The Parting Glass

The last two weeks before The Big Move, the days were cloud-cover grey but each evening, the clouds would break as the sun was setting and we witnessed some truly spectacular sunsets over the back field from our deck.

Sunset Boulevard

I felt as though this place was bidding us adieu in the most picturesque way possible somehow. The sky, the weather. The moon and the pines. The stalks of the cattle corn. A slow, lingering, rosy kiss of farewell each evening. One evening in particular, the sky was streaked a pink haze. Breathtaking. It reminded me a little of the Aurora Borealis if you could see them during the day time. Fingers of columnar colour. Reaching out.

Aurora at dusk?

The last month I have slept an average of maybe two or three hours a night. As my son settled down to slumber, the packing would begin each evening. It is a surreal undertaking to pack one's life into little brown boxes. To leave a place that is deep in your heart. It's the second time I've had to bid goodbye to a love of mine this year. I don't recommend cramming two goodbyes like that into one year. Hard on the heart, actually.

But with all I had going on, I hardly had time to grieve the loss of this home. The leaving it. I think the grieving will come at some point. To be honest, I am writing this on my third evening in my new home and I have not begun grieving yet. I feel too fucking happy. HA! Admittedly, I had some teary moments my final day as I drove away. But this home I've moved into has welcomed us with a very warm embrace. Every piece of furniture I own somehow fits perfectly into each room as though the rooms were made for them, were simply awaiting them to fill that space just so.

Through the exhaustion of the past four months of selling my farmhouse, the exhaustion of the last home-focused year really, I am still able to feel euphoric as I sit in this, my new home. My new, old home. I love its every inch. Its wide staircase. Its hardwood floors. Its views are not of cornfields or sunsets, but I still have a golden maple to enjoy. The views from each window are actually quite beautiful.

I have absolutely no regrets, I realize, as I sit and type this. The first evening I sat in my home as my sonshine snuggled in his new room, I poured myself a wee glass to toast our offical arrival.

And, I thought to myself, this home is already such a happy home for us. It carries no sad memories. It offers only a future of joyful ones. I realize, as much as I adored my foot-deep windowsills, the sun shines much more brightly through windows not so deep. (Vitamin D is an important ingredient for Joy.)

With each box I unpack the last couple of days, I discover that every item has its place where it belongs. And now we have ours! It is perfect in so many ways and I wonder at myself that it took me so long to move towards this Joy, this choice of leaving my last home.

'Kay. I miss my Yeats' poetry. Will have to inscribe a brief verse on the wall of my new kitchen. Which poem? Hmmmmmm...

A Truly Canadian Thanksgiving:

Gourdon Lightfoot, Gourdie Howe and Glenn Gourd

Thanksgiving was last weekend and I was crazy enough to host my sister and her hubby and her two boys out at my farm for one last special occasion. I cooked my final turkey in the stove with some homemade, curried couscous stuffing. My family thought I was insane to even attempt this the week of our move. Much of our stuff was already in boxes. But I'd kept dishes and cutlery out and the timing worked out perfectly as a friend of mine from California suddenly ended up in the area with her main squeeze so it was a truly special day to properly bid the kitchen in which I've cooked 10 years' worth of meals a fond farewell. An additional pleasure to force myself to take a break from all the packing and chaos and just enjoy the company of my twin, her family and our dear friend and her mate.

And thanks was given. Is still given. I have so very much to feel thankful for and the help of many hands to feel grateful towards who reached out to aid me during this entire process. My son and I are so very blessed by the love of family and friends. And the love of this new home. I feel its love as I sit here and type this. We are no longer remote and adrift. We have found our proper place finally!

And so I raise a glass to all of you who visit these pages and have stuck around while I've been lost in Cyberia. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and I know any sad memories I had of my old farmhouse will diminish in time and be replaced by fond memories only.

Pre-Slumber Amber

Here is a wee Scottish ditty I first heard Stephen Fearing perform many moons ago. I love this version by the Wailin Jennys.

A toast...
Goodnight and Joy Be With You All...

--------
Of all the money e'er I had,
I spent it in good company.
And all the harm I've ever done,
Alas! it was to none but me.
And all I've done for want of wit
To mem'ry now I can't recall
So fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be with you all

Oh, all the comrades e'er I had,
They're sorry for my going away,
And all the sweethearts e'er I had,
They'd wish me one more day to stay,
But since it falls unto my lot,
That I should rise and you should not,
I gently rise and softly call,
Good night and joy be with you all.

If I had money enough to spend,
And leisure time to sit awhile,
There is a fair maid in this town,
That sorely has my heart beguiled.
Her rosy cheeks and ruby lips,
I own she has my heart in thrall,
Then fill to me the parting glass,
Good night and joy be with you all.
---------

Music: The Parting Glass, Cover by The Wailin' Jennys

Dead Irish Writers

As aforementioned, lately I've been working my way through seasons of The West Wing on my laptop, once I put Sonshine to bed each night .

Tonight, a cozy fire crackles away as I snuggle under a blanket and watch parts of the third season. Episode 16 is entitled Dead Irish Writers and encompasses the First Lady's birthday party, the dream of a dying, eminent physicist, Donna becoming Canadian (briefly), and the request by the British government, via their Ambassador to the United States, that the White House not allow the leader of Sinn Féin to visit the President for a talk. Joyce is quoted as having written, "history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake" and Eugene O'Neill as having penned, "there is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now."

I feed another log to the fire and dwell upon my dwelling, this farmhouse, again. My home. My heart sighs.

When I was 24, I spent six weeks in Ireland prior to attending a course on 'Yeats and Irish Poets After Him' at St. Catherine's College, Cambridge University toward my degree back in Canada. I had applied for Summer Studies in English Literature and felt truly excited to study Yeats, whom I worshipped. He was my mother's favourite poet and she introduced him to me long before I would study him or any other Irish poet/writer. Growing up, our home had hung on its walls a painting of the Sacred Heart and, alongside it, a framed poem entitled, The Lake Isle of Innisfree. Naturally, there was confusion on my part as to which held the higher footing.

In 2000, my former spouse and I decide to leave Toronto for greener pastures, literally and figuratively. The day I walk into this farmhouse I know I will live here. It isn't that the house is older than Canada itself. Nor that its picturesque views from the back deck over rolling fields remind me somewhat of Ireland. The reason I know I will live in this house is because, upon entering the kitchen, I discover pages of Yeats' poetry have been glued to the wall. The owner had torn the pages from a book in her father-in-law's collection and pasted them for wallpaper. I remember standing open-mouthed, unable to speak, my heart rising into my throat, tears forming near my lashes. Apparently, what helps our bid is that the owner, a poet herself, is pleased as punch to learn we have zero intention of removing the pages of poetry once she sells the place. Ten years later, the pages have yellowed but still hang above the island where guests chop vegetables, sip wine and become enamoured of Yeats' exquisite verse.

One morning, a few Thanksgivings ago, I awake early to start the turkey. It is 6 a.m. when I sit myself at the table with a pot on my lap and a bag of potatoes and begin to peel. This simple act: the dipping of potato in water, the knife smoothly scraping back the skin, poking out the eyes, cutting them in halves, then quarters. A spud in the hand, the dirt of earth still clinging to it, is so decent and firm a thing. I recall taking a deep breath of satisfaction over this humble domestic duty. It occurs to me it is something my mother has done herself many a morning in the wee hours; something my grandmother has done and her mother before her. And hers. Talk about a 'root' vegetable. I feel their wizened hands guiding mine as the skins fall in strips into the compost bucket. Did you know that the ASL sign for Ireland is a potato? And this home was built a mere 15 years after the Great Famine began back 'home', in Eire. Just to think on that...

On my kitchen island hang three pieces of slate salvaged from the roofs of derelict cottages in Ireland, once the homes to past generations of Irish people, now dead and gone. Slate roofs replace the thatched cottages of an even older generation; the kind of cottage my mother's Uncle Jim would bicycle the countryside to photograph in the early 1900s, one of which hangs in my dining room. Shellacked to the slate are images of three dead Irish writers: James Joyce, Sean O'Casey and William Butler Yeats. My aunt sent them across the pond to me as a housewarming gift since she knows my love of Irish history and Celtic mythology, something each of these writers were well versed in themselves, no pun intended. And warm my house, they do, indeed.

I am thinking ahead to the spring when I must leave this farmhouse I love. I wonder what connection I will have to my next home. What will draw me to it? What will speak to me when I wander through its rooms, gaze out its windows? What might grab my heart? Evoke tears? I've no idea yet what will be the deciding factor for me.

But one thing I do know: as soon as I am settled, I intend to rise early one morning in that house and peel some potatoes. To feel grounded. To give a nod to my own roots. I know then I'll feel at home, again.

(Plus, I have a book or two of Yeats' poetry under my arm for wallpapering.)

This one goes out to my wee Irish mother and all the mothers before her; for my father's mother whom I never knew, who died when he was only 9 years of age. And for my wee Irish son who, somewhat miraculously, made an Irish mother out of me. For the homes we've each evolved from over generations. For the homes we and our children and our children's children will make. All the potatoes yet to be peeled. The Innisfrees yet to manifest in our deep heart's core:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

~William Butler Yeats~

Music: Troy, Sinéad O'Connor