Winter always comes in February

Part 9

I listen to the impossibly long icicles releasing their hold from the edge of the roof, and dropping, softly, dagger-like into the snow below. Every time one hit a harder surface, the sound made Kitten jump in his sleep. I haven’t seen anyone in a month.

We had a big storm on Sunday night. The power flickered on and off and I contained my worry about the furnace shorting with the power surge and the extremely flammable oil igniting from a spark and blowing up the house. The snow flew and the wind whipped. I opened the front door at one point in the night and stood at the edge of the doorjamb, my front side exposed to it. I wanted know what inhospitable conditions raged outside my four cozy walls with a fire burning brightly in the stove. The weather was bad enough on land. At sea, it would be unbearable.

The sea is always in the air, and I wonder at the young men lost on around this date, eight years ago.

The Miss Ally was a 42 foot lobster trawler captained by a twenty one year old, third generation fisherman. After five days out at sea, fishing for halibut, he and his young crew found themselves in bad weather. The boat capsized and the bodies of crew members were never recovered. All of the boys were from this area.

I was reading a book called, The Sea was in Their Blood, by Quentin Casey. It told of the young men’s histories, and the history of their fathers who were also fisherman. It told of the fateful few days that led up to them facing the massive storm directly, swells of water 20 metres high and 200 miles from shore. It is unimaginable to me and a truly horrible way to die. I am sorry to those families who will forever be touched by the loss, and the constant reminder that life goes on as more lives are taken.

It’s been cold here. Not Calgary cold, but cold all the same. The house is chilly. Nothing a couple of sweaters and an extra pair of socks doesn’t fix. I think I’m starting to get hot flashes.They aren’t extreme, and considering the temperature around me, and my huge dislike for being cold, they are welcome. I like that feeling of internal heat. I’ve always been a chilly person; cold extremities, skinny. My circulation has certainly gotten worse over time. I feel with age and the onset of menopause, everything stiffening, despite my efforts to stay strong and healthy. I have to up my game here, drink more herbal teas and do more research. I can’t stop aging, but I can support my body’s needs as it does. Adopt new habits. Break old, potentially damaging ones.

I’ve always been so strict with myself, almost militant at times. Regarding food as well. When my daughter was young, after dinner, she would ask for chocolate (we didn’t often have sweet treats, but we always had chocolate). She’d ask, “How many squares can I have?”

Clearing the dishes from the table, I would tell her, “Two.”

“Can I have three?” she would ask.

I would give a pause for consideration, and tell her, “Ok.”

Later, when she was a few years older, in her early teens, she finally decided to read the serving size suggestions on the label. “Mom, do you know what it says the serving size is?” she confronted me one day, “NINE squares! Nine. Not three.” She took nine squares of chocolate, looked at it, and said, “That’s a lot!” She put some back. I’ve taught her well.

I have decided to start refinishing the stairs. They are covered with old, dirty carpet tape and layers and years of crud and age. The brittle, plasticy outer layer of the tape came off easily enough, but the gummy bits needed some solvent. It was impossible to get it out of where it had sunk into the grain of the wood. Next, I scraped the varnish. And scraped and scraped. And when I got to the bottom of the stairs, I realized I would have to do the floor as well. This was the front entry and the first impression you get when you walk in the door. So I scraped and scraped the floor. Most times, walking through the front hall, I got on my hands and knees and removed the cracked and hardened varnish from a small section at a time. And that’s pretty much how far I got this month. I also made a slipcover for a small upholstered chair and finally sewed the slipcovers for the couch and love seat, which had been safety-pinned up to this point.

Why do I feel this unwavering need to produce? I have to make things, grow things, change things. Yet, it goes directly against my hatred of consumerism and the garbage it creates, accumulating faster than we know what do with it. There is also the separation it creates. Between those who have the money to spend, and those who don’t. It is a visible economic divide.

I hate going into shopping malls. I avoid them. I have a daughter however, and part of that youth culture is going to the movies, going to the mall with friends, so I found myself in more malls through her early teen years than I ever need to be in again. I remember the draw of the mall as a young teen. I remember not wanting to be seen with my mom. I remember not wanting to be seen with a Bi-way bag in hand. That was a dead giveaway that you were too poor to shop in a non-discount store. I remember when I was finally babysitting regularly and had money to spend at the mall. My friend, Marina and I would wander from store to store trying on clothes, buying this bit of makeup and that. Bookstores have always been and will always be my favourite.

Then one day, Marina suggested we steal something. So we did. We each stole one thing. I even think it was a book I stole! The next time we were at the mall, we stole makeup. The third time, an item of clothing. I didn’t really know how to feel about these stolen items. I felt guilty any time I used, wore or read any of it. But it was also a bit of a thrill not to have had to pay for things. Just take what you want and don’t look back. Look at my new clothes. Look how pretty I look in this eyeshadow. We were at the new grocery/ department store at the Bramalea City Centre (this was long before Walmarts were in existence in Canada). I had bought a shirt from another store in the mall, and here, at the cosmetic counter, slipped a compact face powder into my bag. Marina was at another part of the counter doing the same. We tried some of the perfumes and then left the store. We tended to walk in silence until we were far enough away.

We were almost halfway down the mall before a lady ran up behind us and told us she was from mall security and could we come with her please. I got the horrible feeling of my heart seizing and my stomach dropping and holding my breath. We followed her into the office of the store we were just in and the manager asked us to empty our bags. He took the makeup I had just stolen and whatever Marina had taken. A policeman came then and asked us how old we were. I was 15. He said he couldn’t charge me because I was a minor. He said he’d have to call my parents to pick me up. That meant my mom. Marina was 16, not a minor, and ended up being charged and having to go to court. I don’t know what happened to her after that other than she changed, or maybe I changed. I never hung out with her again. The ride home was in silence with my mom in the car, until her comment as we pulled in the driveway, “You’re just like your father.” Knowing her hatred for him, that was all the punishment I needed. I never stole again.

I have no desire to be a part of that system that tells me what I want and insists that I need. Pantone has decided for us what the trendy colours of the year will be in everything from advertising and illustration (which no one notices, yet is affected by), to textiles, clothing and home decor. You’ll see a lot of grey and yellow this year.

I am a believer in natural cycles. In simplicity. I am a believer in sharing beauty and positivity. My values are such that I don’t want to create “stuff”, yet I am pulled towards creating.

I spent part of a Saturday scavenging for wood. There was a time when you could drive along the road and inevitably come across a piece or more of wood someone had thrown away. Many times I’ve found good building materials tossed like used beverage containers by the side of the road. Since the onset of this pandemic, wood has become a rare, dear item. The price for building materials has easily tripled, while the availability of it has diminished. Everyone is hanging onto their bits and pieces, and scavenged wood is almost impossible to find. I drove into a gravel parking area at one of the wharves on Cape Sable Island and walked through the long grass at the perimeter. I spotted a piece of wood and lifted it to inspect it, at the same time noticing a deer skull partially hidden under the grass. When I went to retrieve the skull, I saw another, and more bones. There was another skull farther along, and by the water, an entire deer skeleton, with flaps of skin and fur attached to parts which led me to believe this was where hunters chose to come to clean their kill.

I thought of my dog Zazu and I hiking in the woods of Mingus Mountain above Jerome. Zazu would often go running off into the woods and come bounding back minutes later, with a huge smile beaming out his happiness for being alive. On one hike, he ran off into the woods, but he took longer coming back to me than usual and when I saw him approach from a distance, he had something large and dangly in his mouth. He trotted up closer, proudly, and I saw an entire foreleg of a deer, bending at the knee and swinging back and forth as he came to me. What a gift. He was so proud…

I went to the Salvation Army here in Barrington Passage, with the sea in my hair and the skulls in the trunk of my car, with the few bits of weather beaten, salvaged wood I could find. I love to overhear conversations, and will sometimes interject if I feel the overwhelming need to. That is how I found these lovely little books, locally produced, about the stories and history of the area. As I went through them, one of the older ladies working there was telling me that this one, Antics of a Cock-a witter (the name given to Cape Sable Island locals), was a fun book of true stories about the area. So I got that one. I also got one called Old Settler’s Remedies, a book of natural cures used for many years by the people who settled this area. Some of the cures taken from the indigenous people. There are cures for The Bite of a Mad Dog, and for An Old Stubborn Pain in the Back (that’s called a husband or wife. No wait, thats a pain in the neck. Different thing.)

“A Plaister for a Kibed Hele:

Take new butter, oile of roses, hennes grease, of eche an ounce, put the butter and ye grece in a bigge rape roote, or in lacke of it in a great apple or onion, and when it is rosted soft, bray it with oile, and lay it plaister wise vpon the kibe.”

I commented to the woman that the cure for cold-sores, according to this book, was an application of ear wax. I expected her to laugh along with me, but she said, “Oh yes, it works. Just scrape a bit from behind your ear and put in on your cold sore and it’s gone in no time.”

We talked more and she asked if I’d been to Seal Island. I hadn’t and wasn’t quite sure where it was. She called over her co-worker, Alice, who was hard of hearing, and so it took a fair bit of prompting to get her attention from across the store. Alice grew up on Seal Island. Seventeen kilometres offshore from Cape Sable Island, there was a little school house and she remembered adventures across the water into the “big city” of Barrington Passage as a teenager. In 2016, the population was 6646. I can only imagine its size 80 years ago.

I went on another walk in the woods across from my house, following deer and bunny trails to a tree, in the middle of a thicket, the tracks here speaking of a gathering of animals. A thoroughfare through which the creatures of the forest passed. I spent some time in the quiet of the snowy woods, my senses alert and feeling alive. It will soon be time to think about gardening.