The Country Mice

Whenever my father comes to town it’s a party.

We sortie for ice cream, we skip school ‘cuz if you can’t skip school now when can you skip? take in the Royal Winter Fair, we visit elderly relatives, we have a lot of fun.

And there’s always something new to learn. Usually a song — some long-ago reminiscence that comes to his mind and which is utterly obscure to anyone born after, say, 1955.

Have I Told You Lately that I Love You

May the Road Rise Up to Meet You

Abadaba Honeymoon

This time, it’s homemade bubble-blowing solution.

Nicholas and Dad bought, weighed, measured and poured according to Recipe No. 1 (I learned there are three more recipes to come) and set out on the front steps to see how big the bubbles could be.

Pretty big, as it turns out.

Ingredients are fairly straightforward — water, dish soap and glycerine — but no doubt proportions are key.

As we work out way through the various recipes I’ll let you know which was deemed best.

But in the meantime:

Bubble Blowing Recipe No. 1

600 g water

200 g dish washing liquid

100 g glycerine (available at drugstore)

Mix and blow!

Some beautiful music spaces exist in this city.

This little room abuts the side of a big and old Baptist church downtown, once a chapel filled with the faithful.

Among the faithful long ago sat Lucy Maud Montgomery, she of Anne of Green Gables fame, during her brief stint as a Torontonian. Lucy Maud’s house is just down the street.

In its current state, the former chapel hosts a highly polished ebony grand piano for music lessons and rehearsals.

We’re here for the latter.

The lad is here for an hour to prepare for a recital this coming weekend.

Maria, the pianist, patiently guides him through the finer points of rallentando and ritardando as they relate to his performance.

He’ll be playing the three movements of Vivaldi’s Concerto in G Minor and it’s kind of tough for a 10-year-old because he’s got to be the boss.

He has to set the tempo. He has to signal when wants her to start. He has to speed her up, slow her down, set the mood.

When you spend your day taking orders from the tall people in your life, that’s not so easy.

She tells him, “We’re a team, you and I. We work together. Don’t worry if we don’t get it right the first time. That’s why we come here.”

Here in this little room, with the ghost of Lucy Maud.

Would Anne Shirley hesitate to give orders to a tall person?

Unlikely.

Thus the pianist and the performer confer and converse, plan and prepare.

The hour ends, he bows, we leave.

We also go for ice cream.

Lucy Maud would approve.

Autumn may be the time for a chlorophyllic slowdown but beneath the soil hums a vast network of mycelia, waiting to pop up and show itself a mycological arc.

About 40 to 60 mushroom species can grow in these fairy ring patterns and they can live and reappear in the same spots for hundreds of years.

And because they’ve been around so long, fairy rings play wonderfully imaginative roles in European folklore.

In Germany, the rings were said to mark the site of witches’ nocturnal dancing. In Holland they showed where the Devil had set down his milk churn. Personally I’d have expected the Devil to drink something a little stronger than milk!

In Tyrol, the fairy rings showed where a dragon had breathed fire and once having done so, nothing but toadstools would grow there for seven years.

One tale from Scotland tells of fairies sitting on the mushrooms and using them as dinner tables.

And from Wales, that the fairies used the mushrooms as parasols and umbrellas.

It’s supposed to be particularly bad luck for a mortal to step into a fairy circle so don’t expect to see our lawn tidied up in any particular manner before the snow falls.

Wouldn’t want to upset the little folk…

My father just telephoned to say my dear Aunt Jeanette passed away in the night.

Aunt Jeanette was the reason for our trip to Winnipeg at Thanksgiving.

So so glad we went and had a wonderful visit with her.

Deeply spiritual, always sparkly and bright, loving and gentle, she brought many gifts to my mother’s side of the family when she married my Uncle Andrew.

Her last words to Nicholas and Liliana two weeks ago, “I love you meeses to pieces.”

No words to say how much we’ll miss you, Aunt Jeanette!

A mole in my basement.

Right now.

Hallowe’en is still 24 hours away.

It’s rustling under a plastic bag.

Right now.

And now it has crawled under a shelf.

It moves more slowly than a mouse.

The cats are supposed to manage these sorts of things.

Now I have to think about the next step…

I love my little girl.

She is smart, kind, sweet and loving.

She is also a lunatic.

This one I get.

He’s bright, he’s analytical, he likes Scrabble and he adores Rick Mercer.

But this one?

I look at her sometimes and wonder, “Where did you come from?”

Who are you? What ancestral spirit resides within you?

Are you my irrepressible grandfather who painted a sparrow yellow to convince someone it was a canary?

Are you Gord’s rebellious great-grandmother who took her dead husband’s wooden leg and stuffed it in the trash can?

Are you an unspeakable by-product of the Montessori school system?

Was it the champagne I sipped three days before you were born?

*gasp*  Are you even mine?

Nicholas told me the other day we were lucky to have her.

Because she makes us laugh.

I think I’ll try to remember that one, even after the DNA tests prove I’m not her bio-mother.

Just because she makes me laugh.