sunday afternoons and teaspoons

The weather did not co-operate but we didn't care - and we braved the incliment outdoors for about 2 1/2 hours before retiring to our friend's generously donated house. Such a lovely party! Though there were no party frocks, linen trousers, or croquet, we did have two games of Kubb going and spillikins (a giant version of pick-up-sticks - I loved it!). And so much food! But most of all, good friends at ease with each other. How fortunate we are in our friends here.

Nasser's cake went down a hit and small wonder - Look at it!


I am not a good hostess, however. I ran for an hour in the morning and then spent from about 10am until 3pm cooking for the party - with the result that I made lovely food but was exhausted by about 8pm! Ah well.

Today the rain hasn't stopped since about 9.30...it's not cold, though. So just a nice, cosy, spring storm. These days always remind me of the conservatory in our old house in Simcoe. I remember wearing a striped shirt - red, I think - and there was a brass lamp with a frosted glass shade, cut like a lily, shining from on top of an old bureau with an ancient radio on top. That radio had an 8-track player in it. This memory is from before the kitchen was redone and I'm sitting on the old black and tan couch which was on the wall facing the back door. I can see from the corner of my eye (or maybe I know it so well, I can see without looking) the cork wall beside the kitchen table and the linoleum floor running from the kitchen into the sun-room - little squares and rectangles of colour in a pattern I never did figure out. There is rain on the windows, still falling heavily on the skylights - it is late afternoon and darker than it should be. The windows in the room have fogged up with breath and cooking. I am young and comfortable and reading Bambi: a Life in the Woods by Felix Salten.

Now I am comfortable and older - there is rain on the window though it is no longer falling outside. It is dark out - but only the usual dimness of a cloudy spring afternoon; there are no trees outside my window to filter the light. My cats are curled up with my husband on the couch that faces the stairs. The television is on, perched on a black stand we salvaged from the bin-yard. In front of me is the memory I have written out - a passage of time - behind me (seen with vision sharper then my poor eyes) could be my parents' home in Canada, an apartment in Kingston, a flat in Windsor or, as memory and the present resolve, my home here and now.