Holidays

Part 7

In December, the weather held out. No big storms. A light dusting of snowfall, gone the next day. I love it here. I am a warm weather person, born in a cold weather country. As one so chronically cold, I’m looking forward to the hot flashes of menopause. Bring on the heat!

I lived in Arizona for ten years. One of those years in Scottsdale. Summer in Phoenix is like the deepest coldest winter in Manitoba, (but better!) Most outdoor activities are not recommended when the weather hits extremes. One good thing about the heat in Arizona was that if you got out of the sun, and stepped into the shade, the temperature dropped to a more comfortable level. For me, it’s all comfortable. I just need respite from the blistering sun. Outside, in Manitoba in the winter, there is no respite from the cold.

My daughter had just turned one year old when I moved with her from Jerome to Scottsdale to be with her dad. It was definitely hotter than Jerome. The fall and winter were a wonder, with barely a day I couldn’t be outside in short sleeves.

The storms that came through were mostly dry storms, though during monsoon season, an astounding amount of rain could fall in a short period of time. Powerful wind drove incredible amounts of sand, sideways. If caught in the middle of one of these sandstorms, the sky would go black and night would come on as though someone had pushed the fast forward button on the day. Then, even if your back was facing the oncoming sand, and your face was covered, it would still end up in your nose, eyes, mouth and ears.

Water is an issue there, of course, though you’d never know it, with all the fountains in Scottsdale, diverting water from the already over-pressured Colorado river, so that it never makes it into Mexico. In the heat of the summer, the water running out of the cold water tap was hot enough to make tea.

I remember taking my girl to the park near our house, shortly after we moved there in June. She had walked for the first time at our house in Scottsdale just a few days after our move. I think it was because the tile floors (to keep the house cool) were much harder on her little knees than the historic wood floors of our house in Jerome. At the park, there was a shade cover over the big kid swings, but none over the baby swings, which were made of thick black rubber hung from metal chains. My girl loved to swing. I left her in the shade and walked over to check the temperature of the seat. I reached out to hold the chain and pulled away in pain as red welts raised on my palm. If the chain was that hot, the black rubber would probably give my kid 3^rd degree burns. I taught her then and there how to use the big girl swing. Barely walking, barely one year old, by the end of that summer, I couldn’t push her high enough as squealed with glee and called out, “Higher mommy!”

Back in Nova Scotia in December, it was beautiful, temperate, autumnal, with many back-to-back sunny days.

I heard (at the post office, of course) that there was chocolate making at the community centre every Wednesday night before Christmas. It was a community fundraiser for the village of Port Clyde that raised enough funds to keep the centre open through the year and available as a warm place for folks when the true winter storms hit, and power took out heat and electricity. AND there was the chocolate. I have a nose for chocolate, it being one of my few vices, and can ferret out the best chocolate (or chocolate making festivities) like nobody’s business. So one Wednesday, Bobbi and Ira came to pick me up and we drove past the 6 or so houses down the road to the community centre. I was soon put to work dipping the mint, coconut, and maple centres into melted chocolate and meeting more of my neighbours. Frank was there too.

I decided to have a Christmas studio open house in the middle of the month. It was a good way to push myself to connect more and was a good motive for finishing unpacking the house. I designed a little invite and dropped it off at the post office at the same time I mailed out my Christmas cards (I made 18 originals) with a bit of Nova Scotia sand in the envelope. Jody took the envelopes and to the sound of something shifting she asked, “Sand?” I laughed and said, “I guess I’m not the only one who does that, eh?” I gave her the open house invite to display and wondered, if in the midst of this pandemic, anyone would show up.

So I got unpacking, decorating, baking, cooking, and setting up for a day full of people coming in and out. I had some prints and cards, and a few books sitting out. I am not a salesperson or one who enjoys hawking my wares, so I thought I would keep this more of a social occasion with the option that if anyone noticed the books, prints and cards, that would be the sales opener. I am such a loner and recluse that social occasions in my own home are cause for huge stress and anxiety. My standards are high, set by my sister who is a home entertainer extraordinaire. Mind you, she always has practice as she married an Italian man with three brothers. The extended and growing family are always hosted at my sister and her husband’s house.

It turned out I didn’t need to stress or prepare so much at all. Three people came. Frank, Shirley and Della who I had met during chocolate making. They each had something to drink, but ate nothing as they had just come from lunch after church, at Anchors Away restaurant. It was a really nice visit, and once again I felt so grateful to be a part of such a welcoming community.

I took the opportunity now that I was marginally more organized, to go through the back attic space, accessible from my bedroom and with stairs leading down to the hallway behind the kitchen. There were boxes of old clothes and linens, dishes, books, record albums, bed frames. I love this shit. Going through old stuff is a treasure hunt and an anthropological dig to find out more about the people who lived here before me. Someone was a great lover of opera, with cassette tapes containing the home recordings of every opera known to man. Someone else had a child who left a construction paper sketchbook full of drawings. I see this back, attic space, being redone into a cool sewing room/ hangout space for me when I have the bed and breakfast up and running and want to leave the house to the guests.

I checked out the attic space above the main house, just for a look-see. It was accessible from the hatch in the bathroom and the wooden ladder that lived beside the bathtub. Poking my head up into the space, there was a window at each end, no floorboards. Dust motes (probably filled with old mouse poo) floated through the air giving everything the look as though I was the first to enter this space in a very long time. Under the dust, I found two prints on paper of early 1900’s florals and a woman with flowers. There was a bamboo easel with brass end caps. These were much older than the items found in the back attic. I wonder what else hides underneath the thin layer of insulation between the joists? One day I may find out. Or they may be hidden there forever.

Christmas was coming and I planned on Facetime dates with various members of my family who, due to the pandemic, would not all be spending Christmas together this year. On the day before Christmas Eve, I put a cheesy Christmas movie on, had a fire going in the stove and was settling in for a relaxed evening, when there was a knock on the door. I opened it to my neighbour, Jamie, who was holding out two lobsters, each by one front claw. He handed them to me like this, and now I was was holding them each by one front claw as we stood at the front door, talking and his truck idled on my front lawn, right outside the door. We had chatted previously about seasickness on the lobster boats and he told me stories about men who would be sick the entire time, and while working and pulling up traps, there was often someone throwing up over the side of the boat between hauls. He said he often felt seasick as well. So I asked how the weather was out there, during this last run, and he said it was godawful. I can’t even imagine being on a small, rolling lobster boat a hundred kilometres or more offshore in the cold North Atlantic in December, for days at a time. Nothing, and I mean nothing, could get me on one of those boats. It’s one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Every year a fishing boat goes missing. This year already, a scallop dragger in the Bay of Fundy was lost to the weather and all the men aboard lost with it.

With the the lobsters still in hand, and squirming, I wished Jamie a merry Christmas, and went to put the little creatures in a bin, in a cool place until I could cook them up. I was not looking forward the their torturous screams as I dropped them, alive, into boiling water. Back in Squamish, my friend Len took me out a couple of times into Howe Sound on his little aluminum boat with an outboard motor. He had a couple of crab traps he would set and then come back to collect the catch. On this day, we pulled out four good-sized crabs and threw the smaller, undersized crabs back in the water. At his house, he taught me to crack the shell and then throw them into the boiling water. I did it once and couldn’t do another. I was literally breaking the poor creature’s back before dooming him to a scalding death.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with my new lobster friends. I marvelled at their ability to stay alive for so long on land when they were used to the frigid depths of more than 150 ( sometimes over 1000) feet. I wondered if their little bodies, especially their oversized claws felt super heavy to them, now weighed down by a gravity they were never meant to feel.

I went back to check on them periodically that evening and the next morning, and they squeaked at me when I opened the door to the back porch where they lay in a yellow bin. Bobbi called then and told me that she and Ira do a lobster boil every Christmas Eve and wondered if I’d like to come. “Yes!” I accepted, knowing this was my lobster-murdering out, as I could just hand them to Ira who would carry out the ghastly deed.

That evening, in Bobbi’s she-shed, with the fire going and a view out to the river, we drank and smoked and I was taught how to properly eat a lobster by Ira. Even tried tomalley, the green stuff you’re told not to eat. Here, it’s considered the most flavourful part if the lobster. Fishy for sure, but definitely not unpalettable, it tastes like lobster x10. Frank came, and then Ira’s son, his wife and his 11 year old granddaughter. Some other friends of Bobbi’s came with their son who I thought was 18. They started talking about him having to get home to put his kids to bed before Santa came, and when they left, I asked Bobbi how old he was. “32,” she answered. And Jamie, who I thought was no more than 28? It turns out he’s in his 40’s. I want whatever they’re having if it means looking 20 years younger than my age!

I’m used to not seeing my daughter every other Christmas as she heads down south to spend the holiday with her dad’s family. I’m used to not seeing my family every year, because I’ve always lived far away and can’t always make it out for the holidays. I’m used to making my own traditions and having lovely, quiet Christmases on my own. But this Christmas? This was seriously one of the nicest Christmases I have ever had. The next morning I went on my traditional Christmas day walk, this time through the mossy bogs across from my house and took in the bright cool air.

New Years is a non holiday for me. I haven’t been to a New Year’s party since I was in my 20’s, and that’s ok with me. I’m not terribly comfortable in places where there are too many people and too much noise. For me, it’s a time of reflection. A time of looking at what the last year brought and envisioning for the next year all of the things I want to happen. Last New Year, I was fretting over an e-harmony man who was either scared of me or just was not interested in who I am. “You’re so open!” was his constant remark to things I would say. “How else is there to be?” I asked him. How can you ever know someone if they hide behind notions of what they should and shouldn’t say or do? Last year at this time I was licking my wounds and writing imaginary letters to this quite privileged, older white man, who had never seen struggle and had never had to work hard for anything. I was writing about my current financial affairs which I felt to be a deterrent for someone more successful. I was writing about the fact that I was force the likes of which he has never seen, and just wait a year, my circumstances would be different. I have no idea where that man is now, but since then, I bought a house and moved to Nova Scotia. He is probably still riding on favours from well-positioned friends.

I thought this as I reflected. If my life can take such huge turns in the space of less than a year, what would this next one bring? This year, instead of big changes, I am seeking a sense of home, and security. That’ll be a new experience.

Next: January – The Bathroom Issue