They always are

I have just recently realized that I am married to a gnome! 

Why didn’t I notice this before? 

It was only after he grew a beard; a wonderfully white and gnome-ish beard, that I realized what had been hiding in plain sight all these years.  Ah, but now it all comes together.

Would a gnome be a wood carver?  Yes

Would he be on a first name basis with birds? Absolutely.  That’s a given too.

Would he be a tree whisperer? Of course, they always are.  

Tea helps

Life happens. Tea helps.

Hot

 “It’s not HOT hot,” my husband says, handing me a mug of tea. “It’s just hot,” he adds by way of clarifying. 

Diamond dear

In 1977, beside a lake as blue as the sky, with leaves twirling down like confetti, my smiling boyfriend placed a diamond ring on my finger.  In the spring of 1978 a glittering wedding band was added and neither ring has ever left my hand. They have felt like constant friends. 

The other night as I sat reading in bed, my rings caught my eye and I duly admired them, turning my hand to catch the light.  Lovely.  It occurred to me that I should take them to a jeweller and have the claws checked. How sad it would be to lose a stone.  

The next evening as I sat in the same spot with the same book my subconscious self who is apparently scanning and noticing, jolted me out of my reading trance. I had a feeling of trepidation as I raised my left hand and slowly turned it over. 

Gone. 

Six tiny golden claws gripping absolutely nothing. 

My husband was as stricken as I. 

Isn’t losing something dear a jolt?

“It’ll be alright,” I said, “At least I still have you”

floor show

An Achilles tendon injury has placed my husband on the couch with his foot up. Ice has been involved, and a heating pad by turns. It tends to flare and heal so that he is alternately, immobile, hobbling, limping, or gingerly walking.
On the weekend, while he was in a gingerly walking stage, we struck off for Aldergrove Lake Park.
We took lawn chairs and parked ourselves on a grassy rise overlooking the water.
Dragon flies patrolled the pond edge.
A turtle on a log was using solar power to plan its afternoon. 
An aggressive red-winged blackbird was the floor show though, as it chased cedar wax wings off of the bull rushes, and out of the reeds and away from the shrubs and out of the trees. Its flute-like, reedy call shrilled over and over.
Bullfrogs added the lower notes and our ears hummed with the sound of a thousand bees on the wild rose and blackberry blossoms.

seeing

My husband has carved some pretty amazing ducks and birds but it is these little whittled creatures that I love the most. His ducks ripple with life, their feathers etched and curving, eyes agleam, and they are truly beautiful, but I love to SEE the marks of the knife. I love to SEE the grain of the wood. I love to SEE through the eyes of the carver.

wonders abound

I'm learning to carve!!
My husband kindly cut a blank out of basswood with a birdish shape.
He generously hunted out his carving knife and handed it over.
Turns out you hold the knife just as though you were pealing an apple or potato!
Hey, another rare moment when life itself is a transferable skill!
I have noticed that three exclamation marks have made it into this short post.
It's because at the intersection of learning and creating, wonders abound!
P.S. It's not finished yet. Many more whittles required. So far, no band-aids required

righty tighty

My husband relies on his reading glasses.
When the tiny screw holding an ear piece in place fell out it was a mournful moment.
You can't make a quick trip to the optometrist for repairs if you are hunkered down, social distancing.
We peered at the carpet. Well, I peered. My husband needs reading glasses to peer.
We got down on our hands and knees.
We got out the flashlight.
We used the light on our cellphones.
We slid our hands over the carpet searching by braille but to no avail.

I have a pair of reading glasses that is missing a lens.
It is now also missing a teeny tiny screw.
Of course, to transfer that little screw from one frame to the other, we had to find a screwdriver first that was also teeny tiny.
Hazah!!!
I knew just where to find one.
I had just finished sorting and organizing.
Now when does life stand and sing in unison like that I ask.
Not too often but as I held the old frames and twizzled out the needed screw I felt grateful.
"Maybe you should do that over a plate or something in case you...," he suggested.
".....drop it."
Which of course I did, right on cue.
More peering.
More flashing light and fingertips on carpet.
The vacuum roared over the floor.
The dust as fine as cornstarch was dumped onto a bag and more braille ensued.
A crumb.
A crumb.
Yep.
There it was.
I washed it so carefully.
Gadzooks.
And managed to balance the teeny tiny screw point in the right spot whilst turning the teeny tiny screwdriver.
Is it righty tighty lefty loosey?
Yes, thank goodness.
I tweaked it into place and my husband can peer now too.
He is wood carving today.
He doesn't need his glasses for that.

deeply gaze

My eyes were on the wooden bridge where a man leaned against the railing.
Not my husbands eyes though.
His gaze was already aligned with the strangers.
They spoke in unison. "There's an owl."
Perched on a curved branch hanging over the bubbling creek, was an owl. A Barred Owl. It stared solemnly at us.
We whistled softly at it and hooted but it just blinked.
I wished my grandchildren had been along. It isn't often that an owl perches where it can be admired and scrutinized.
I remembered walking with my daughter and the children on a long ago afternoon and being startled by a bird suddenly swooping between the trees, right across the path where we were walking in the dappled light of a heavily wooded park.
It was a giant bird.
A Great Grey Owl.
Silently, it swooped back towards us, and up into the branches beyond.
There it perched in all its magnificent, regal greyness.
What a huge bird.
No wonder they are called Great Grey Owls.
It stared and stared at us and we were just as impolite.
The children and I stood in a row and hooted and hooted.
The eyes of the owl never left our faces.
It began to feel a little unnerving.

My husband went back to the woods with me the next day, hoping to see the Great Grey Owl but alas, the branches were bare.
We hooted and whooted and did hear owls calling but none came for a closer look.

I'd like to be an Owl Whisperer.
I'd like to stand and call, and wings wide would silently sweep.
Black glistening eyes would deeply gaze.
And I would hear with my heart.

very silent

Wooden chickadees, carved by my husband and painted by me. These ones are very silent and sober, not at all like chickadees in Campbell Valley Park.

had to be there

"Teenagers are getting arthritis," she exclaimed, her emphasis on the word teenager. "It's because of the texting," she added incredulously, and I imagined a generation of seniors unable to grasp their canes.
Isn't eaves dropping a revelation?
When I began to tell my husband what I had just heard I began to laugh and couldn't stop.
It was because of Far Side. I suddenly remembered an old Far Side comic about a Boneless Chicken Ranch.
I think you had to be there.

infused with hope

”What should we throw out today?” I ask my husband happily.

We've been striking a blow for serenity.

We've been simplifying our foyer.

Now those two statements might not seem remotely linked but they truly are.

Our entry way (foyer) has been making a very bad first impression on visitors to our home for an entire decade.

It has been dark and dingy and dusty. 

Dust always settles where indecision or apathy reign. 

This time it was likely a bit of both. First, indecision which left unchallenged gave way to apathy.

All that changed this spring when I made a decision. The wall paper had to go.

In fact, I made the decision in the very split second that I reached out and twitched a strip of paper off the wall. And then another.

Every time I descended the stairs for the next week or two, (or three) I twitched off another piece and then another.

I am married to a man who can catch a ball, even one thrown a bit on the wide side by me, and run with it. 

And make a spectacular touch down.

I should have taken 'before' pictures.

I'll take 'after' pictures though.

My husband has accrued so many brownie points that he could bank them for years to come.

He is a very hard working and particular man and I treasure his hard work for what it truly is, a large and lavish bouquet.

Our entry feels so different now.

So open and infused with hope.

no time at all

My favourite home reno show on TV is Fixer Upper. JoJo and Chip make it all seem so appealing and worthwhile to smash your house to bits with a hammer. It's not just the grand reveal at the end that's inspiring either, but all the decisions made along the way.
It has made me glance about my own living room with a jaundiced eye.
Our fireplace mantel has always struck me as a 'Before' sort of mantel, not an 'After.'
Not really a focal point.
Not really a reflection of our interests and passions.
Over the decade we've been in this house, we've cast about ideas for the fireplace.
We've pondered built-ins and built-ons and built-arounds.
We've considered paint and rock and weathered wood.
This spring, very suddenly, it seemed like the time was right.
Perhaps it was because I found at long last, a completely black fireplace screen. Or perhaps, it was because some projects just need to hang on the vine and sweeten in the sun.
Once a project is ripe and ready, the path seems to clear before your eyes.
Paint seemed called for.
And a more substantial presence.
After that, one thing led to another.
My husbands carved ducks seemed to be exactly the right thing to add to such an important spot.
A quilt will be next.
It is taking shape slowly on the vine right now but it'll ripen up just fine in no time at all.

team work

I came out into the bright sun and headed across the parking lot to my car.  Standing by the door, key in hand, I found myself staring in my car windows. Was it really my car? The key didn't fit.
I tried again.
Nope.
I peered at my license plate.
My car alright.
What in the world?......
I walked around to the passenger side and unlocked the door.
I reached across and unlocked the driver side.
Back I went, and into the car.
I didn't really think about the lock driving home.
I just assumed the lock had seized up.
Just needed a squirt of oil.....
When I climbed the stair at home, I mentioned the lock to my husband.
He disappeared out the door in a flash.
Moments later he appeared.
It was just as he suspected.
A broken key was jammed in the lock.
He headed for his shop bench and I headed for Google.
I've come to think of Google as The Wise Man of the Mountain.
My husband headed back out armed with a handful of lock picking sorts of things.
I hunkered down in front of the computer and watched a youtube video showing Nine Ways to Remove a Broken Key.
My husband toiled on.
When he returned to the shop for smaller tools,
I tried one of the nine ways but it just didn't work without a second set of hands.
Back he came.
Grimly he crouched by the car door and squinted at the lock as he gripped impossibly small tools with his big hands.
He didn't want my help.
He didn't want my suggestions.
He didn't want the broken key to be in our lock.
There are shifting dynamics in marriage.
I suppose it is because even though we are married to the same person for many years, even though our friendship remains constant, our inner life does not.
It shifts and changes.
There was a time when I would have resented my husband not gladly accepting my help,
not welcoming working as a team.
On that day, I just felt pity.
And, when he disappeared yet again in what I could tell from experience was getting close to being his last desperate effort, I hunkered down before the door and tried one of the Nine Ways to Remove a Broken Key again.
Just as I jiggled the broken piece of key to the edge of the lock, my eyes crossing, my husband appeared like the cavalry over the hill and plucked it out with tweezers.
Team work.

dizzying circle

At just past midnight last night, it occurred to me why Darth Vader never remarried.
That moment of clarity came as my husband slumbered on.
Snored on.
It also occurred to me that the person who falls asleep first wins.
It is a contest that I am destined to lose these days.
The cycle of life has swept we along in a dizzying circle and brought me back to my youthful beginnings as a married woman.
I didn't sleep well then either, not because of Darth, but because my ears were tuned to the slightest stirrings of my children.
To their faltering step, their coughs and squeaks.
I slept in fitful batches then and dreamed in fragments.
The days and years passed by.
My aged mother lives with us now.
She is caught in a cycle of her own.
She has become as vulnerable as a little child.
I lay awake and listen for her faltering step.
I sleep in fitful batches and dream in fragments.
And I listen grimly to Darth.
This morning,  tea in hand, my husband defended himself by reminding me that I too snore.
"I am woman, hear me roar," was my callous response.
Lack of sleep will do that.

old man of the forest

We gaze out our dining room windows into the arms of trees.
A green thicket of waving limbs.
This morning, as we sat sipping tea and talking, my husband chuckled.
In the dark and light of branch and sky and shadow, he could clearly see the face of a man.
An old man with a flowing beard.
And as the wind gusted, the man seemed to talk, or sing, his beard twitching, his face alive with movement.
"Show me," I begged.
"Well, you'd have to be sitting here," he began, as I promptly perched on his lap.
Sure enough in the distant green, a face appeared.
The old man of the forest.
He lives in my yard!!
I'm not positive he was talking or singing.
He looked like he was chewing gum.
A big juicy wad of spruce gum.

Tolkien came to mind.
And Ents.
Our old man of the forest looked quite old.
Ancient and wise, breathing the morning in and exhaling winter's wind.

up on the rooftop

Our house has become a curiosity.
We are reroofing.
Now when I say we, I really mean my husband.
He is the one who is brave enough to scramble all over the roof and dangle over the eaves.
When the ladders went up, passing cars slowed.
When the scaffolding took shape, people far below on the street gazed upwards, their steps faltering.
As the stacks of shingles along the peak have diminished though, neighborhood interest has not done likewise.
Today two woman perched on their car bumper and watched my husband's high wire act.
Moments later, the occupants of a car craned their necks, not to check for oncoming traffic, but to check on the progress near the peak.
I imagine the span of time this project is taking may be part of the fascination.
Work and diminishing daylight hours have transformed my husband into a weekend warrior. A weekend after weekend after weekend warrior.
This has not been a sprint but a marathon.

My mother forgets things now.
This allows her to enjoy the sensation of surprise each time fresh volleys of thumps and bangs echo down from the rafters.
I have become like a kindly recorded device announcing that her son-in-law is on the roof.
Today for some reason, I found myself telling her it was Santa.
Must have been the frost in the morning air.

and our dad

We used to holiday with our children.
Our little Volkswagen Rabbit would be packed to the rafters with camping gear and our daughters would scramble into the back seat over mounds of bedding and jackets. They always seemed wedged in like after thoughts, poor things, when really, it was all for them that we went. It was fun though.
Getting out of the car at our eventual campsite was like hatching from an egg, or like some strange time lapse; door hurled wide, the back hatch as well, and an endless stream of gear unfolding and unfurling and filling up the available space.
Getting there really was half the fun, as long as we made the ferry connections.
Even the wait at the terminal had its charms. Comics would emerge from the cache of back seat goods, snacks too, and windows would roll down.
People watching can be pretty entertaining too and we would all hunker down for the duration, somehow content and eager at the same time.
I remember one summer morning  at the ferry terminal, waiting with all of the other cars, line after endless line. As yet another cluster of teenage loveliness drifted past the car window, a man in the next aisle could contain himself no longer. He hooted and leered and lolled out his car window.
My young daughters exchanged glances in the backseat.
"And OUR Dad watches birds," said one to the other.

congratulations always

Yesterday it became official.
My husband is now a Library and Information Technician with a Systems Technology concentration.
I know this for a fact because I was there when a host of enrobed students marched in to Pomp and Circumstance and he was one of them.
He was wearing that strange hat that all graduates wear. Not as strange as the Doctors on the platform but still an odd fashion statement. The tassel dangling in front of their eyes I get though. It must be there to symbolize a goal, always just inches away but ever before your eyes, sort of like a carrot before a pony. At least that's how I see it.
Being a student is never easy and being an older student changes that fact not a whit.
Hard work is hard work.
Discipline takes discipline.
Balance is...... well, impossible for the student. Sacrifice and focus hold sway.
But, he made it.
He hung in there.
We all did.
And the reward at the end is something I never expected.
I knew I would feel relief.
And pride. He made the Deans List.
I knew I would feel jealous.
But I never knew I would feel this sense of newness; this sense of surprise.
I wasn't sure at first what I was feeling and then I knew.
I am seeing my husband through a new window, framed by his accomplishment.
I am recognizing something within my husband that Brian Minter, the University Chancellor referred to in his address to the graduates. He said that there is one thing that will allow you to rise above the ordinary and that one thing is passion. Find and pursue passion he urged.
I am feeling so happy that my husband has stirred up the passion that lies deep within.
I looked up the word congratulations and it means to take joy in the success and good fortune of another.
Congratulations always my dear.

even more

Brave little pansies bloom almost year round here on the coast. They are one of the first flowers in the garden centers in spring and one of the last that fall gardeners tenderly tuck in as the clock ticks ever onward.
I must admit, I have a special affection for pansies.
For all pansies.
For those giant velvet faces, eyes sooty black, for the dainty violas and wee little johnny-jump-ups. They stir the earliest of memories for me.
And although at first glance they make me think of my mother, they make me think even more so of my husband. They are one of his very favorite flowers.
Opposites attracting as they do, I joyously embrace our common love of the pansy. How delightfully simpatico of us.

This mini quilt was one of a rash of small quilts made in response to a guild challenge.