Give a boy a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a boy to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Give your sister a fish and freak her out with the glare of its glassy dead eyes. Somebody better teach your mother how to prepare and cook a fish from scratch if you keep this up, kid. (I am quite impressed -- I do not think I have ever caught a fish.)
Nova Scotia
May 07, 2012
April 16, 2012
Rite of Spring: Mayflowers
Nicholas Roerich, Kiss to the Earth.
On Sunday we went looking for mayflowers. They're called mayflowers but they come out in April here in Nova Scotia, at the tail end of winter. Their tiny pink and white blossoms, so delicate in comparison to the thick hairy brown stems and broad rusty leaves that protect them, smell heavenly -- sweet, wild and, beyond that, indescribable. Finding them -- and you can only find them in the wild -- means that it is definitely spring.
Luke, unconvinced that mayflowering would be very exciting, brought his Lego Ninjago sword, which he used to fight off a number of invisible monster skeletons he happened upon. He also explained to me, as I peered into the underbrush looking in vain for tiny pink and white buds, that just the sight of his sword would be sure to terrify any bears we might stumble across, as surely at least a few of their ancestors must have been killed by swords. I nodded and kept looking for mayflowers, wondering how the bears might've communicated this ancestral fear of swords to their children. Sylvie, pushed along in her stroller by her father, bounced over tree roots and babbled about owls.
After some fruitless searching, we came out onto the hiking trail that has been made out of a defunct railway line. Luke and Vivi, who by now had tumbled out of her stroller, started to lag behind and to complain. Grampa's sharp eyes managed to discover three tiny unopened mayflower buds on the side of the trail. "Maybe it's still too early," I said and suggested that we make a quick detour to the nearby town graveyard, to see the children's grandmother's grave, before going on to the playground.
Luke's grandfather's name and birthdate are inscribed to the left of his grandmother's but of course, as Grampa is still with us, there is only a smooth empty space where the date of his death would go. "Who knows? Who knows? Who knows?" said Luke cheerfully, as he pointed one by one at the blanks where the month, day, and year will be.
Vivi caught sight of a small gravestone carved in the shape of a teddy bear. She ran off toward it. I went after her, to make sure she didn't take any of the flowers away. It was the grave of an 8-month-old baby. "We love you, silly bird" was inscribed along the bottom. Sylvie giggled and stumbled away in her bumble bee boots. I followed her, looking down at my feet, my eyes suddenly filled with sunlight and tears. And there, in the dead brown grass all around the children's grandmother's grave, were dozens of mayflowers.
Thank you, Gramma Linda.
March 31, 2012
Updated Weather Maxims for the Age of Global Warming
Image from here.
Traditional Maxim: If March comes in like a lion, it'll go out like a lamb. If it comes in like a lamb, it'll go out like a lion.
Update: If March comes in like a lion, it'll suddenly turn into a lizard, then briefly into a Labrador retriever, then back again into a lizard before it goes back out again like a lion. If March comes in like a lamb, it'll be served with mint sauce.
March 05, 2012
Things Grampa's Grandparents Told Him
Gorgeous image of snowflakes by Yuji Obata, found here.
"The old woman is shaking her feather bed." Grampa mentioned this one just now because enormous soft snow flakes are falling from the sky. "What old woman?" I asked him. "I have no idea," he said. "Just the one who lives in the sky," said Luke.
"The devil is beating his wife." Grampa explained that this one was said when it rains while the sun is shining. "Is the rain supposed to be the devil's wife's tears?" I asked, wondering about the poor devil's wife -- why have I never heard of her before? -- and her wretched life. "I have no idea," said Grampa.
"Freckles are caused by raindrops falling on your face." How did they get this one so very wrong? It's too much sun on your face, not rain. Unless, like me, you were simply born with them.
"If you go to someone's house and when you walk in the door, there is a broom lying on the floor in front of it, whatever you do, do not bend down and pick it up." "Why not?" I asked. "Because it will prove you are a witch. Just step over it," instructed Grampa. As a boy, Grampa himself visited the houses of people who performed this test on unsuspecting guests. "They were known to be fanatical about witches," he explained.
See also: the devil's darning needles.
(I get these in dribs and drabs. "Is that all you can remember right now?" I just asked him. "Yes, that's all," he said. But while I was searching for a good image of snowflakes, he came back into the room. "Did I ever tell you I wasn't allowed to watch during pig-killing time?" he asked me. "No," I said. "Why weren't you allowed to watch?" "Because if you pitied him, he wouldn't die," said Grampa. "I was allowed to watch after he was dead.")
February 02, 2012
January 29, 2012
Carrot Lobster
This image arrived in an email called "Lobster for Vegetarians and Poor People." Around here, where lobster fishing is an industry, lobster is for poor people, or at least it used to be. Kids used to be embarrassed to have to take it to school in their lunch boxes.
January 13, 2012
Snow Day
Not much school this week for residents of the crooked house. First there was the annual twenty-four-hour stomach flu vomit-a-thon on Wednesday, then the early lunch-time dismissal on Thursday due to an impending snow storm, and now school is cancelled today while they clean up the streets. We just made the obligatory snowman. He looks like he is bleeding because we tried to use red smarties for his mouth but they proved to be too irresistible and had to be eaten, leaving nothing but red dye smears across the snow. We replaced them with uncooked rotini noodles, which aren't as palatable.
Nothing says "fun" like a giant fake smile.
See, she actually does have a normal face.
"Ah yes, the 2010s," future photography historians will say, "when the likes of hipstamatic made even joyous childhood activities such as the making of snow angels look bleak and ominous."
The angry birds are quite pissed off about it. Well, the red one is. The green pig is mildly annoyed, the blue bird, concerned.
October 23, 2011
For My Brother
Wish you could come home.
