Today, Instagram reminded me that today 4 years ago, I was grading my first stack of papers as faculty at KPU. I took a picture of the stack of final reports with a nice iced coffee perched on top. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a cold brew and a salted chocolate chip cookie from Platform 7.
My students’ final projects are beginning to roll in. Many of them have chosen to create archives of their time during Coronavirus, and I’m just blown away. I can barely write a few blog posts, but they’re producing such smart, touching, raw, creative work. I’m really lucky to have my job.
Other than that, it was a day of small pangs of sadness. For the past two days, I’ve taken Dot to an elementary school to run around and each time, we’ve encountered other kids around Dot’s age. They’ve grown wary of each other so quickly. One little girl just stared at Dot. Dot ran behind my legs and softly repeated, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” How will these kids ever learn to play with each other again? I worry for my sweet, sensitive girlie.
I was introduced to John Prine by a former wheelchair basketball teammate when I lived in Victoria. We’d train together and sometimes I’d go over to his apartment after and listen to music. I was 18. For most of high school, all I’d wanted was to sit on someone’s couch and talk about the meaning of lyrics: to turn the words over and over with someone, admiring them, holding them up to the light. I wanted to meet someone who cared about the same things I cared about, or better: someone who knew more about the things I cared about, and maybe cared about them more, and could introduce me to more things to care about. And now I was living in a new city on my own and finally, it was happening.
The first time I heard “Angel From Montgomery,” I closed my eyes and knew I wanted to write like that. To believe in this livin’ is just a hard way to go. It was like John Prine was writing about me. Of course, he wasn’t. I was 18. My years had not flowed by like a broken-down dam. I was not an old woman named after my mother, married to someone who’s another child who’s grown old. But I felt that shock of recognition all the same. I knew it was a song I would grow into.
And I felt that in “Sam Stone,” when he sings sweet song never last too long on broken radios: which I used to belt out in my car like an anthem when I was frustrated with my inability to ever get my shit together, or my body’s inability to get its shit together. And I felt itin “Dear Abby” when he sings you are what you are and you ain’t what you ain’t, which was a lesson I should have listened to John Prine about earlier. John Prine is the type of music I used to go on long walks to, back when I could go for long walks, back when I had alone time.
It’s been decades since I’ve known someone else who loves John Prine. There’s a particular kind of loneliness that comes from loving an artist and knowing that when your favourite song comes on the car stereo, no one else is going to sing along. No one’s going to say, “Man, this is a great song. It’s been years since I’ve heard it.” And when you like John Prine, you can’t even have the satisfaction that no one else’s music tastes are as cool as yours. You’re just someone whose music tastes run towards old dudes who can fingerpick.
I am not a great singer, but when you have a baby there’s a grace period where there’s a person in your life who doesn’t care. (That window has passed. I tried to sing along to “The Wheels on the Bus” with my toddler today and she said, “Mommy no wheels on a bus for you.”) And then you’re tired and lose your self-conciousness. And one day you find yourself on a warm summer night, standing on your porch rocking a baby who won’t settle, singing I am an old woman, named after my mother. My old man is another child who’s grown old as she nuzzles into your neck, as her little body gives up its tension. If dreams were thunder, lightning were desire, this old house would have burnt down a long time ago, you sing to her, and to yourself, because motherhood has you feeling both filled up and hollowed out.
John Prine died of COVID-19 today. He was one of my favourite songwriters. I didn’t go and see him the last time he came to Vancouver because I couldn’t find someone to go with. I should have gone anyways. He wrote boredom so well. He wrote characters who were waiting for something to change in their lives: for something to begin. He was funny. His last album is so damn good. Tonight, I sang “Sam Stone” to my daughter as I was getting her dressed for bed. She likes to stand on her changing table so she’s taller than me, then play with my hair. “Oh no,” she said, “Mommy’s hair is too messy,” tousling it in front of my face as I sang to her. “Don’t worry mommy,” she assured me, raking it out of my eyes and smoothing it down. “It’s good. It’s okay. Yes, okay, it’s good.”
I don’t know why I’m spending so much time thinking about my relatives. Maybe it was the bread, but maybe it’s a love story that my grandma often told me. My grandma was a single mom of two boys when she got sick with polio. She was living with her own mother, who struggled to take care of her. A family friend named Joe McNeney came over every day to care for her. He’d already had polio, so he was immune. Day after day, he would carry her to the bathroom, and tell her to think nothing of it. When she was better, she married him.
An epidemic is part of my family origin story, so perhaps I am seeking out these stories now. Or maybe I feel stuck in the present moment and feel the need to unearth the past. I think even Dot is feeling it. When we were on our walk a few days ago, she stopped in the middle of the street, looked up and said, “Oh hi daddy’s grandpa! Bye bye grandpa! I love you!” She was so convincing I asked my husband to phone is grandpa to make sure we hadn’t been visited by a ghost.
So, ghosts all around us. Whatever the reason, I spent Dot’s naptime scanning a stack of documents and photos that my uncle had given to me years ago. My family’s on the eccentric side, so while other people find staged photos of Christmas gatherings, I find rhyming erotic poetry about dances in the 1940s in Burnaby and narratives about how my grandma’s gin poisoned a cockroach. But it was lovely to see my grandma’s handwriting, and to read all the old recipes, and to marvel at the wonderful strangeness of my ancestors.
Instead of writing yesterday’s post, I drank two cocktails and fell asleep watching Nailed It. That’s how she goes sometimes.
But today, I threw a birthday party. Seven years ago, my husband and I randomly decided to celebrate movie director Roger Corman’s birthday. We pick a movie, I make a themed cake, my husband makes a dinner. It is a fun little tradition. In fact, Roger Corman knows about our tradition and picked the movie one year.
My cakes used to be really elaborate (2014 – 2016 are particularly impressive, if I do say so myself) but then I had a baby and I never quite got back on the cake-making horse:
Obviously, I can’t just pop to the store for the ingredients to make an elaborate cake, but Dot is obsessed with birthdays after watching a million hours of the episode of Elmo’s World where Elmo celebrates his fish’s birthday (“THAT’S TOO MUCH TAPE MR. NOODLE!!” is seared into the deepest crevices of my brain), so we decided to soldier on. I cut balloons out of construction paper and Dot decorated them. Then, we made a banner.
We were low on baking supplies, so I made a Wacky Cake, which is a cake from the Great Depression that doesn’t have any eggs, butter or milk. Dot delighted in dumping in the ingredients and stirring, but spent most of her time sampling the batter. After her nap, we iced the cake in rainbow colours (she was head frosting taster), then put on gold star sprinkles (more frosting tasting – for quality control). We didn’t have candles, so I made some out of popsicle sticks and construction paper.
Decorating the cake
Dinner was another big treat. We’ve eaten every meal at home for a month, but I’d read that takeout is still safe. So, we ordered some Thai food. Unfortunately, it was 2 hours and 15 minutes late, which meant that first we ate the cake, then I ended up making sweet potatoes and eggs for Dot, and by the time the Thai food came she was teary, and I spent the entire meal saying “gosh, you have some strong feelings about that” and “I can’t let you throw your plate.” Still, she soldiered on and sang happy birthday, while I worried about whether takeout food was actually safe to eat at all, and washed my hands a million times.
Happy birthday Roger Corman!
Still, it was probably our best Roger Corman birthday yet. Happy birthday Roger Corman!
Today I made chicken pot pie in the slow cooker. I love using the slow cooker because the scents of whatever you’re making sneak up on you. You throw the ingredients in, turn it on, go about your day, and just when you forget about it: bam! Rosemary, thyme, and sage! A far better scent than our place’s usual melange of ‘apartment that 3 people and a cat have been cooped up in for 3 weeks straight.’
When my husband took the toddler out for her walk this afternoon, I decided to make an Irish soda bread to go along with the chicken pot pie. I love to bake, but I’ve never tackled bread. I’m not a very patient person, and bread takes time. You have to coax it to rise, knead it (not too much!), let it rise again. Not like muffins, which you can have in the oven in 10 minutes.
But I’ve been told that quick bread is easy, and we’re officially at the stage of self-isolation when I’m moodily baking to Townes van Zandt. (“Living’s mostly wasting time. I waste my share of mine. But it never feels too good, so let’s don’t take too long.”) I’d prepared the dry ingredients and was waiting for the buttermilk to curdle, when I startled out of my folk-music-induced reverie. I was slathering my hands in margarine.
Hands have long memories. As a child, I baked a lot of bread with my grandma. She’d make me roll up my sleeves, then slick on butter so the dough wouldn’t stick to my hands. As she did, she’d look at my palms and say that I had old hands: a sign that I’m an old soul.
Then, as she prepared the loaves, my siblings and I would make little people out of the bread dough scraps, or roll them in cinnamon and sugar and eat them raw. (Far more dough landed in our mouths than on the baking sheet). Sometimes, my grandma would place her hands over mine to show me how to knead the dough: pressing with your palm, folding. Her rough hands were soft on bread-making day.
Nana Elsie
My grandma’s been dead for over a decade, and I probably haven’t made bread in 20 years, but I can still remember her kitchen: her spoon collection in its display case on the wall, the mug full of even more teaspoons, her brown teapot with a crocheted cozy over it, the glass-front cabinets full of trinkets and the good china: all of it labeled in blue felt pen with the name of the person who would get it after she died. You’d have a snack at her house, bring a dish to the sink and realize that it had “To Susie When I Die” written in blue ink on the bottom. And you’d feel a brief pang at the reminder that one day your grandma would die, and the plate in your hand would be Susie’s, and you would get the china doll with the sailor suit, and a little china jewelry box with painted roses. (My grandma lived next door to a graveyard, so you were always reminded of your own mortality).
It’s an extinct smell now: the odour of her kitchen, the rising bread — which smelled of butter and yeast but also faintly of dill — the tea with milk (Tilk, she would call it) cooling in the cups, her Neutrogena hand cream. And my craggy little lump of dough heaped on the baking sheet is not in the same universe as her uniform golden loaves in their heavy square pans. But my hands — soft with margarine — remembered what to do.
And the bread was delicious, in its own way. I forgot to grease the baking sheet, so the bottom came off. But we ate it warm slathered in butter. Dot liked it so much that when I had my back turned, she snatched the remaining 1/4 loaf off the table. I found her sitting at her play kitchen, putting the bread in the oven, humming to herself, taking it out, checking it, putting it back in. When she decided the bread was ready, she turned on some rocking tune on her drum set and sat thoughtfully picking little morsels of white bread out of the middle of the loaf and chewing them and bopping up and down to the beat.
While we’re still at the wait-and-see part of the curve, knowing worse days are ahead, knowing that loss is coming, it is good to focus on new beginnings, and to think of the people who fed you when you were young. Maybe I could be good at bread. Maybe I could get better at waiting.
I made sweet potatoes for dinner and Dot said, “Take off the sweet potato sticker please.” I was baffled about this request until she began to peel the skin off her chunk of potato and leave it on the table. And she’s right. It does look like a sticker.
Our eggs (we’re lucky to have eggs) expire on May 2nd, and I tried to imagine what the world will be like on May 2nd. It reminded me of how when I was pregnant, I’d look at the label on a can of beans and think, “When this can expires, I’ll have a baby.” And then it was, “Wow, when this milk expires, I’ll be past my due date.”
I got tired and let Dot colour on my face in orange crayon just so I could close my eyes for a minute. She very carefully decorated me, whispering, “Eyes…nose…mouth…” as she did so. But at least I’m not seeing anyone in person, so no one will know when my skin inevitably breaks out from having wax jammed into my pores.
As we were drawing, Dot said, “D – O – T spells Dot!” As she did, she tried to write her name. She’s 2, so I know she’s not actually writing her name, but I was so struck by the concentration she showed trying to make the letters.
Well, the longest March in the history of Marches is over. (The #90sKid in me wants to rewrite “Long December” to be about COVID-19. It’s been the longest March now and there’s reason to believe/ maybe April will be longer than the last. I can’t remember the last time I was around other people/ And my hygiene’s dropping fast…)
It’s also been exactly 3 weeks of social distancing. We’re still in the calm before the storm here, compared to what’s happening in the USA and other countries. It seems like a bad idea to think about “after,” but last night I was up at 3 a.m. worrying about Dot. After months of being around me 24/7, how will she adjust to being around people again? Will we ever be able to leave her with a babysitter? What will happen to her social skills if she’s never around other children? We really have been in our own little universe.
While I was making muffins this morning (again! By request! And this time they were delicious!), I wondered how long until it will be until I set an alarm for 6 am, get up and ready, pack Dot’s lunch in the dark kitchen, running down a mental checklist of lunch – snacks – water – Eugene the stuffed owl – more clothes – extra sweater as I pack Dot’s bag, then tiptoe in to wake her up by rubbing her back. How long until we listen to a podcast in the car while she sips a pouch, on the drive to daycare? How long until I get back in my car by myself and commute out to Surrey, stopping to get a giant iced coffee? How long until I sit for a few minutes in my office — iced coffee in hand — and take a few breaths before seeing students? How long until I see a student again?
This train of thought helps no one. Best to enjoy a breakfast of warm muffins, and a cup of coffee, and a sleepy toddler beside me on the couch patting my arm every once in awhile. And so I spent the day trying to plan in a more productive way. I made visual mockups to block out one of my classes for next semester. I sketched out the semester, dreaming up new assignments. It’s good to focus on what you can control.
Speaking of what you can’t control, today Dot learned 2 new phrases, both of which she has been delighting in saying. The first, courtesy of a frustrated construction worker, is “t*tty f*cking Christ.” The second: “we don’t pick up poop.” A life lesson for us all.
Let it be known that on March 31st, Arley Cruthers officially achieved the status of Queen of Carbs. I’ve made cakes and pies and tarts and bread and basically every baked good under the sun, but there was one baked-good nemesis I couldn’t conquer: the carbohydrate Bowser at the end of my culinary Super Mario Bros, if you will. The simple pancake.
I’ve never been able to make pancakes. They’ve always been raw in the middle, burnt on the outside, burnt and raw, too thin, too thick or just plain gross. But today, I used a cast iron pan, and pancake victory was mine. Perfect pancakes! So easy! I felt very domestic, flipping flapjacks on my cast iron pan. Is there such thing as a Pandemic Merit Badge?
So, the pancakes were a hit. Dot ate 2! And then something else happened. For the first time in 20 days, my husband agreed to take Dot outside. Don’t get me wrong. I love our daily wanders, but I’m trying to work full-time and I have chronic pain, and it was nice to have a day’s reprieve. For the first time in 20 days, I was alone in the house. The silence was really strange. Instead of grading, I used my newfound glorious 45 minutes of freedom to….mop the floor. But, for a moment there was silence, gleaming floors that smelled faintly of grapefruit, and the sun shining in.
And then like 2 hours later my gleaming floors got covered in paint because a toddler wanted to paint and also wanted to make me look like Daniel Tiger. The biggest mystery was that she also carefully painted my nails. I don’t paint my nails. I have no idea where she picked this up, but she was very attentive. My first manicure since my wedding!
