NoodleDog

It’s just starting to get nice out here. I say this because I’m headed East tomorrow, East to the land of, well, Home, to me. It will theoretically be “spring” in the Eastern Townships in Quebec, which is where we’re going. However, I seriously doubt it will be as nice there as it is here. Calgary does have some good weather. We have some atrociously bad weather, too, as every place does, but we get The Chinooks, and those ease the pain of winter pretty well. A Chinook, for those of you who don’t know, is a warm, humid wind borne off the Pacific and over the mountains and delivered to us in a giant swath of snow-melting goodness. So while it very well may be –25C in Edmonton, it could very easily be +5 in Calgary. Thanks to the Chinooks.

The Chinooks come with a bit of a caveat, though, and for people who tend to experience migranes or crippling headaches, the Chinooks may help push those poor folks right over the edge. I, myself, experienced the odd terrible headache, and probably have a susceptibility to migranes, but what I am occasionally subjected to is nothing at all compared to what my sister goes through, or what some of my less-fortunate co-workers experience.

At any rate, the Chinooks notwithstanding, we’re having some nice spring-like weather. Sunny and warm. The kind of weather where you want to get out the patio furniture and bask in that long-forgotten sun, just soaking up every ounce of warmth. Rob is one of those people who, at the first sign of melt-y weather, will put on shorts and parade around the house and back yard JUST to irritate those of us who are still freezing our asses off at –5C. So you can’t go by what he’s wearing, you just have to find your own way. But he put on some shorts the other day, and I stuck my head out the back door, and sure enough, the air did not freeze in my nostrils, and it was even warm. I got out and cleaned all the patio furniture, and sat in a nice patio chair, at the patio table, and basked. Sure, it snowed a few days later and we plunged back into –10C territory, but it’s coming around. This week, it looks like we’re getting +10C to +15C temperatures, which means it would be nice enough out to relax and try to enjoy the outdoors again, to free the yard from the covering of dog poop, to allow the cats to venture out, whiskers all twitching, to sit on the patio furniture and enjoy drinks and lunch…

But we will not be here. We are going away. We are going to Quebec, where there is still snow. There won’t be for long, because the forecast contains a projection for rain this weekend, which is fine by me. The increase in temperature means that the sugaring season will begin (it has already). Sugaring is the process of extracting maple sap out of the maple trees to boil down to maple syrup. Oh, there are lots of other things you can do with it – they make maple butter, maple treats, maple sugar, maple sugar-on-snow… Most are variations on maple sugar, which is maple syrup further reduced and crystallized into sugar crystals (so it tastes maple, of course), which you can easily do yourself by boiling it to a certain point, and then “dropping” it, ladling it into a large pan from a couple of feet high, as it cools so the crystals will form.

Quebec is where my mother is from. More specifically, the Eastern Townships. Located about 2 hours South East of Montreal, the Eastern Townships were originally settled by the 13 colonies of Loyalists just as the Americans decided they wanted nothing more to do with merry old England. Sure, Canada had been well-established by then, and most of the people in Quebec were descendants from France. But this pocket of land was settled by English-speaking former Americans, some even descended from the original settlers of America at Plymouth Rock. Most of the population there now still speaks English, and my grandmother (whose farm we’re going to) doesn’t really speak French much at all. She knows enough to ask where the bananas are at the supermarket (or, Supermarché). My mother and her brothers and sister all grew up speaking English and French. Thus, my siblings and I were all forced to learn both languages. It was probably a good thing, although my mother went about it all wrong, and forced us to speak French when we didn’t want to, so instead of appreciating it, I didn’t like it and when given the choice in University of a language option, I did NOT take French (I already knew it), so instead I took Spanish, which I figured was a much more interesting language. Turns out they’re nearly the same, so there you go. But, still, I know or knew French pretty well. I haven’t spoken it in years, though, so although I will understand what they’re saying to me, I will likely not be able to think fast enough to respond with any accuracy.

We will leave tomorrow morning, spending most of the day in transit, arriving at the farm probably around dinnertime. My plan is to stop at the grocery store in the small town about 15 minutes away from the farm to get supplies, and hopefully arrive in time to cook something, or at least get take-out. My grandmother, when the farm was in operation and my grandfather was still alive, used to go to town once a week, on Thursdays, to sell eggs and whatever else they had to sell, and buy supplies or machine parts or tools for the farm machinery. Going to town was a big deal. Going to town was a treat. Nowadays, with town being much closer in terms of travel (faster cars, bigger town), I could go into town every day, if I wanted to. “Town” is closer than I lived to Calgary, when I lived in Airdrie.

The other days of the week were spent doing farming things. My grandfather would go out into the field and work – either plant crops, tend cattle, tend or dress chickens, etc. – and my grandmother would stay in the house, cooking. She had men to feed, you see, so she had to prepare breakfast (oatmeal, toast with maple sugar, eggs, possibly some bacon) then the men would come in and eat (usually pretty quickly) and then go back out to work. Then, she would clean the kitchen from breakfast, do dishes, and maybe start a little baking, and start on getting lunch ready. Lunch wasn’t the way it is here in the city – lunch was a substantial meal. Like, maybe a ham or a casserole or hot sandwiches (and many of them), with sides, and a full dessert like a cake or squares. After lunch, there was cleanup and usually a lot more baking. On some days, she baked bread. On other days, she made cakes and pies. On still other days, there was canning to be done, or just general dinner preparation. Dinner was, of course, the main meal of the day. Huge dinners, really. Chicken pie. Roasts. Roasted chicken. Ham. Occasionally, pork chops. And side dishes – carrots, rice, potatoes, bread, beets, vegetables I can’t even name, there were so many. And the desserts were plentiful – pies and cakes and cookies and squares…

And in the summer, there was gardening. Always gardening. Her garden spanned at least an acre, and had all manners of squashes and zucchinis, carrots, beets, turnips, beans, peas, lettuce, radishes, spinach, raspberries, cherries, blackberries, currants… everything you’d need to run a farm without having to ever go to the store. And the flowers – the flowers were amazing.

Nowadays, this is not the scene. Now, my grandfather is gone, and my grandmother is getting too old to really look after herself and cook much any more. There are no more cattle or chickens. Her garden has shrunk to a tiny size and she doesn’t grow a lot of complicated vegetables any more. She still grows some, because she can’t not have something to do during the summer, but the mass-producing gardens of days past are gone. She has to take medication for her heart and bones. She naps a lot more now. And she watches television – something I remember her deliberately NOT doing when I was young.

Going back to the farm this year will be sad, for me. I fear the changes. But I long to go so badly – I miss it fiercely. It is the most beautiful place in the world. In the summer, it is green and warm and lush. In the winter, it is a snowy landscape wearing a majestic mantle. In spring, it holds such a promise of new life that your heart could burst, and in the fall, the unimaginable explosion of colour and the show the trees put on is unforgettable. Every aspect of that place burns in me, and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to be anywhere else. I suppose most of us have places like that from our childhoods, where time seemed to go more slowly, and adventure lurked behind every corner. Now, living in the city, going to work in my car every day, and dealing with countless people (always people) it seems like the magic of life may be gone.

A lot of the time, I can just forget about it. I can trick myself into thinking that such a fantastic place exists and I’m not there is probably just a dream or something I saw on TV. If I thought about it every day, I’d drive myself insane with longing and the pain of separation. So I just don’t think about it. I try to distract myself, I have a little yard, and pets, and friends to talk to. But times like this, when I’m so close, and I know I’ll be there in almost 24 hours, my mind cannot focus on anything else. I remember every little detail from when I was a kid, playing with my cousins every summer, building hayforts in the barn and looking for the kittens. We would take long walks in the forest, following the brook or looking for the old collapsed sugar shack. One year, we found it, all broken-down and sunken-in, and a skunk had made his home beneath the ruins. We found salamanders in the brook, and little minnows. And if you walk up the brook to the source, you can find fools gold, iron pyrite, glittering in the banks. One year, we followed the brook all the way down to the lake, too, and since we were in shorts, our legs were cut by the sharp sedges growing near the outlet. We didn’t care. We were invincible. Time meant nothing, and age was as vague a concept as the end of summer.

We picked apples in the orchard, we touched the electric fence with a piece of grass to dull the shock, we looked for wild gooseberries. We made little pathways through the raspberry canes, looking for the “best one”, as if any of them weren’t the most succulent things you could expect to find growing anywhere. We laid in the grass, we played cards, and we didn’t care that we were missing television. We “helped” with the baking. We did the dishes as quickly as we could so we could get back outside, to play.

And even now, when I go back as an adult to that paradise, I feel that I might still be myself, that person I was becoming when I was a child. Most of the time, that person I could have been is hidden now, crushed a little by responsibility, dimmed by disappointment. In the city, you learn not to be generous, you learn not to extend yourself to those who will certainly take advantage. You learn to hide your feelings, and keep to yourself. You learn to give only what you have to in order to get ahead. The insanity of all this seems unnoticed by everyone here, so you just go along, trying not to act out of place.

That’s not how I wanted to live my life. I want to be the generous person I was as a child. I want to give everyone everything, and trust them unconditionally unless they prove I cannot. I want to breathe deeply, instead of this shallow breathing forced by the constrictions of business wear, proper conduct, “civilization”. I want to know my neighbors, have them over for tea and pie I baked myself with fruit I grew in my own garden. I want to work hard every day and fall into bed at the end of those days, tired but feeling good about everything I’ve done. I want to feel sunshine on my face, and stave off the cold of winter by chopping my own firewood. I don’t want to “get ahead”, or “make something of myself” – I just want to live a good life.

See you in a week, if I come back.