silken powder on the uncleared walks of my neighbors. I still experience that irresistible childhood delight of being the first to leave a mark on a blank stretch of white like writing on a page. Snow words whispered against my jeans, crunched beneath my boots and murmured muffled warnings of hidden ice. Talking snow. Yes, talking snow seems an appropriate word for it when that is what most of us are on about these past few weeks here in the Near North.

Burnt Toast

     The way I make toast is enough to drive anyone crazy. It has. It does. Yet, zealously, I still strive for those two perfect slices with my morning tea.

     I keep my bread in the refrigerator because it is a sprouted grain variety without any preservatives. I discovered a few years ago that cold bread doesn’t toast evenly so I warm it up a bit in the toaster before I start the actual process. And it is a process. I put the bread in the toaster for one minute at a time. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. You get the idea. Between all the upping and downing I give it a rest to let some of the moisture evaporate. I do this because, unlike many, I want my toast crispy all the way through—but not too brown. And I don’t want the pat of butter (perhaps, pat is an understatement) and the dollop of jam compromising the crunch.

     Does it sound obsessive to you? Probably. I know that anyone in the house waiting to use the toaster after me thinks that it is. Sometimes I miscalculate and must add scraping into the ritual. Sometimes I throw it away and start over. I don’t know anyone who really enjoys burnt toast. Burnt toast is a bummer.

     But it isn’t the end of the world, is it? In fact, it is nothing more than crumbs when compared to real tragedy.

     I have a book on my shelf that I re-read every few years. Mrs. Mike is a story about Kathy, an Irish girl in the early twentieth century who travels from Boston to her uncle's home in Calgary to recover from pleurisy and marries Mike Flannigan, a sergeant in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Kathy leaves behind everything that is familiar to move with her husband to isolated posts in the far north of British Columbia and Alberta. In just a few short years she experiences the kind of hardship and heartache that would break many woman. It nearly breaks Kathy.

     When she returns home to her mother’s boarding house in Boston to recover from her devastating losses, she is plunged into the everyday concerns of smaller lives. Burnt toast in the morning becomes an occasion for exaggerated discord and complaint among the boarders, and nineteen-year-old Kathy realizes how much adversity has changed her, how it has added depth and dimension to her life. As Sergeant Mike Flannigan tells her, “When little things are so important, it's because there aren’t any big ones.”

     Mrs. Mike by Benedict and Nancy Freedman is more than a memorable romance and adventure story. Without being didactic, it serves as a poignant tribute to endurance. We all experience spilt milk and burnt toast moments, but it is often the harsher struggles that give our lives definition; and how we respond to them shows the world who we really are.  Not many lives run in straight, easy lines. The book is primarily a novel, but knowing that some of it is based on the life of a real woman gives it more heft. It is a book that I will continue to read again and again and, in my estimation, that makes it a classic.

Burnt Toast by Todd Gipstein

Hot Mess

     We took a Canadian colleague of my husband's to dinner last week. He insisted we try a small plate of poutine. It has been a popular dish in Canada for decades. Perhaps you have heard of it.

     I hadn't.

     French fries smothered in gravy with bits of meat, cheese curds and scallions. It sounded rich, heavy and slightly disgusting to me. A hot mess of grease on grease on grease. Not my idea of deliciousness. But I didn't want to be a stick-in-the-mud so I took a bite. It was rich, heavy and one of the most toothsome appetizers I have ever eaten. I ate a couple of bites of the one we had ordered to share, and then ordered one for my dinner with a house salad to balance the flavors and mitigate the guilt. Crisp fries, tender short rib pieces with savory gravy, melting cheese curds and bright scallions. Yum. I could go for another one right now.

     But I won't. At my age, it isn't the kind of food I can make a habit of; I can't afford to make a hot mess of my health, but you can be sure it won't be the last time I will order poutine.

     And also most likely not for the last time, I am reminded not to judge a book by its cover.