More snow

…and the quiet of the very early morning hours

(A picture of my Dad, walking his cat, at the end of nowhere where I lived from age 13-18. My parents still live there. This picture is from this past weekend and taken by my mom.)

Tiny book number 43 will be below. But I wanted to publish this now, for the night owls, the other chouettes (what my Dad used to call me) because not all of us are day time people. Some of us think better in the calm of the middle of the night.

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Tiny book 43

Picking Blueberries

(A blueberry I painted in 2021)

(This wasn’t the book I was expecting to write, but it was the book I needed to write)

Picking blueberries tiny book 43

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It’s is 2:37am on Thursday. These are the prime factors of 42. Which I know because the last house I shared with my partner…those numbers were in our address.

And when I bemoaned the fact that our address didn’t have a 42 in it. They told me it kind of did. My partner has an affinity for prime numbers. They’ve spent the last two weeks trying to train their brain to figure out the prime factors of any number from 1 to 101.

Sometimes our love right now looks like me just saying 94, and waiting for them to say the prime factors.

2 and 47.

I’ll be 47 this year.

I did try to go to sleep tonight. I swear. I tried to will myself to sleep. I couldn’t. My brain has multiple channels operating.

One for the terrible sadness of the news in Canada yesterday.

One for thinking about my kids and if they will be safe.

One for feeling awful about not going to the space tomorrow.

One wee channel reminding me over and over that how that garbage day is my responsibility I have to get up at 6:30am.

So after an hour of lying with my eyes closed. I gave up.

Then after an hour of scrolling through things to see if I could find gentle directions my brain could go in the dark of my bed, I decided I would write.

My tiny book prompt for today is Picking Blueberries. I’m grateful to my past self for choosing that.

I know my tiny book might end up whimsical and strange. But the prompt itself could is from the fact that I grew up in wild blueberry territory.

My first seven years were spent in and about Flint Flon/Creighton.

Flin Flon is in Manitoba and Creighton is in Saskatchewan. Living near the border meant recognizing that imaginary lines don’t really define who we are. I was 15 minutes away from being a Saschatchewanian. My first best friend lived over the border. But we shared the same school. Our parents were best friends: they fought hard to get a French immersion kindergarten class set up for when we started school. Our class was the first French class in that school. It was important to my Dad, whose first language was French, that I learn both French and English…and as many languages as possible really. He believed deeply in being a bridge between people. My dad is Métis. He raised me with the values his grandfather transferred to him. That is was our responsibility to care for the land and to be grateful for what the land, and lakes and waterways provided us.

I grew up hunting, fishing, trapping, and foraging. As well as gardening. But we also belonged to conversation groups that helped care for the swamps, bogs, fish, bird and habitat of the lands we lived on.

I remember helping my dad stock fish in this small lake. My job was to help the young fingerlings who were having a hard time. I would gently cradle them in my hands under the water, and softly move them forward and back until their gills became accustomed to the water and they could swim on their own.

When I wasn’t in school I would as on the lake with my dad, or walking in the forest. I learned how to be so quiet that I was a part of nature. I learned the calls of wild birds, and moose, and the loon. I especially loved calling to the loons. In the early morning or late evening while fishing with my dad, they would often call back.

In the summer when the wild blueberries were ripe, my mom would insist we go to pick to get enough for muffins during the winter. Her blueberry and cranberry muffins and waffles are still something I crave on lazy Sunday mornings.

My mom picked…efficiently. She have those long wooden containers full up with wild blueberries. Which are very small. So A LOT.

My Dad, though, taught me to pick traditionally.

We sit on milk crates next to one another…and…milk the blueberry plants. You put your hand in the bush and move your fingers just so and the ripe berries fall into your palms. And we’d eat our fill, then when we couldn’t eat anymore we would put the rest in our small ice cream containers.

Picking blueberries with my Dad is one of my favourite childhood memories. Being scolded by my mom for not picking enough, was just part of the fun.

When I’m overwhelmed, I can put myself back there. I can hear my Dad telling funny stories about him and his brothers growing up, or telling me about people he’d met in his life.

I feel grateful for the parents I have. The way I grew up. There were moments of my childhood that would pass as idyllic. And it is in the moments I like to sit.

It is these moments that are the foundation for my patience and my inner calm.

By the time you read this, I will have slept, put out the garbage, and sent everyone who comes to Curious & Kind (the community space I facilitate) on Thursdays a message letting them know that today is a snow day. I will have written the tiny book.

Here is a video of the snow falling yesterday. This will be my third day off in a row. And maybe I needed these moments to recharge.

I am looking forward to spring, but I’m not rushing it.

It is 3:27 as I finish this. The actual address of our last house. The prime numbers of 42. 3 2 7

I am calmed and the buzzing channels of my brain are all tuned to sitting picking blueberries with my Dad. And I can go to sleep now.

Heart,

Wake