Christmas window displays in department stores seem to suspend time, stopping us in our determined shopping tracks and sending us into a revery of memory and a bit of nostalgic longing.  Simpson’s in Halifax, Eaton’s in Toronto, Ogilvie’s in Montreal, Woodward’s in Vancouver. Elves, toy maker’s shops, Santa and the missus checking lists, baking cookies, animals on Hans Brinker skates seeming to  glide on mirrored glass, one leg pinned to the ice, the other stretched out behind like a scarf in a stiff wind. All animated. Hammers gently up and gently down on a train car or a doll’s shoe,  a bunny pirouetting on a skate, defying the laws of physics in its languid speed or lack thereof , a woodsman in an eternal effort to chop down a Christmas tree with a tiny hatchet that always falls short of the tree trunk. A dozen alternating up-down-sideways and back movements, jerky and stiff – enchanting to kids and a lift to the hearts of adults.

And then there’s Mill Brothers in downtown Halifax,  the clothing and cosmetics store, not the singing group.

Our first Christmas season in Halifax lacked snow but was gripped with cold. I was walking home late one December night on the street side opposite to Mill Brothers store, and from a half block away, I saw the lights in the window and some small figures moving in the familiar slow manner of  old clockwork animations. I felt a lift and a brightening of my mood which has been less than sunny that first year home. A Christmas window display. I bounded across the street.

Some swear by instinct to save them from undue unpleasantness, but I lack that gene. If I had it, I would not have crossed that deserted street and trotted up the sidewalk to gaze in at the display. I would have kept on walking down the silent street, on to my home and its abundant creature comfort.

When I reached the window, I was buoyed  by the thought of a cheery little tableau. What I saw was a snowy scene of misery. There, in a little coffin, lay an almost dead Snow White, hands folded just below her heart which every seven or eight seconds would rise up briefly and fall back into her still body. Around her, seven distraught dwarfs silently grieved. Tiny fists were curled up close to their bright eyes as if to stop the teardrop crystals that had been glued to their cheeks. Snow White continued to lie in her chilly repose, her breast thumping out a weak swelling every three or four imagined breaths.  A few animals gazed on, bewildered and frozen.  It was horrible and sad.

I walked home pondering what kind of thinking compelled a merchant to say yes to that. Santa’s Workshop – no. Skating Bunnies – no. Victorian Family Decorating Christmas Tree – no. Dying Snow White – yes. Just the ticket.

When I reached the corner of my street, I cut across on a diagonal to save a second or two of time. As I stepped on a manhole cover, I looked down and read the embossed name on it. “Silent Night” it read. It was somehow sweet, and made up for the Mills Brothers Christmas Window, but I wondered how it came to be. “Silent Night” – a wish and a promise, I guess.

A wish and a promise, I guess. Before Christmas, I’m going to try to snap some pictures of the aforementioned scenes. Please write me if you have similar stories and/or pictures. It can’t just be Halifax, can it?

Here’s how it unfolded (abbreviated version):

All ducks were corralled and set in a straight line – studio, producer, engineer, musicians, manufacturer, and all the other details required to record and manufacture a CD. Photos – done. Artwork, design – ready to go. Printing of jackets (done in Quebec because of good prices, good service, guaranteed on-time delivery) all lined up.

Everything was ready. Final step –  the jackets. As promised, they were shipped on Thursday night and arrived in the local depot at 07:00 Friday morning…where they sat until Tuesday morning. We finally took receipt of the jackets and were able to get the whole project packaged and ready to hit the road with us.

Today, the 25th of November, I sit and wait for another package (that requires my signature before it is released). I can track the steps this parcel has taken since it’s departure from the warehouse. It started it’s journey in Shanghai on the 19th, made its way to Dieppe NB, the 22nd, by way of Anchorage, Alaska, Louisville, Kentucky, Mount Hope, Ontario.  Since the 23rd, it has been sitting in the local depot in Dartmouth waiting to be delivered.  Well, I presume that, because I see in the tracking info that it’s there and has not moved since arriving there. In the interest of fairness, the 23rd brought the first snow of the season and people stayed put. But yesterday was beautiful and still no delivery.

I picture a person going into a warehouse, looking at the parcels that wait to be delivered (need to be delivered, should have been delivered), scratching his or her head while muttering “Geez, thems a lotta boxes – gotta think on this for a day or two”. I know it can’t really be like this, but the image does pop into my head in a bitter, unkind fashion.

Say what you will (and do) about Canada Post, but they usually get parcels to me. And if they attempt delivery when I’m out, they either try again, leave it with a neighbour or hold it at the post office outlet, which is four blocks away, and easy stroll from my house. This is a breeze, compared to the 45 minute drive (which requires crossing a toll bridge twice) into an industrial and commercial maze.

I will leave the house today around noon, and I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that the courier will arrive at about 12:15. When I get home tomorrow I’ll find a little notice in the mailbox letting me know that I can pick my parcel up on Monday because the depot is closed Saturday and Sunday.

Just checked the tracking info for my estimated delivery time. Last updated: Yesterday at 09:44.  Shoulda guessed…

Well, what a whinging post this is. Some days are like that.

This works well, to my mind. I like hearing from people via this site. It reassures me that someone’s reading. Other than some of my family.

Today, on my page, I posted an upcoming event at the Carleton. Rankin, Church and Crowe will be performing there on October 19th. While posting it, I remembered the event invitation I sent before my show at the Carleton on March 14th. I think I had about 30 responses from folks who checked the “will be attending” box. A few “maybe attending”.  the night came, and I was very happy with the capacity turnout. But, in thinking about it later, I realized not one “will be attending” or “maybe attending” person attended.  Odd. Just sayin’.

I see where Rose Cousins is playing The Company House on September 3rd and 4th. Go see her…she’s good. Very good. Here’s the scoop on the venue:

The Company House
2202 Gottingen Street
Halifax, NS B3K 3B4

Phone: (902) 404-3050

I scrub on my hands and knees because I don’t think one can really clean a floor with a mop, unless one is not wearing their glasses. Without glasses, the kitchen floor looks pure and holy, like the only weight it has borne is dappled sunlight at 4:00 in the afternoon. Like no cat has ever walked on it let along coughed up a mole-sized hair ball. Like the fridge, stove and dishwasher are holding their breath lest they sully its bright broadness with a crumb or a drop of water.

Some things are better without glasses. Sleeping – better without glasses. Early morning glances in the mirror – better without glasses.

A year or so ago, while on stage with Cindy and Raylene and in a state of dreamy repose (forgetting, momentarily why I was there) I noticed neither of them were wearing glasses. It came to me in a shocking instant that they were wearing contact lenses! It was a hard moment. They were clear, bright, beautiful. There was nothing between them and the audience. Well, except for the microphone, several cords, little  pedals, monitors, the lip of the stage and approximately 15 feet.

There I sat, stunned with the self awareness that I was wearing glasses on stage. Glasses. Sweaty , smudged, back and forth slipping up and down glasses. It occurred to me that I had wasted a lot of make-up that night – and many nights before – because  no one could actually see me. It was in that invisible state that I decided I would get contact lenses. I, too, would be clear, bright and beautiful. There would no longer be anything between me and my audience. Except for: see above.

My helpful optometrist fitted me out with handfuls of little gel packs, some labeled R, some L.  In each, there was a lens. After repeated scoops of a pudgy finger in a little gel pack, I retrieved a tiny sliver of something that seemed like a cross between teardrop and a tiny blob of egg white. I balanced it on my right index finger, used my middle finger to pull down my lower lid and popped the little thing on to my right eyeball. Like wise the left eyeball. Miraculously, immediately, I could see quite a distance. I left the office thrilled with a new reality.

When I entered the car, I realized that I could not read the instrumentation panel. I was able to drive home despite the blur, still chuffed with my new status-  a person unburdened by glasses.

I denied the little nuisances that forced me to go out and buy drugstore reading glasses so that I could read, work at the computer and recognize whether I had an orange or a yellow pepper on my plate. I thought it was kind of fun that I had to get new non-prescription sunglasses because my prescription sunglasses were useless – dangerous even – when I wore the lenses.

It all went to hell the first time I played guitar. Lo and not behold, I could not see the frets. I needed my drugstore readers to see where my fingers were landing, thereby defeating the original purpose for getting the lenses in the first place.

I now own: prescription glasses, prescription readers, prescription sunglasses, non-prescription readers, non-prescription sunglasses and a little box full of R and L contact lenses.

So I wear my glasses on stage and take them off when perspiration causes them to slide down my…er…rather insignificant…nose. Sometimes I see, sometimes I don’t.

But for a day or so after I scrub the floor, I never wear them. Better without glasses.

Here’s an incomplete list of bad decisions:

• Took the advice of an aspiring make-up artist and ended up looking like a Geisha girl wearing a lipstick that was wrong. Very wrong.
• Once, on a whim in Montreal, had my hair cut and spent the rest of the trip eating take-out in my room and watching the real estate channel.
• As a child, wondering if my arm would flatten out, I put it in a washing machine wringer. This was a common childhood injury, but I remember – clearly – thinking “Uh-oh. If I don’t do something, my head’s going to flatten out”.
• Said no to a request for a Morningside* interview. Why? Peter Gwsoski was away on vacation, I would have been interviewed by someone else, and I wanted to wait until he returned. Of course, by the time he did return, the moment was gone, as was the the request.
• Being gullible, spent far too much money in hiring people who “just want to get the music out there” only to have them be unreliable, incompetent, of the vanishing variety, nagging or just too darn nice. Of course, I was the problem, or so they told me.
• Didn’t wear my suit jacket at a recent public event thereby revealing a waist so short that I looked like a bowling ball on stilts. To be fair, it was 95 degrees in the room. Also, my stilts aren’t bad for my age.
• Once, when opening for someone at the Chan Centre in Vancouver, (only after I sang the first song) discovered my guitar was unplugged, so I plugged it back in and did the whole song over again. This looked stupid which is not surprising because it actually was stupid.
• Didn’t turn on the individual translator at an opera and spent the whole evening wondering how so many people in the same room could understand Italian because they all seemed to laugh at the same time.
• Loaned my car to a neighbour who ran red light, wrecked three cars and destroyed my insurance rating.
• Let the same neighbour make it up to me by doing the repair work on my car.
• Out of courtesy, did not mention to him that he had wrecked my car twice: once the crash, again in the repair. And it wasn’t just the duct tape.
• Worked with a person who talked to animals and saw ghosts.  Yet, although I did not believe this to be true, I believed what the animals had said.
• Called a music industry type an idiot to his face. Well, who’s the idiot now! Hah!
• Wore rubber boots in Holt Renfrew in Toronto.
• Bought something in Holt Renfrew in Toronto.
• Had someone else return the something I bought in Holt Renfrew in Toronto.
• Did not take medication on time and paid the consequences, as mother might say – and in italics, too. As she might also say, I had no one to blame but myself.
• ….and too, too often, slept on the wrong side of the bed. On purpose.

But, I made no mistakes. Because (and here’s the Oprah moment!) I learned so much from these experiences. Here is what I learned from each of these experiences:

• You can aspire all you want but it won’t make you a make-up artist nor a Geisha girl.
• The real estate channel can be fun, especially in French.
• You arm will not flatten out in a wringer but it will hurt like hell for a long time and if you’re four years old you will need help in the bathroom.
• Say yes to CBC. It might not come again. It may not come again because it’s gone.
• When someone says it’s your fault, don’t always believe it. Unless you’re me. Then you’ll always believe it.
• Wear something long if you have a short waist. You may not think you have a short waist. But, try this. Sit on the floor with your legs extended out in front of you. Place your hands, palms down, on the floor at your sides. If your arms are bent at a 90 degree angle, you have a short waist. However, you may not, after this exercise, have to wear a longish top because you will be stuck there forever. Or, you can call a good yoga instructor to help get you off the floor.
• Make sure your guitar is plugged in. This goes for most electric appliances, but apparently some of us need to be reminded.
• If everyone suddenly understands Italian, you are at an opera,  and you too can understand Italian of you just read the program you’re twisting in ignorant frustration.
• Don’t loan your car to a loud-mouth neighbour.
• Don’t let him fix your car.
• Blackmail him.
• Don’t believe that someone can talk to animals unless the animals themselves confirm this.
• Lie.
• Wear rubber boots to Canadian Tire, not Holt Renfrew.
• Buy something at Canadian Tire, of only for nostalgia’s sake. Remember that they once had good service and knowledgeable staff, and sigh.
• Return something to Canadian Tire, just to p*** them off.
• Take your pills and shut up about it. No one cares.
• Don’t sleep.

Oh, and this just in…I drive a Prius. Too early to determine what the lesson in this, except perhaps that smugness has a shelf life.

Well, that’s about it for today. Unless I’m mistaken.

The coffee maker will save me from bad coffee on the road, and the worst of the bad (my opinion only – please don’t sue me): Tim Horton’s. My mother, when asked for her take on Tim’s coffee, replied “That coffee is just not my cup of tea”. Mum has a way with words. Hey, here’s a question: why is the Tim’s double-double so popular? Answer: because double cream and double sugar mask the taste of art gum erasers. Don’t ask me how I know.

So I have this little electric espresso maker now, and I will take it on the road with me next week. Last time I travelled, I was lodged in a “all suite” hotel, so I took my little stove-top Bialetti. Took a bag of ground coffee with me, settled into the hotel, had a good nights sleep. Woke the next morning, filled the Bialetti with cold water, put ground coffee in the little receptacle that fits in it, put on the top . Moved toward the stove to turn on the burner. Realized that there was no burner. No stove, in fact. A small microwave was tucked in a corner and I stared at it for what seemed a long time. I don’t know long I stood there – coffee maker in hand, stunned and confused. I know it was long enough to work it through in my mind carefully and come to the decision not to put the shiny bialetti in the microwave. I’m slow at 6:30 in the morning, and on that morning there was some desperation in play.

Word to the wise: not all “all suite” hotels are all suites. They’re “partial suite” hotels. They’re “microwave and beer fridge suite” hotels. They’re “we’ll give you cutlery, wine glasses, plates, bowls, pots and pans but no stove” hotels. They’re “we’ll charge you seven dollars for a bad cup of coffee” hotels. Word to the wise. And wise I’ll be with my new little coffee maker. Slightly smug, too, it’s turning out. I look forward to it all.

As said, second to arrive was the quilt. If I have the family tree standing right, the quilt top was made by my grandfather’s cousin’s wife, deceased a few years back. The quilting was done by her daughter, who, since her mother’s death, has taken on the project of quilting all the tops that her mother was unable to quilt. This one, the one I received today, is the second to last (and as we know from a few blogs back, it’s the penultimate). And it is a beauty. Double wedding ring pattern – lovely in itself – but the quilting is remarkable in that it’s stitched with tiny hearts that one can only see with close examination. Old colourful fabrics and a scalloped edging to give it a finish. These bits of material came from the clothes of relatives, and long ago friends of my mother, I’m guessing. She grew up in the village where the top was stitched and the quilting completed. In fact, now that I think on it, it was sewn in the very house where my mother was born.

This is the picture I see, this is the story I imagine:

A daughter comes home to care for her mother. When her mother dies, she leaves behind 24 quilt tops. The daughter takes them up and quilts every one (well, still one to go…). It takes six years. She again lives in the house where she grew up, the house in which my mother was born, the house in which I watched buttermilk being squeezed from butter and where I counted the dozens of salt and pepper shakers that had been long collected. A house that looks out on a blue like no other, a small harbour that receives the iron-riddled river – the brook, as it was called and what we call it still. A house where my uncle Zen sat outside in the sun – wordless and watchful. I can see it all.

Two great deliveries today. One to look forward. One to look back. I can see it all.

But I’m not in the country tonight. I’m in the city and have just come in from shoveling. With my neighbours long gone to bed – my partner, too – I was alone. Nice, being out in a fresh snow with no other people around. My shovel scraping the sidewalk was all I heard. That, and that which I never listen to – my breathing. Oh, and in remembering what my mother used to say, “I can’t hear myself think”,  I heard my thoughts.

I thought of Christmas and the easy, comforting welcome of my sister and her husband. The beautiful Christmas table, the five place settings, the abundant cheer and warmth, the choice to be with each other. The absence of others was marked and acknowledged as perhaps unavoidable, but those who were present embraced each others company with the tacit agreement that no trouble would come into the house. And if it did, it would be ignored.

We talked the night away, had liqueur in our coffees Christmas morning, thought we’d collapse of exhaustion in the afternoon. The food was better than should be allowed, and wine stained the tablecloth without the fussing attached to these glass-happy accidents. It was good, and then some.

I value those few days and I’m glad I’ll have their memory. We’ll have other Christmases, I know, but that one is gone and won’t be back.  I’ll miss it.  But then again, I’m grateful I didn’t miss it.

On things lost and returned I can spend hours of thought. There’s one great loss to which I return more than what is practical. That is the loss of my first musical instrument, a little Hohner harmonica – a Christmas gift when I was eight.

My brother describes his disbelief and subsequent delight at finding, when he was 12, a .22 calibre rifle under this Christmas tree.  My delight was as great. I remember longing for and anticipating a saxophone. Why a saxophone – I can’t say. Perhaps the Simpson’s catalogue featured one in its slim two-page music section, and I, with my early and enduring fascination with beautiful machinery, was smitten by the curves and valves. Maybe the magpie in me was mesmerized by the shine. Maybe I just knew, instinctively, that with it would eventually come a porkpie hat, and what eight-year-old girl did not dream of that?

What came was not the saxophone, but a small rectangular box that held a polished chrome Marine Band harmonica. My love was instant. I developed an immediate tunnel vision. All that surrounded me disappeared, all fell silent.  I saw only the little mouth organ. There was nothing in the world so complete, so lustrous, so right. And just like no one else got to play with my brother’s .22,  no one got to play with my harmonica. Both are dangerous in the wrong hands.

My brother took the bus to school, but I fell into an age group that required me to go to one room school, not served by a school bus, about a mile from home. Winter in rural Nova Scotia blew dress codes to threads – I wore snowsuits, sometimes over my flannel pajama bottoms, or leotards (tights, really, but we called them leotards). Sometimes flannel-lined jeans for which I still hold a dreamy fondness. If, for some reason, I was required to wear a skirt, the snow pants remained underneath the skirt all day. I, and all the girls, looked like hippos in a plaid, reversible tutus, snow boots for toe shoes. A snowsuit ensured a pocket in which I could tuck the harmonica.

On the way to and from school, I lagged behind other kids, gave them a long lead time before I headed out. I walked to school playing my harmonica. Played it, tucked it in my pocket to dance a little, play, dance, play, dance….I did this throughout the winter and spring.  It was pure and elevating joy. My teacher once waited with me so that she could walk with me as far as her house. She asked if she could try my harmonica. She put it to her lips and played a tender – soulful almost – rendition of “Little Brown Jug”. I was stunned by her sudden transformation into a deity.

One spring day, after a short spell of dancing myself home, I reached into my pocket for the harmonica to discover it wasn’t there. I retraced my steps. Many, many times on many different days. Never found it. Foolishly, I believe it’s intact in some preserving pocket of time, and that it shines still, waiting for a magpie’s eye.

When I’ve been able to wrestle this affliction into submission (read: get off my lazy bum), I walk. My proximity to a large wooded park makes it difficult to whine about no-place-to-go, so I sometimes head that way. This park holds another attraction for me: leash-free dogs (before 10:00 a.m.).  To watch a dog play is like, er…watching a playing dog.

The city core is less than a stone’s throw from me. Dentist, haircutter, grocery/liquor store, newsstand – all a walk away. A small city is a convenient city.

But it was grim, that first year we moved back. Lots of unexpected difficulties came our way. Because we had rushed the decision to move, because I was away for seven unthinking weeks and got home just as the moving truck was pulling up to our old house, I came to Halifax unprepared for the reality of living in a city that oozed personal history.

In early days, I read a restaurant review that said if I visited the place in the evening, I would be delighted by the romantic lights of the refinery across the harbour. My father had worked at that refinery. It did not seem romantic, given that he was, at that time, ill with something that had probably been caused by overexposure to romantic refinery lights. Or petroleum products. Not sure which.

There is a difference in the tones of every city. They’re sounded out in how shop clerks greet you, painted out by where the sidewalks flow, when wreathes go up, how work gets done.  This city? Generally speaking, friendly folk. Sidewalks are shared, and wreathes go up early. Work gets done -sort of.

Aside from all that, every city has a less visible characteristic. That which is in the groundwater. Some images capture and express it.

The first Christmas after having returned, I was walking home from a night class. It was late – cold and windy, vaporous snow ghosts were swirling on the street. Shops were closed, street was deserted. Across the street, I saw a window dressed for Christmas and I could make out some movement. Of course, it was a Christmas diorama in the window of a small department store, the sort of thing that would cause children to stop and dream for a minute or two.  I crossed the street to see it. I’m always happy to stop and dream for a minute or two.

Lying in a tiny decorative coffin was Snow White. Surrounding her were seven sad dwarves. On their cheeks were little crystal tears, and their arms moved in a way that suggested they had been trying to wipe these tears away. I watched Snow White, stunned to see a dead fairy princess in a shop window at Christmas. After staring for 20 seconds or so, a little bump popped up and down on the left of her snow white side dress. 20 seconds later, another bump. I took it to be a heartbeat.

This image remains, for me, the essence of this city. A whimsical and romantic vista that upon closer scrutiny reveals some sad and disappointing truths, all underscored by the occasion heartbeat to inspire a drop of hope.

Later – what I love about this city.