A short story by Madeline Walker

For four weeks, Brian Butler taught my husband how to play guitar on Zoom. I don’t know how my husband found Brian Butler, but when I came home one day from grocery shopping, Stan was enthusiastically tuning his old Checkmate guitar. He has dragged that guitar around all of our married life, yet it’s rarely been out of the case. It was good to see him plucking at the strings. Especially as I’ve been down lately. What with Covid and all. Since I met my husband in 1974, learning how to play guitar has been on his to-do list. Whenever we’re packing to move house—six times in 46 years—he takes the guitar out of the case, noodles around on it, lays it on the sofa or leans it up against the wall for a few days, even gets out some chord charts. Then as the packing boxes start to pile up, he quietly puts it back in its battered case and it gets moved to the next apartment or house.  

I washed my hands after I unloaded all the groceries and threw away the disposable mask.  After I shut off the water, I could hear him picking out a tune, faltering. Going into the living room, I asked him what’s up? and he said I found this great guy on the internet, name is Brian Butler. And? Well he’s going to teach me how to play, finally, on Zoom. We had just signed up for a Zoom account and my husband was eager to use it as often as possible to make the twenty bucks a month worthwhile. Okay, when do you start? Tonight at seven. But we always watch the Good Wife at 7. Well, can’t it wait a night? The Florricks aren’t going anywhere. 

As 7 o’clock got close, I was curious about how the guitar lesson would go, but I knew my husband would be shy about it. He went into the basement with his laptop and the guitar, just before 7. I watched a cooking show instead of the Good Wife—Bobby Flay gloated over beating somebody at making waffles. 

I assumed music lessons were half an hour. So I was surprised when 7:30 came and went. So then I watched a real estate show Love it or List it, where some terrible asbestos problem blew the budget. I’ve gotten the formula down pat now. Everything is going well with the reno’s then, Bam! There’s a crack in the foundation, asbestos in the kitchen, a dead rat behind the wall.

When my husband’s head bobbed up the basement stairs just after 8, I looked over and could see he was animated. He practically danced into the living room. How did it go? He’s great! Just great! This guy is fantastic! He had me playing a bunch of chords at the end of an hour. And he has some great ideas about life too. 

I think my husband felt sheepish because he went into his study then and shut the door for a while. After about five minutes I called through the door, wanna catch a Good Wife? Just one episode? We have time before bed. Okay. And he came out and we didn’t discuss guitar lessons for the rest of the evening. For that matter, we never mentioned it the rest of the week. 

I’ve been depressed lately. What is there to be cheerful about? I force myself to go to the grocery store so I will see another living person other than my husband. It’s hard to get out of bed. The birds who come to the feeders give me some pleasure, especially the Northern Flicker who has been making the rounds. That and coffee, snacks, television, and wine keep me going.

During the second lesson, I was nosy enough to go down and stand outside the closed door at the mid-way point. I could hear laughter and some guitar playing and then more laughter. I hadn’t laughed with my husband for weeks. No wonder he wanted to learn how to play guitar from Brian Butler. Brian Butler sounded fun. I went back upstairs and made microwave popcorn, poured a water glass full of red wine and watched the rest of Love it or List It.  

The next week, my daughter called me to see how I was doing. She deals cards in Vegas, and she’s been calling me once a week since the Covid to see how I’m holding up. 

            “Mom, I found this dance therapy called Gaga, and I think you’d like it. There are classes online. You just move your body around, and it’s very liberating. I wish you’d try it—I see lots of older people doing it. I’ve been doing it myself, and I feel great.”

         “Gaga, as in Lady Gaga?” I was proud of myself for knowing who that person is. 

            “No, it’s some Israeli guy that named the dance method after his first word when he was a baby.” She laughed. “That’s probably everybody’s first word. Either gaga or googoo. Was it mine?”

            “No, yours was blackjack.” That was my attempt at a joke because from a very young age, my daughter said she wanted to be a card dealer in Vegas. But the joke fell flat. She kept on about the Gaga dance until I agreed to go get my iPad and look it up, try the streaming classes. 

            “Please try it out this week. It’ll cheer you up, Mama.” She called me Mama when she was feeling concerned about me. So I agreed to give it a try. 

I didn’t actually have an intention to try anything new, but when my husband started to get ready for his lesson Tuesday after dinner, taking out the guitar and noodling around, I remembered the Gaga class. I didn’t tell him, but when he went down to do his lesson with Brian Butler, I opened my iPad and found the class, paid with PayPal, and got a glass of wine. Nobody could see me, I had my camera off and Stan wasn’t there. I could do what I wanted. So I see a bunch of people moving in strange ways, and the leader calls out to them, “Okay, be a feather, I want to see your feathers.” 

Do you know what? I love being a feather. I could see myself loosening from the Northern Flicker’s wing and floating, twirling on a pillow of air, my downy bits fluffing in the wind. I shut my eyes and my quill lowered to the carpeted floor as I listened to the deep voice of the teacher encouraging me to be something other.

The week after that, Tuesday night, I got ready. I found the old djellaba I bought in 1977, folded in plastic and set on a high shelf in the closet. We both bought djellabas in the night market on that trip to Marrakesh—Stan’s is purple and mine is yellow. I rarely wear it, but it reminds me of a canary feather, so that night I poured a glass of wine, took off all my clothes and pulled the djellaba over my bare skin. I had bookmarked the class on my iPad so I got there quickly, paid my $12.50 drop-in fee, and soon I was dancing like a feather. Nobody could see me, but I could see a grid of young women, light on their feet, prancing about in their living rooms, shaking their manes. And one very old couple being frail feathers together. 

The teacher was calling out instructions “let everything drop away….shake out your legs and your arms. . . what’s left? Just the core of you. Let your core lead you,” he called in a deep voice. “Follow your limbs. . .  follow your fingertips…” I forgot about my wine, I was so busy following my fingertips around the house, then I followed them back to the iPad propped on the coffee table. Next, we were clouds floating and changing shape, and after that we turned into hollow seed pods, skipping along, carried by the changing wind. I was so busy being not myself that I didn’t hear Stan come up from the basement. He stood at the top of the basement stairs—I don’t know for how long—watching me. When I saw him from the corner of my eye, I got flustered and shut everything down. 

You’re early tonight, I said, and he agreed. It was the last class and they finished a bit early. So I went quickly down the hall to our bedroom and changed out of the djellaba and put on my sweat pants and sweat shirt and we watched an episode of Good Wife. It’s funny, but we didn’t talk about what I’d been doing. He didn’t ask and I didn’t tell. I felt vaguely ashamed, as if I’d been doing something forbidden, ashamed of the way I’d followed every instruction of the Gaga teacher as if he were Franz Mesmer himself. Ashamed at how I had enjoyed my bare breasts and thighs rubbing against the old Moroccan cloth as I moved through the house, not even remembering that I had a self. It felt good, but bad. 

That brings me to last night. After dinner, I loaded the dishwasher, and I was wiping down the counters when Stan called up to me from downstairs. Hey, Darlene, will you do me a favour? Put on your djellaba? And come down here? I have something I want to show you. A strange request, I thought, but I shrugged my shoulders and yelled down the stairs okay, Stan. After the other night, I’d draped the yellow djellaba over the chair in our room and it was still there. I let my clothes drop around me in a heap, and I slid the long garment over my body. I liked how my naked skin felt next to the cool, rough cotton. 

I picked my way down the stairs, my bare feet caressed by the textured carpet. I stopped and really ground my feet into the nubbiness of that carpet, like I was scratching a deep itch on my soles. The swivel chair was positioned away from me, so I couldn’t see Stan’s face. When he turned around, I saw he was wearing his purple djellaba and he held his old Checkmate in his hands, poised, ready to play. I laughed out loud to see my husband in his djellaba. Beside him on the desk was his open MacBook and a man’s face was looking at me from the screen. This is Brian, Stan said, gesturing at the face, and the man, who had drooping moustaches and a sad face, waved at me. I could see now that he had a guitar in his hands, too, and he tapped the wood on his instrument, one, two three, then both Brian and Stan started to strum chords and sing.  

“Looking at the world through the sunset in your eyes / Travelling the train through clear Moroccan skies. . . . ”  So this was what Stan had been practicing all these weeks, behind closed doors! Our song from long ago. I started to sway and dance as I had for the last two Tuesday evenings, as if nobody was watching. My spine turned into seaweed, and I was floating in the North Atlantic Sea while Stan sang the old song in his cracked voice and Brian’s deeper, suppler voice came from the computer’s speaker as he watched me. I wasn’t ashamed anymore. I moved my arms and legs and my torso, following my body every which way it wanted to go to the music. “Wundtja know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express / Wundtja know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express/ They’re taking me to Marrakesh. . . .” I started to sing with them, “All on board, that train, All on board that train…” 

My husband got out of his chair and put his guitar down on the floor and then it was just Brian playing and singing as Stan followed my lead. We waved our arms and danced. We twirled around the basement room. Soon we were turning into seaweed under the ocean. Jellyfish spun around us, salty ballerinas, translucent yellowy orange with long fronds and frills. Then we became the jellyfish. When I moved my body, Stan mirrored me, and our fronds waved and sparked with electricity. I looked down at his pale slender feet gliding across the pocked tile, purple cloth draping his bony shins. We moved together, jellyfish mates under the long fluorescent light tubes, sinuous in our coloured dresses. The song was over, and we heard rustling coming from Stan’s computer, but we didn’t look over to see what Brian was doing. Now it was just the buzz of the tubes above us as we rocked in the deep. My husband’s crooked grin lit up the greenish underwater world.   

This week, I moved my office to the basement—a desk, a rug, a chair, lamps, a bookshelf full of  books about writing and editing, my computer and my big monitor. I like working down here – I feel more efficient and less distracted than when my office was upstairs. I am getting ready for self-employment as an editor.  Part of my moving process included going through some old papers. I came across a bag of letters from the 1960s from my adopted grandmother. Phyllis took my mother, who felt neglected by her biological mother, under her wing in the 1950s. She cherished “Ginger” and paid for her psychotherapy for years. When my sisters and I were born, we always called her Grandma, and she showered us with love, attention, and gifts. 

In August 1965, when I was six, our family moved from Berkeley, California to Toronto. For several years after that, my grandmother and I wrote frequently—we missed each other. Her letters were many pages long: typed, double-spaced in Courier with cross outs here and there. She typed on thin paper, then folded the pages into sixths so they would fit into small envelopes. Much of what she wrote was about her several cats. She usually had three or four cats at a time, mostly strays she found or who found her. She never tired of describing their behaviour, their looks, their sweet antics. Today, I slipped my hand in the bag and pulled out a letter dated February 12, 1966. 

Mercury retrograde has been disrupting communication since the end of January, and I’ve felt those disruptions—messages gone astray or misinterpreted. But the serendipitous reach into a bag and the pulling out, like a rabbit from a hat, a message from fifty-five years ago to the day—feels special indeed. The magic lingers today. She wrote,   

                                                                                                     February 12, 1966

Dearest Madeline:

You make me feel very lucky to have such a good little letter-writer for a granddaughter. I have two  letters to answer, just as I did the last time I wrote to you. That means you are twice as faithful in your correspondence as I am. 

            You wrote to me on January 20^th, “I don’t think I can think of much to say”, but don’t every worry about not having anything to say. If you only say “Dear Grandma, I was thinking of you and wanted to say hello. With love from Madeline.” I will be thrilled to get your letter. Just to know that you were thinking of me and just to see the envelop in the mailbox with your writing on it gives me such a big happiness when I come home from work. I get lonesome for all of you, even though I am kept busy. 

            I got some pictures of all of the family with my valentines, and I can see you have lost a tooth. You didn’t give that news, and anyway I suppose it didn’t seem like much news to you. But everything that happens to each of you is news to me, because I try to keep track of you in my mind and think about how you look. You may be surprised that in just the six months you have been in Ontario when the pictures were taken, you have all changed a little. You have probably grown taller too. All this is happening a long way from me, so I have to depend on your news about yourself to fill in the picture of you in my mind’s eye. 

            I have just re-read your two letters to see if there is anything in them I should reply to at this time. (I ought to know them by heart, I read them over enough times. The first reading is more like a mental gulp, and then I read them over and imaging you writing them, and it makes you seem closer than five thousand miles.)

            Well, right off, your letter of January 20^th gives me a subject to write about. In it you said that you didn’t think you would ever draw like Kathy—and this is true, I hope; because only Kathy will every really draw like Kathy. Anyone else who drew like Kathy would only be imitating here, and you know that an imitation is never as good as the original thing. You will draw like Madeline, and I think each of you are pretty wonderful, and each of you has a definite quality in your drawings that speaks for you—it is the beginning of a “style”, as it is called in the artistic world. . . . 

            It was in the pencil portraits of Ginger and Kenneth that the “you” in your drawings was particularly effective. . . . the pencil drawings were quite remarkable, I thought, not because they were as expertly drawn as you might have thought they should be—but because they were as they were genuine portraits in the fullest meaning of the word, not only a physical resemblance, but you caught something of the total character of your mother and father. Not only would I recognize them immediately if you hadn’t labeled the drawings, but they were well proportioned and had had an inexplicable quality I can only call “aliveness”. This means that you are both perceptive and have control over your pencil—two  qualities a great many grown-up artists which wish they had.

 I hope you learn all you can about the techniques of drawing and painting, but I hope even more that you hold onto the precious quality of being able to draw what you see without self-consciousness. I hope I don’t bore you with all this talk about your drawings but I just took at the envelope and looked at all of the paintings and drawings over again and I feel just as delighted with each of them as I did the first time I got them.

I was struck by how loving and lively her voice is. It reaches to me over decades, skipping over death. Her affection touches me afresh, like fingers brushing against my cheek. Her words demonstrate a lively interest in me as a person, a lovable girl with talents and potential, and her enthusiasm, her vigorous voice, still warms me as anew, even though her hands folded these pages more than half a century ago.

The letter goes on, the next four pages all about her cats: Thumbelina, Pinky, Batu, and the newest addition, Duckling. She describes driving to the mail box , and getting out of the car to mail a letter, when a small black cat comes up and mews at her. She asks the neighbourhood children walking to school whom the kitty belongs to and none of them know. She tries to shoo the cat away, but when Grandma opens the car door, the cat slides in beside her, “settling herself into a comfortable little bundle and starting to purr.” Then she writes, “What could I do? I turned the car around and took her home.” 

Grandma writes she is “altogether the most unprepossessing little black kitty—and that is how I started calling her a little ‘Ugly Duckling,’ which has now been shortened to ‘Duckling’.” On page 5, after descriptions of Duckling’s warrior stance with the other cats, Phyllis writes, “She adores the sheepskin rug, standing ankle deep in the fur, purring and making biscuits with a trancelike expression on her little face.” I can see that little black cat kneading even now, deep in her pleasure, having found a refuge.

Grandma ends the letter at the end of page 6 with rhetorical flourish, “Now I come to your lovely valentine…Thank you, darling. It is one of the most original valentines I ever saw, and I dearly love what you wrote on the back. Many kisses to you for making it and sending it. …

Goodbye little sweetheart. This is almost like reading a book, isn’t it? Tell me if you get tired reading long letters and I’ll try not to be so long-winded, or divide my letters into three separate epistles.” And in pen, “Lovingly, Grandma Phyllis,” with many x’s and o’s across the bottom of the brittle paper. 

Tears clumped in my throat when I read the last paragraph. “Goodbye little sweetheart.” I’d forgotten her affection for me; I’d forgotten what it’s like to be a child treasured by an adult. I’d forgotten the warm articulate voice that spoke to me in Courier typeface, that set me firmly in her pink spotlight, never talking down to me, using language so beautifully and naturally, telling me her stories. Perhaps reading her long letters planted the seed for my love of reading and writing, my love for stories, my affection for the long dash. I’d forgotten what it’s like to have an adult consider you—a small child—valuable and important, your burgeoning talents of great interest and worth remarking on. 

In the universal way of impermanence, the relationship slackened over the years, which was not surprising, given our distance from one another and my encroaching adolescence. But that little magic pocket of emotion inside of me has been lit up, rosy pink, these last 24 hours. A lamp-like glow that bathes me from the inside out. I feel loved. 

Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you. Thank you for reading.

By Madeline and Jude

On Monday, our provincial health officer extended social gathering restrictions until January 8, 2021. You could almost feel British Columbians deflate: a long sad sigh. At first we were distraught. We must forgo visits with our families and friends for Christmas. My sister Jude had been planning to come visit, to meet the new puppy, Marvin, and hang out and cook together as we usually do. Distress softened to disappointment. Then acceptance. Instead of connecting in person, we would connect by writing together about kitchens and food.

A kitchen is the beating heart of a home, the place where people gather, where alchemy takes place. As well as providing us with nourishment every day, cooking is our creative outlet. It can be a calling. I believe it is my sister’s calling.  Jude is an intuitive, skilled cook who seems happiest in her kitchen, cats nearby, CBC on the radio. I love sitting at her wooden table, watching her work or standing beside her, chopping on the big scarred board that’s been in our family for decades. Lately, my sister’s been musing about the well-loved tools that comprise her essential kitchen.  And I’ve been appreciating Socca, a flatbread originating in Southern France.

Jude:

My essential kitchen tools have been collected over many years of home cooking. I have deep affection for many of my well used pots, pans and various items. As much affection as one can have for an inanimate object. Which for me, is a lot. Most of these things have been with me for years, or in some cases decades. They have survived in my kitchen because they are dependable, hard-working, and often beautiful.

The cooking vessels that get the most use in my kitchen are simple. I have a two cast iron pans, a 10” and a 6”. I believe I bought both in thrift shops. They are heavy and solid with great heat distribution and if you treat them right they are non-stick.  I also have a wok that has been with me for over 30 years. I bought it in China town in Toronto and it travelled across the country with me, it has served me often and well. It is great for stir frying, deep frying and all types of  Asian noodle recipes. I think my favourite vessel is a dark red enamel coated cast iron Dutch oven that I use almost daily in the winter months. It sears, simmers, braises, and is perfect for my slow cooking life. And it is beautiful.

I have a thing for wooden spoons. I have them in all sizes and shapes and from many corners of the world. They are a perfect prize to pick up while travelling, light and easy to carry . They are also lovely to handle and practical. They don’t scratch pans, they don’t get hot and burn your hand, and they age beautifully. 

Cutting boards are another essential tool. I have a few, mostly wood. My favourite is a 2” thick riveted board that was a wedding gift to my mother. So it has always been part of my life. I remember  using it as a Ouija board when we were teenagers, there are still some marks we made on one side. My kind of heirloom.

And now for knives. These tools are my best friends and my foe. I am admittedly bad at sharpening. I just can’t seem to get the angle right and often end up with a blade worse than when I  started. So I get mine professionally sharpened when I can. My long-time favourite is a 8” Henkel with a riveted handle my mother gave to me many years ago when she could afford it and I couldn’t. It is a good weight for my hand and when it is sharp it performs marvelously. I also love my wooden handled wide tooth serrated knife, another gift from my mother, it slices through a crusty loaf or a ripe tomato with ease. I always have 3 or 4 paring knives around, just the cheap ones. Very handy. 

A fairly recent addition to my kitchen is my mortar and pestle. It is large and very heavy, solid granite with a smooth salt and pepper exterior and rough interior bowl. At first I was a little shy and didn’t have good results. After watching some of my favourite tv chefs I figured out that you really have to have some patience and put your back into it. I now use it all the time. I compose my Caesar salad dressing in it, make pastes for curries, and my electric spice grinder hasn’t been out of the cupboard for a while. The end results are very rewarding.

 Until I worked in a commercial kitchen I didn’t appreciate the relevance of tongs. Tongs become an extension of your hand, and next to knives are the most guarded tool of a chef in a busy kitchen.

So, along with a set of stainless steel measuring cups and spoons, a whisk, a rubber spatula and a fancy digital scale, these are my essential kitchen tools. 

Madeline:

Socca. What a revelation—I can have “bread” in 45 minutes!  When Michael and I started reducing carbohydrates in our diet, I discovered this traditional grain-free flatbread from Provence. Socca’s few ingredients are chick pea flour, water, olive oil, salt, and pepper. You’ll need a good frying pan—I use our 12-inch All-Clad, but seasoned cast iron works well. You can use a 10-inch pan for a creamier, thicker bread, but I prefer thin bread with a crusty edge.  

Place the pan on the middle rack of your oven and preheat to 450 degrees F.

While the oven is preheating, add the following to a bowl:  1 cup of chick pea flour (we use Millstream variety, local to BC), a cup of lukewarm water, a couple of tablespoons of good olive oil, about 1 tsp. of salt and several grinds of pepper. Mix it and let it sit. It should be the consistency of pancake batter.When the oven is preheated, carefully remove the pan with good oven mitts, pour olive oil to coat the bottom, then pour the batter into the hot pan. Return the pan to the oven and bake for 20 minutes. When you remove the pan from the oven, use kitchen tongs to pull the flatbread out of the pan and onto a rack. The edge will be lacy and crunchy, the inside of the bread velvety. Socca is delicious on its own, as a side to soup or curry, in a grilled cheese sandwich, or topped with almond butter.

Mark Bittman (New York Times) adds onions and herbs, fried lightly in the oil before the batter is poured into the pan. David Lebovitz adds cumin. These additions are delicious. But when the bread craving comes upon me, I make it fast, plain, and simple.

I haven’t had the energy to write blog posts lately because I am writing a novel, so I was very happy when my sister sent me a piece she wrote this week, inspired by reading Elizabeth Hay’s wonderful memoir, All Things Consoled: A Daughter’s Memoir. The thrifty mother in that book made Jude think of our Mom, so she wrote this story called, simply, “Thrifty.” Thank you Jude, for being the guest blogger today and for memories of our mother.

by Judith Walker

 My fridge is in a sad state. My previous fridge was original to the over twenty year old mobile home I live in. It tucked in nicely between the dishwasher, the overhead cabinets, and a wall. Replacing it was not easy. Fridges these days are huge, shiny double doored affairs, enough space to store food for a village. I do not want or need one of these, and I do not have the space. I was happy to finally find a fit, but my joy did not last long. Almost immediately the door shelf broke and had to be fixed with packing tape. Next, the precariously balanced glass shelves gave away. So now I have a cold cavern with one shelf and a couple of bins in my attempt to keep it organized. It is noisy and annoying but it does its job of keeping food at a safe temperature, so I will keep it until it dies. I dread that day. Things are piled high in there, multiple recycled containers with this and that, bags of cheese, squashed plates of leftovers, at least the veggie drawers are still intact. I have had a tiny dish of cranberry sauce buried in the pile since Thanksgiving dinner over a month ago. I refuse to get rid of it. I have some local turkey cutlets in the freezer that I will cook eventually, so I may use it…why buy a whole can for that? And as far as I’m concerned turkey needs cranberries.

 I hate waste, the older I get the more I grieve our planet that is drowning in garbage. I am disgusted by our consumer culture, the cheap throwaway products, the over packaging, the careless greed. I am thrifty, but not obsessive (yet). I am my mother’s daughter.

 Mom was born in 1929, the eve of the depression. She grew up in hand-me-downs and shoes that didn’t fit. Her parents were immigrant farmers, there was always enough food but it was a hardscrabble life and being the sixth of seven children and a girl she was made to feel a burden and not an asset. She was picking grapes on the farm by age seven and her dad taught her to drive when she was twelve so she could “take Mama to town.” The only book in their house was the Bible, something she loved to tell us while reclining amongst her overstuffed bookcases. Some of her few joys as a child were once- weekly piano lessons and a pony she shared with her much favoured older sister. She did not attend school till grade five, I’m not sure why, I think her parents did not let her go to school barefoot and needed her on the farm. Against all odds she became a respected professional in the academic world. Her thirst for knowledge and a chance meeting with a woman who would become her mentor and best friend propelled her towards a path of self-respect and achievement.

 When Mom became a wife and young mother times were hard. Dad worked at menial jobs while pursuing a degree. Mom was at home raising her girls and trying to make ends meet. One of her oft told stories was when she shared her accomplishment with a friend after making a stew from a lamb neck. Her friend replied, “Virginia, you are making a virtue of a necessity.” Later in life she told that with pride.

 In those early years Mom revelled in her maternal role. She made us dolls, doll clothes, tiny furniture from popsicle sticks, perfect for our cardboard box tiny houses. She set up an easel in our back yard and we had unending recycled paper from old bill boards. She baked bread and let us help turn the leftover dough into cinnamon buns. Mom let us express our wild side. She encouraged curiosity and exposed us to as much art, music and books as she could. She also cut our hair and sewed our clothes. Mom was not a lover a fashion at this point in her life, clothes were utilitarian and needed to be functional, and cheap. She took apart her old dresses and somehow made them into shifts for us, to be worn over a turtle neck and tights and passed down the from sister to sister. I don’t remember ever feeling deprived. When we moved from funky California to an upper middle class neighbourhood in white Toronto my friends and peers were kids of doctors and lawyers. They had school clothes and “party clothes,” dresses in pastels with poofy arms and white shoes. My best clothes were a kilt, a turtle neck, knee socks. And my little cowgirl boots. That is what I wore to parties with my rich friends. I remember being gently mocked, I didn’t really care. I knew and they knew that I was  a cool kid.

 As my mother’s career advanced so did her income. She bought a shitty house in a great neighbourhood and made it into a beautiful home. I remember her, in her fifties, in a bikini on a hot summer day pulling up tiles in the back. She loved that house, that home. She lived there for over forty years. Almost half of her life. She never stopped her thrifty ways. She bought the best, but always on sale, she never paid full price. She was an ardent recycler until her last years when she told me “I just don’t give a shit any more.”  Can’t blame her.

When I visited her a few months before she died we talked about what would happen to her things when she died. At one point she opened a drawer in her kitchen, the junk drawer. There was a nest of hundreds of elastic bands in the corner. She looked at it and looked at me, and in a plaintive voice she said “I just wish I could find somebody to give these to!”

 Oh mom. I told her nobody wants your old rubber bands. Look mom, they have lost all of their elastic! How long have been there? Decades? Oh mom. Poverty mentality.

 I am sorry I was so dismissive. I honour my mother in many ways.  I will never stop missing her voice. I  have a beautiful sock doll she made for me. And some of the tiny furniture. And a drawer filled with twist ties, well used baggies, and rubber bands.

I’ve started several blog posts in the last few weeks, yet I talked myself out of finishing every one of them. I told myself that writing blog posts about quotidian things is frivolous during this pandemic. If you are writing in these difficult times, you need to have something profound to say. The news is serious, life is serious, people need succour. But lately I have realized that our small everyday acts of creativity are far from frivolous—they nourish us and keep us sane. So bring on the poems and the sewing, the novels-in-progress, the drawings, the baking, the quilts and the aprons. The blog posts. And all of the mistakes we make as we create. All of it is keeping me going right now. 

Having a Hallowe’en birthday is special because birthdays are special. My mother acknowledged the Hallowe’en side of my day of birth by buying a pumpkin-shaped cake for my first birthday, and later on by decorating with orange and black streamers, putting a jack-o-lantern on the table, or letting us bob for apples. Later, when I became a mother, my own birthday was eclipsed by trick or treating, which was absolutely fine. 

I have been thinking a lot lately about perfectionism and birthdays, and how perfectionism has nothing to do with being perfect, and about how children’s birthdays can be a breeding ground for perfectionism, which is a soul-killing characteristic that I wish to banish in my life. 

For some reason, it was important to me—to my very identity as a mother—that I design fun, exciting, wonderful birthday parties for my kids. Decorate your own cupcake with five colours of icing and a dozen candy toppings. The year I made a cake from the pages of Women’s Day magazine featuring a swimming pool made of blue Jello and a path made of chocolate covered ladyfingers. We rented a Bouncy Castle twice—had it set up in the back yard for the August birthday one year and the front yard for the September birthday a few years later. We didn’t have lots of money, but I always figured out a way to pay for extras like that. We put on a teddy-bear tea party one year (bring your teddy-bear!) and  a trip to the reptile zoo another year (poor reptiles! What was I thinking?).

Oh yes, the year of the hockey card cake—I painstakingly cut the players from hockey cards then glued the cut-outs to popsicle sticks so they could skate across the white icing on a sheet cake. That was also the year we hired John Demers, a children’s musician (kind of a low-rent Raffi, but actually better than Raffi) to play his guitar and sing in our yard for the children. There was a magician one year. I’ll never forget the tears I cried over making the bright yellow Big Bird cake—I borrowed the cake tin from a friend and worked so hard to get the icing the right colour. All this effort for a one-year old child who didn’t know the difference! Who probably just wanted to lick the bowl, that would have been enough. There was the year Greg and I blew up something like a hundred balloons so the boys could fasten paper bags on their feet with rubber bands and play the “stomp the balloon game.” I’m sure my fancy birthdays drove Greg crazy! 

And then as the kids got older and grew into adults, I upped my cake game and kept trying to perfect the Butter Brickle Cake, the recipe from Dufflet’s Bakery in Toronto. Three layers of pecan meringue with caramel sauce and whipped cream. I experimented with baking the meringue so it wouldn’t stick to the foil. Spray it with Pam first? Maybe parchment paper instead of foil? Higher temperature? Lower temperature? Maybe bake them a bit longer?  Was the caramel sauce too runny?  

All of this work at making birthdays wonderful is fine and beautiful. A noble intention: I wanted my kids to feel special, happy, and loved. None of this is wrong. But what gets me is how I tried so hard. The anxious perfectionism driving my doing is what I’d like to eradicate. I think I took a neurotic pride in these exertions, looking down my nose a little at the families who ordered a pizza from Pizza Hut and an ice-cream cake from Dairy Queen and let the kids play in the yard for a couple of hours and called it a birthday party. But at the same time, I envied the relaxed looks on those parents’ faces—they were enjoying themselves, sitting in their deck chairs drinking beer and laughing while the kids made their own fun. No need for hired entertainers, fancy party bags, or even paper invitations. Just call a few friends and tell them to come on over. No need to try so hard.

The word perfection comes from the Latin noun perfectio and the adjective perfectus, both of which are derived from the verb perficere, “to complete.” So perfection is tantamount to wholeness, completeness, and—to use the Buddhist concept—suchness. Something is perfect simply because it is. It is perfect just as it is, mistakes and flaws included. (p. 29)

When I read this paragraph yesterday in Vanesa Zuisei Goddard’s book, Still Running: The Art of Meditation in Motion,  I felt a click of recognition. My therapist has been talking lately about Madeline at capacity. Being all of myself, allowing all of myself to be. To feel my suchness. That’s perfection. 

I wish now I’d been a bit more relaxed as a mother. Perhaps more “being” and less “doing.” More carefree. Welcome the mistakes. Don’t worry so much. Only make a fancy cake if I felt inspired to, not because I was driven by a Women’s Day image of what good mothers do.There’s no shame in buying a cake.

If I have an intention for the year ahead, it is to stop trying so hard, to relax deeper into my suchness. Instead of pushing myself into each new day with a list of “shoulds,” I plan to pause and see what emerges from my depths. What do I, in my perfection, want to experience today? 

Butter Brickle Cake 

This cake, by Dufflet Rosenberg, is a sensational combo of pecan meringue, rich caramel, and whipped cream filling.

Pecan Meringue

6 egg whites
1.5 c. white sugar
4.5 oz. toasted pecans, finely chopped (you can toast in a cast iron fry pan on top of stove, or in oven for a few minutes)

Caramel Filling

1 c. white sugar 
.5 c. buttermilk
.25 c. butter
1 tbsp. corn syrup
.5 tsp baking soda
few drops vanilla

Whipped cream filling

2.5 cups whipping cream 
.25 c. dark rum OR a tsp. of rum flavoring

Meringue: whip the egg whites in large bowl til soft peaks form. Add 2 tbsp of the sugar and beat until stiff peak forms. Fold in remaining sugar and pecans. Line baking sheets with parchment paper, and spread three 9-inch rounds on the paper. Bake in 200-degree oven until firm.  

Caramel filling: in small heavy saucepan combine all ingredients. Sir and cook over med. heat until sugar dissolves and mixture boils. Boil without stirring until mixture reaches soft-ball stage (236 degrees – if you’re not sure about what this is, look online or in Joy of Cooking).  Remove from heat and cool 2-3 minutes. Spread mixture evenly over meringue layers, reserving .25 cup for decoration. 

Whipped cream: whip cream until stiff, fold in rum or flavoring. Spread some cream on each layer and then pile the layers up. Cover top and sides with remaining cream. Decorate with butterscotch swirls and pecan halves. Refrigerate until serving. Makes about 12 servings.