Turkey and sweet Amélie

I had a few shopping errands to run yesterday. I needed a new 12 Volt battery for my doorbell, and to get a new set of keys made. We also stopped at the mall so Marian could buy a CD at HMV. I don't care about owning many movies, but two of my favourites were there on sale (VHS), so I had to snatch them up: Pulp Fiction and Amélie.

The new key to the front door works fine, but the one for my apartment does not. By careful comparison, it is identical to the old ones. What's with that?

The afternoon was spent roasting turkey, which I haven't done many times because I didn't used to care for it much. GroceryGateway brought a bigger bird than I expected, 15 pounds, but for $20 I'll get a lot of nice meals out of it. I had to improvise a roasting pan out of my largest cookie sheet and tinfoil. Various recipes recommended wildly different times for cooking a bird of that size. The packaging said 4 hours at 325°F. My mother's recipe said 20 minutes per pound (5 hours) and the panel of my stove said 30 minutes (7½ hours). I went with Mom, but fortunately I used a thermometer, because the package was right.

I had invited Sylvie for "anytime after 5:30," but told her dinner would be at 6:30. The turkey was done at 5:10, so I wrapped it in foil, covered it with placemats and kept it on the warm stove. She didn't arrive until 6:20, but the meat was perfect. After dinner came the best part, putting away enough leftovers for five turkey pies.

I made chocolate pudding cake for dessert, delicious and easy to make from ingredients that are always on hand. Apparently cocoa is more powerful than tryptophan, because Brenna was not just hyper afterward, she was through the roof. I have never seen her affected so dramatically by sweets.

Then we all piled in the bottom bunk and watched Amélie. I forgot how that movie affected me. Amélie is a lot like me, a child who had few playmates and is terrifed of people, but genuinely likes them. The first time I saw it I had pretty much given up on having a boyfriend. Now I have one as sweet, funny and sensual as Nino. Last night I cried again through the kitchen scene near the end, this time because I feel lucky. Funny how movies and music do this to me, nothing else.

Sylvie says the downtown video store has other titles by the same director. They are mostly dark humour, darker than Amélie, a genre we both like. We'll have to do a movie night sometime.

Marian says she has a new favourite movie. The kid has good taste.

At home in the woods

On the way home from meeting my parents in London for lunch, we stopped at Wellington County Agreement Forest. We lived near it for the first two years of Brenna's life, when I was still married, but we haven't gone back in years. One of the things I like least about not having a car is that I rarely have a chance to visit places like this, bits of wilderness not far from the city. Soon the woods will be full of dogtooth violets and other ephemeral spring wildflowers.

I especially love this particular woods because its dominant species—hemlock, beech, cedar and sugar maple—and steeply rolling terrain remind me of the landscape around my cottage.

I keep fearing that my daughters will start to lose interest in hiking, but they never do. In fact, their enthusiasm grows as they get older, so we walk further and further.

* * * * *

As we hike along, a forest opening appears on our left, where the deep shade of mature hemlocks prevents anything from growing on the forest floor except several beech saplings, their gold leaves blazing in the midst.

MARIAN: Let's go over there. It looks cool.

We leave the main trail.





BRENNA: I like it better where the trail is more closed in like this.

It is a knoll, bounded on all sides by swamp. We explore in separate directions for a few minutes, then come together again and move on from this magical place.

* * * * *

( Brenna in beeches )

The beech (Fagus americana) is one of my favourite trees because it has lovely silver-grey bark and retains its leaves all winter until the new buds burst. Beechnuts are intriguing, too.

BRENNA: I wonder what this place looks like in the moonlight.

( Beech leaves )

* * * * *

ME: I like walking with you two because you spot things I would miss.

* * * * *

BRENNA: You know how people have little goals they want to reach, like eating a certain kind of food or visiting a particular place?

ME: Like Antarctica?

BRENNA: Yes. My goal is to find the perfect pine cone.

* * * * *





* * * * *

Marian eventually flops down in the dried leaves by the side of the path.

MARIAN: I like the ground.

ME: Are you tired? Do you want to turn back?

MARIAN: I like the ground. The ground feels good.

ME: Will you be pissed off if we keep walking?

MARIAN: No.

We leave her alone on the ground and meet up again ten minutes later.

* * * * *

BRENNA: Even though I didn't grow up here, I feel more at home in the woods.

Me too.

( Brenna swinging on a vine )

* * * * *

If there is one thing I ever hoped to bequeath to my daughters, it was a love of the forest.

Elmbrae

After leaving the Agreement Forest we drove down a dirt road and stopped so I could take pictures of the house in the country where we lived when Brenna was born. It is a passive solar house on two acres of old meadow, which turned to white lace in May with the blossoms of wild apples, hawthorns and chokecherries. A slope leads down to an ephemeral spring pond. The new owners have cleared parts of the meadow where blue-eyed grass and pussytoes used to grow, but the white flags in the ground probably indicate where wildflowers have been planted. Gardens have been added.

The three years that I lived there represent one of the most unhappy times of my life, except for Brenna's birth and this property, which I loved. With Marian's help I established a large, productive vegetable garden despite stony, infertile soil. I added many native trees and shrubs. I kept planting and dreaming, hoping my problems would go away. I named the place Elmbrae, but I notice the elm, for which it was named, that stood behind the house is gone; it must have died.

Marian remembers waking up on Christmas morning when she had just turned four and seeing a white-tailed buck out her bedroom window, which is the second-floor window visible in the photo. We also found turtles laying eggs in our driveway. The bird feeder was well attended in winter, in fact a varied thrush spent the winter there in 1994. It is a West Coast bird. People came from Quebec, Ohio and New York to see it.

I moved out in January 1996, when Marian and Brenna had just turned 4 and 2. At the time I was too heartbroken about other things to give any thought to the property, but I have missed it ever since. The house was sold the following August.

"I would love to live there again," said Brenna.

So would I. But I pointed out that the cornfield next door has become a gravel pit, with a second one up the road. If we had continued to live there, that would have broken our hearts, too.

( Two photos, for the record )