My house smells like a bakeshop.
3:00 p.m.
I saw Ed online yesterday morning as I was procrastinating inking my forms and asked him if he would like to go for lunch. He instead proposed that I accompany him to N0rth HatIey where we would eat, and he would then visit a friend in the White House (La Maison Blanche, a home for people of questionable sanity) and I could visit the town’s charming boutiques. This prompted me to get my inking done so I could mail my envelopes from the town’s charming little post office.
The man at the counter ahead of me was none other than A. Kneecap, a former Bushop’s student with whom Little Princess and I took an aikido class when she was 12 or 13. I remembered him well, as we were performing a throwing move and he dropped me on my head. At that time he was quite facially hirsute, and I used to call him “the big hairy guy.” Now he is in real estate, has two children, a clean chin and a thickening waistline. I guess it happens to everyone.
Ed and I ate at a little restaurant, sharing a pizza (half of which I ended up taking home since we couldn’t finish it), fries and salad. Then he went off to see his less-than-sane friend and I moseyed about town. On the sidewalk a man asked me if I was Mrs. Canadian Composer, and I replied in the affirmative. He turned out to by Jack Eyelet, the father of an elementary-school friend of my daughter’s who used to live at the bottom of the street. The parents divorced, the house was sold, the girls went to different high schools, and we rarely saw him. So it was nice to get caught up.
N0rth HatIey, as Harriet knows, is really a tourist town. If you saw the movie Open Window, you would have recognized it. It’s lovely, on a picturesque lake nestled in a green valley (in the fall, the colours are glorious), with its very own reported aquatic monster. As a result of this status, not very much was open. The galleries were mostly closed, and only two restaurants were open, but I still managed to spend money. First I bought a baking pan with 12 depressions, each differently shaped to prepare festive little cakes, in a gift boutique. I thought this would make a lovely partial wedding present for a couple whose nuptials we are attending in August.
At the grocery store next door, I found a stainless-steel strainer to replace the broken one which went promptly into the recycle box when I got home, and a quantity of English breakfast tea. Just as I finished paying for my purchases, a retired BU professor came in, someone I like a great deal and whom we shall call Mr. Gross (not his real name but close enough, and not to be confused with my first dentist, who was Dr. Gross, which was his real name) and who let me know that he had been to the recent choir concert. I asked him if he liked it, and he answered emphatically, “No!” and proceeded to tell me why. He didn’t like the music, found it was excessively long, and was tempted to leave at half-time, but his wife convinced him to stay. He did like my solo bit though. Or at least he said he did.
I walked back to the preassigned meeting place with Ed in time to see him approaching from the parking lot, and we went for coffee and apple pie (again, shared; this time, finished) at a pâtisserie above a dress shop where I had just been fingering the merchandise but not buying anything. We remarked on what a typically Québecois bilingual experience we had been having. Our waiter at lunch alternately addressed us in both official language, and we did the same to him, and our server at the café, whose accent sounded suspiciously Belgian, started out in French, switched to English, and then finished up in French again. Only here would that happen.
Today has been a much less eventful day. I noticed three blackening bananas in the fruit basket on the counter, so I made banana bread. Otherwise, I have stared at a poem I started a few days ago that has me stymied. I’m trying to work out my emotions about my mother’s fading memory, and this seemed to be the right medium. If I like it, I’ll post it.
<~~~ * ~~~>
