Married for 50 years

A couple of weeks ago we drove to Brechin, Ontario to celebrate B&As 50th wedding anniversary. Congratulations to B&A, but congratulations too to each of their six kids who arranged the celebrations. There was a church service to reconfirm their vows. All the music, lessons, prayers were by the children and grandchildren. Then there was a party at the legion, with speeches from the eldest son, S, their best man and many of the family members -- this is a family that loves the stage. HG and I had seen the "first draft" of the powerpoint slide & music presentation that the younger siblings had created from old family photographs when we visited N in March. There were few dry eyes in the house. I don't cope with crowds very well, so I hid myself in the back and did face painting for the kids.

50 years though, its really a lifetime. HG and I passed our silver milestone this year, only half of B&As achievement but still it seems an impressive length of time. I'm proud of us, that we have stuck together through rough times, and good times -- here's to you HG, here's to us.

Luma

I'm so far behind in writing on my blog. In my mind I would up date this every few days. It already seems weeks since we visited ARGs friend MDL and her new baby Luma. By now they will have flown back to Peru, to MLDs husband and their new life as a family.

I was happy to have found Fair Trade peruvian cotton, in order to make a little hoodie for Luma. It came out larger than I had expected, but she should be able to wear it by the time she is about a year old. However, I find these days that I'm quite bad at estimating sizes for babies. I knit a sweater to fit a 6-12month old (the size I usually pick when I'm knitting for a new baby), only to visit at 3months and find that it just fit perfectly. I'm convinced that babies are larger these days, or that my old UK patterns do not provide suitable age-size matches for North Americans.

Living in the garden

June 30th, the day before Canada day. If I was a Canadian gardener, the front yard would be ablaze with red geraniums and white shasta daisies. Actually, despite the soggy weather, the front garden is attempting a vague nod to July 1st. That's at street level, where the tubs are full of geraniums and white spider flowers. Further back, the enchantment lilies are an orange sunburst and with the blue campanula, there seems to be a Dutch theme going on. Where did that come from? No connection to us, but I love the opposition of orange and blue.

The lilies have been in the garden for years. So long that I don't remember buying them. But they are a stalwart of the front yard. I look forward to their return every year, and, based on the comments I get from the neighbourly dog walkers, so do many other people who take their morning stroll down our street.

They are such an outrageous colour, (the lilies, not the dog walkers), I often think that they don't really belong in our rock terraces. However, I wouldn't want to be without them. We had a pot of them in the front garden in the UK, and before that they were the one flower that I had to have in my wedding bouquet, and before that they were the first flowers that HG bought for me one dreamy day on Queens Street in Leicester.

This year its been so wet that the slugs and other nasties have taken over the garden. I was horrified to find fornicating red beetles followed by black sludgey beings chewing up the leaves of my precious lilies. I was so upset, and resorted to wiping down the leaves with soapy water for several days running. Fortunately it seems to have paid off. the lilies are shouting as loudly as ever in vibrant orange -- Happy Canada Day.

The things we leave behind

We waved ARG off from the Pierre Elliot Trudeau airport in Montreal last Tuesday. She was off on a big adventure -- backpacking around Europe with a couple of girlfriends for three whole months. We stayed at the airport for a drink, monitoring the line containing our girl until it finally snaked its way through the security screen and we could see her no longer. Then we stayed a bit longer and had something to eat, before finally wending our way through the terminal carparks to find the bright blue car (bbc) on the edge of the furthest most car park. I drove home as HG was tired. It was dusk by the time we left, so it wasn't until the next day that I found the hair elastic abandoned on the passenger seat.

ARG has been a dancer her entire life. Hair elastics are such an integral part of her, that seeing it lying on the car seat almost reduced me to tears. It was not only a hair elastic, it was a thick ouchless hair elastic, seamless so that no hairs get snagged on the metal join. A carefully selected purchase, bought with the experince of many years of inferior elastics. And, it was a lavender blue colour, a colour that I always associate with ARG. There was one year when the entire class of dancers at the School of Dance adopted lavender leotards as their class uniform because ARG had a lavender bodysuit.

Seeing the hair elastic reminded me of a poem by Sharon Olds about finding a drop of crystallized maple syrup on the table after her daughter had left for summer camp. I looked for it on-line and then I found this from High School Senior

"There are creatures whose children float away
at birth, and those who throat-feed their young
for weeks and never see them again. My daughter
is free and she is in me--no, my love
of her is in me, moving in my heart,
changing chambers, like something poured
from hand to hand, to be weighed and then reweighed"

And then I remembered lines from my own work about DAGs First Leaving.

I've been thinking recently about the things we leave behind. It feels attractive to carry little through life, to tread so lightly on the earth that one leaves no trace of oneself, except a brief trail of consciousness like the water vapour stream behind an airplane. For me, at this point in my life, I'm not sure whether it comes from a desire to disappear, or from a real place. For now I litter my office and my home, and write and knit and garden in a way that binds me to others and which seems somehow contrary to this desire.

There's a glut of them

It's that time of year. Babies are popping out all over. A co-worker had her baby on Sunday, a couple of weeks earlier than expected. ARGs first friend in Canada had her baby a few weeks ago. She came home from Peru to give birth in Canada. She had a little girl called Luma and is planning to stay only for a few more weeks before heading back home. Then another co-worker's daughter, is due to have her second baby in October. All this reproductive activity is quite stressful if you knit. I like to knit baby sweaters, they're small and don't take a lot of time to produce. But when there's a line up, the pressure can be a bit much.

I finished the jacket for HG's co-workers new baby last week. Still waiting to take it to her, but I don't think she will have grown out of it yet. My co-worker is more of a problem as I didn't knit anything for the first child, but now feel as though I should overcompensate and knit matching sweaters for the little girl and new baby brother.

Then what to knit for ARGs friend. I don't know what to do for someone who pretty much became a hippie and has little use for material things. You still need baby sweaters though. I've considered rummaging in my stash of old yarn and mixing random colours and textures to make a ragbag sweater, but I don't feel right giving Luma leftovers, when everyone else will receive sweaters made from newly purchased yarn. On the other hand, I love receiving things that have had a previous incarnation, so perhaps it isn't really inappropriate.

While I mull over my baby sweater(s) dilemma, I'm posting a picture of the sweater I knit for HGs co-workers little girl.

I did it

I ran the Ottawa ING half marathon. Its the first half marathon I've ever run, so I'm pleased that I made it to the finish line. I was a bit disappointed by my time 2 hours 14 minutes. I had hoped that I would make it in under 2 hours. In a training run a couple of weeks previously I'd run 18km in 1 hour 42 minutes (according to HG). However, I was jet lagged and had suffered a bout of food poisoning a few days previously. Also, I really wasn't prepared for the heat. It must have been at least 24C, and although in the height of summer that doesn't feel too hot, at this time of year it was baking. After 10K I was feeling dizzy and had to walk for a bit. I was feeling cross with myself, but finally decided that my primary goal was to finish, and so I should just relax and enjoy the experience. After that I started giving all the kids in the crowd high fives, and made sure that I kept taking on water at every station. It was probably wise as I saw at least 3 people collapsed along the way. It was an unbelievable experience to be running with so many people. From the starting line on Elgin street where 9,000 runners sang Oh Canada together, until the finish line along the Rideau canal at the back of Confederation park, the crowd never thinned.

So now I know I can run 21K

Running with 9000

On Sunday I'm running the Ottawa half marathon, with 8,999 other people, if they all show up. Yesterday, I went out for a final training run around the Norwegian countyside. The airport hotel even gave me a map. They have a strong health policy, which includes encouraging their guests to get out and run along the narrow roads. However, the map left a lot to be desired. It was printed from a google satellite map, so although it gave a good indication of buidlings etc, it was very grey and murky and the details (including roads) were hard to make out. I tried to orientate myself from the hotel, and ran in what I thought was the right direction, but never found the old airport buidlings marked on the map and ended up after about two and a half kilometres facing the hotel again. So I set off in another possible direction, but again never found the buidlings marked on the map. This time I kept going, and tried to run in a big loop that I figured should be about 5K. The last leg of this loop took me up a dirt track, and eventually a realsied that it was a farm road and there was no way out. So even though by that time a had run a further 4K or so, I had to retrace my steps and run back the way I came.

Running around the Norwegian countryside by myself, I realised that there is a benefit to running with 8,999 other people. With any luck, none of us will get lost.