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.