“Like a bird on a branch”
dress-fitting
I just accidentally erased the most darling photos of CJ, taken by AppleApple, after Fooey had styled his hair into a swoop across his forehead. I’ve lost other things over the years, too, to digital carelessness or breakdown. It’s always hard to believe something’s gone, when it’s gone. But those comical photos are gone. Loss is a painful emotion, complicated by regret. I’ll get over it in a moment. This post will suffer from their absence, however. Photos affect tone, and those were really funny photos. But these photos are lovely too, taken during a recent fitting; my mom is making AppleApple a dress with puffed sleeves and a puffed skirt (that she might wear to my sister’s wedding this summer).
There’s a commercial running during the Olympics right now with the tagline: Your someday is here. It shows athletes ready to compete, while in the background run faded film scenes of their child-selves, practicing their sport. I find myself curiously affected by these ads; I’m not moved to tears, I’m moved to a faint frisson of panic. Your someday is here. Yikes. Talk about pressure. It also whispers to me: your time will be here and gone before you know it. (I’m obviously in a cheery headspace.) Because doesn’t it also shout: Everything you’ve worked for has brought you here! Celebrate! Enjoy the fruits of your labours!
This week, the Globe and Mail ran a comprehensive obituary on Mavis Gallant. It was heart-breaking to read that she spent her last decade “plagued by ill health and poverty.” Poverty. That word guts me. I reflect on the number of times I read and re-read Gallant’s stories during the past decade, for inspiration, for pleasure, and to admire and try to parse her technical skill as a writer, and how that pleasure received should have been repaid, somehow. Yes, I’ve bought her books over the years. But considering how many times I’ve read them, those purchases were bargains. How to repay a writer for her gift? How to offer appreciation that affords a great writer simple comforts as she ages? Gallant said in an interview in 2006 that “luckily” she had the temperament to be a fiction writer: “I never wanted to own anything — like a bird on a branch.” So maybe I’m projecting my own worries about future financial stability onto a writer who perched above all that, like a bird on a branch. She always noted that her name, Mavis, meant song-bird.
Mavis Gallant was 91 years old when she died.
It’s hard to believe she’s gone. Loss is a painful emotion, complicated by regret.
A series of unfortunate events
I’m writing this post in bed, because it’s bedtime, and because I can, thanks to my precious and much-appreciated laptop. On a day when I spent five hours driving children around to their various activities, waiting outside of their various activities, and folding laundry during the down-time, I just feel like writing before bed, please. (I also spent at least an hour this afternoon watching Canada play Latvia in an Olympic hockey game, while live-texting results to my brother, who was in a meeting, so I really shouldn’t complain about time wasted.)
I want to tell you about the worst hour in recent memory, which happened yesterday evening, just upon arriving home from AppleApple’s soccer practice. I’d made advance plans to meet my siblings for a drink, basically as soon as I’d arrived home from AA’s soccer practice, and I was really looking forward to sharing a pitcher and catching up, as some of us haven’t seen each other since Christmas, and also because the day had started rather on the wrong foot when a dog made a deposit in the front hall, which I stepped in without realizing, and then tracked around the house in the dark, while up at 5AM to take AA to swim practice. Which meant that when the deposit was discovered, in the light of day, to have been tracked all around, I was on my hands and knees cleaning it up before breakfast, which put me in rather an unpleasant mood.
Suffice it to say, I was looking forward to that pitcher of beer with my sibs.
We pulled into the driveway. Kevin appeared rather mysteriously from the back yard, looking a bit perturbed. “What are you up to?” I asked, still, in my imagination, about to depart.
“DJ seems to have escaped,” he said.
“And DJ’s so dumb!” Fooey said worriedly. “She won’t know what to do!”
Well. The panic began. Children circled the house, calling for DJ. I thought I heard her collar jingling. We searched the snow forts in the back yard, the garage, all the rooms of the house. It seemed apparent that she had indeed escaped, likely through the back gate which had been difficult to close with all this snow. The pitcher of beer began to fade, along with the plate of nachos I’d conjured up to accompany it. I decided to eat a leftover baked potato while Kevin drove off to widen the search. AA and Fooey ran around outside awhile longer, then they both came in and AA announced that she was putting on pants. She was still in her soccer kit. Pants sounded like a good idea. She popped in again not long after to say she was going “that way.”
Kevin drove up, no dog.
“Where’s AA?” he asked.
I thought she was in the front yard, or maybe around the corner. But no. Apparently, she’d gone further afield. And that’s when the real panic began. Kevin headed out in the truck, again, this time to look for our lost daughter. She is 11, I reminded myself.
“But she has a terrible sense of direction!” Fooey reminded me.
I gave her twenty minutes, and then I called the police. Perhaps an over-reaction, but it was dark and growing late, and cold, and my kid had left the house in soccer cleats, in an emotional state, and she hadn’t come back. I was kind of losing my mind, actually. Meanwhile, a couple of my sibs turned up and offered to drive around looking for AA, too, even though the snow banks were so high that no one driving by could spot either a child or a dog on the sidewalk anyway. My sister confided later that she thought, “We’re going to be driving around looking for AA, and we’re going run over DJ.”
Kevin’s texts had ceased.
The kindly dispatcher did not berate me for permitting my 11-year-old to search by herself for our lost dog in the snow after dark while wearing soccer cleats. Or that I couldn’t manage a detailed description of her coat. Or I didn’t know the colour of my lost daughter’s pants!
The back door whammed open. There was AppleApple, in tears because she hadn’t found DJ. I let the dispatcher know that the search was off (sorry, DJ).
“I couldn’t find DJ!”
“It’s not DJ we’ve been looking for–it’s you!” I told her, to her complete astonishment. She’d been so focused on searching (and of course she knew that she was perfectly fine) that she had no idea she’d been gone for a good half an hour.
Meanwhile, Kevin was slow to return. Turns out, he’d gotten into a small car accident on a side street. Yeah, it was that kind of an hour.
But the thing is, all’s well that ends well. AppleApple came home, safe and sound. The truck suffered a minor paint scrape that’s purely cosmetic. And not long after, a woman called to let us know she’d found DJ. In fact, she’d picked up DJ not far our house, probably within minutes of DJ’s original escape. DJ, who is not known for her arresting intellect, was crossing the street. (“And she’s colour blind, so she can’t even see when the stop lights are green or red!” Fooey noted.) Kevin and the girls went to pick her up, halfway across the city. DJ responded with typical DJ-ness to the arrival of her relieved entourage: she was largely indifferent, but agreeable to riding home in the car (she loves riding in cars). It appeared that she’d been nicely brushed during the interlude.
But I heard all about this later because I’d left with my siblings for that pitcher of beer. Which at that point seemed hardly sufficient, although it had to do. I was too tired for genuine debauchery. And my brother Cliff is the father of a four-month-old who rises at 5:30AM, so he was too tired, too. And my brother Christian had to leave as soon as we arrived for a soccer game. So it wasn’t quite what it was going to be, in my imagination, and I didn’t bother with the nachos. But it was still a good ending as far as I’m concerned.
The play’s the thing
Yesterday, I played soccer.
Though it may sound odd to say so, it feels like the most significant thing I’ve done so far this year. I played soccer! I feel like a different person, while playing soccer. I feel stronger, smarter, freer, unencumbered. It’s the play I’ve been missing. Play, as in doing something purely for the fun of it.
I haven’t played soccer since August; since the concussion. I was terrified to try again, and wouldn’t have without a lot of encouragement from Kevin and AppleApple, both of whom claimed to want me on their team (flattery always wins; actually, so did our team, but that was mostly due to AppleApple hammering in a pile of goals). My touch was lacking, after six months away, but everything else came back in an instant: strategy, positioning, speed, and the ability to run pretty much forever. We played for two hours, and all I could think was: I have to do this again. Soon.
The players were mostly girls from AppleApple’s team, with some siblings and dads, and me, the lone mom. I was a bit surprised to be the only adult woman on the field. It was so fun playing with these highly skilled, extremely polite and friendly girls (ages 11/12); I’ll bet they’ll still be tearing up the soccer field when they’re my age. When I was their age, there wasn’t anything near the same level of skill-development available for soccer-loving girls, (or probably for soccer-loving boys, either, at least in Canada); I played one season of house league, the summer I was 11. Opportunities have improved for the athletic girl.
I’d love to see more adult women participating in sports: being a participant, a teammate, a competitor gives you a different way of seeing yourself. I think these girls will grow up to be participants, carrying the confidence of their skills. I wish for the skills, but when I get on the field, I find the confidence. And that’s what I’ve missed all these months of not playing: that different way of seeing myself, of being myself.
Mavis Gallant has died. I’ve been reading and re-reading her stories since discovering her in university. How to describe her style? Her stories are like complex riddles that I’ll never entirely puzzle out, and that is their appeal. They offer a clear view into worlds I’ll never know, perspectives as precise as they are unfamiliar. Her stories evoke mysterious emotions, and I think that’s why I’ll never tire of them. She writes of bafflement, of striving and failing and not understanding why one is failing, of being the outsider–always that. My favourite Mavis Gallant story is “The Iceman Going Down the Street.” I’d like to tell you to read it, but only if you’ll promise to read it at least ten times, perhaps over the course of several years, so that you’ll know it and know again, differently, each time.
Goodbye, Mavis. I’ll read you forever.
Our team is what? DYNAMITE!
This is how it feels to win the cup final.
And also this.
This is how it feels to be brought along on a Saturday morning to cheer for your sister.
And also this.
This is how it feels before the medal ceremony following a hard-fought 1-0 game.
This is how it feels to coach your daughter and get to give her a trophy (and a hug).
“Our team is WHAT? DYNAMITE! Our team is WHAT? DYNAMITE! Our team is tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick BOOM! DYNAMITE!
“Their team is WHAT? Down the drain. Their is WHAT? Down the drain. Their team is glug-glug-glug-glug-glug down the drain.”
Hm. I hadn’t heard that second verse till just now when I asked Fooey to tell me their team cheer, so that I could record it here for posterity. Any comments, Coach Kevin? (In fact, for the record, the whole team was very courteous and sweetly pleased in victory, and they did say that part of the cheer really quietly.)
“Now I have two trophies!”
“You do?”
“The other one is for Highland Dance!”
[The other one is really more of a plaque. And I am a terrible mother. I have a strange haunted feeling that I chucked said plaque in a fit of purging several months ago. Oh, how I hope that I am wrong, now that I know its value.]
My Fooey: brave defender, who played like she was twice her size.
Art to the rescue
The “best school project ever” continues. AppleApple is studying nature art, and has looked mainly at the work of Andy Goldsworthy, a well-established British artist who works with materials found in nature to create ephemeral installations, mostly outdoors: they aren’t meant to last (though he does photograph them, and they’re definitely worth seeing, if you have time to click on the link).
As AppleApple was working on her project, we discovered that Meghan Harder, a young local artist and recent graduate of the University of Waterloo’s fine arts program has been creating nature art right here in Waterloo. (The Canadian Mennonite featured her on the front cover in January.) So we arranged to meet Meg Harder yesterday afternoon in Waterloo Park, where a year ago, with help from some friends, she’d built a “human nest.” With her teacher’s permission, AppleApple got to skip out of school early, and we trekked through snow banks and found the spot where the nest had been made.
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| Here’s what the nest looked like a year ago |
Here’s what the nest looked like yesterday
After our hike, Meg and her boyfriend generously spent another hour with us, drinking tea and answering AppleApple’s questions. (I had a few too: I couldn’t help myself!) I’ve given very little thought to conceptual art, and we talked a lot about art that tries to communicate an idea or generate a conversation. For Meg, the process of creation is more important than the final creation. She also talked about the way in which nature art invites passersby to interact imaginatively with something they may not even realize is art, making it accessible to an audience outside of the traditional gallery setting, where we all know that what we’re seeing, if we go there, is art.
AppleApple took lots of notes. I’m fascinated to see how she’ll synthesize her material. I also need to find a way to print these photos, which she’ll be using for her display. Any ideas? The deadline is fairly tight, and I want to get this bit of the project (the part where I’m helping out) done this weekend.
one of AppleApple’s installations, after the snow fell
A note re health: Antibiotics to the rescue, again. Thankfully, I am feeling much better.
I felt well enough to go to yoga last night, although I struggled at times. The thought that soothed me, as I repeatedly fell out of a balancing pose, was “this is the body I’m in.” I just kept telling myself that, and it made me feel better, calmer, maybe. I want to be like my character Aganetha in Girl Runner, who I think fully and without judgement inhabits her body, born with a talent for awareness of its strengths and limitations. Doing a regular practice like yoga puts me in touch with precisely where my body’s at on any given day or hour; sometimes I feel strong, and sometimes I feel weak. Sometimes my strength comes as a surprise, on a day when I’ve felt discouraged or down; and sometimes it’s my weakness that comes as a surprise, although not last night. I knew I was feeling crummy. I would like to think that success is not limited to the days when I feel strong, rather success is the willingness to continue practicing, and to meet my body where it’s at. These bodies of ours do such amazing things. I don’t believe they’re just vessels for our spirits, they’re the expression of life itself.
Even right now: I’m able to write because my body is stilling itself into quiet focus.
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One last thing. My dad forwarded me a review of The Juliet Stories in the MQR (Mennonite Quarterly Review), which is an American journal. The reviewer engages with the book as both a personal and a political work. It moved me to tears. This link is to a PDF file that includes the review (scan down, as it’s toward the end). Here’s the last line: “After reading The Juliet Stories, I’m convinced Snyder should be named one of the top women writers everyone must learn to know, given the power of a text that questions the permanency of borders, and the ways journeying somewhere new might cut each of us wide open.”