Gone

My autumn spider has vanished with her web. I had such great plans to watch her spin and my insides did a small flip when I saw that she was gone on her way. It's funny how our thoughts attach to some things so strongly. I was very attached to the thought of that spider and my plans to catch her doing interesting things, outside my window, for my benefit.

I think we humans do a lot of that sort of attaching of thoughts ...

Autumn Spider

I have an autumn spider in my kitchen window.  We usually have one at this time of year - except in years past they have been on the inside, living right in the kitchen.

One year, a huge black spider took up the entire window with her web and we let her stay and grow until Christmas.  By then it was really too much to have inside the house - she took up a lot of room and I think might have been about to have babies.

But this one, this year, is hanging just on the outside of the window - the four corners of her web tied to the brick at the top, and the yellow rose at the bottom. Her web is unbearably beautiful and so I decided this morning that I am going to watch her every morning, and talk about her here.

I'm not sure why I think the spider is a her.  And I probably should not call her an "autumn spider" because that is a particular type of spider and she is not that.  But it is autumn and the spider is here so I will watch my autumn spider and she will help me pass some time.

I don't have a picture of her yet.  My camera battery is dead and I've somehow lost the computer plug in my messy life.  I'm going to try to replace it tomorrow and then I will post her picture.

Strawberries for Saturday

I'm so glad it's Saturday.  

All week I felt as though I was walking the tectonic plates beneath people - all sorts of different kinds of people.  Or being drenched as though under a faucet.

I was really missing my dad this week and wished that I could go and sit on his bed and ramble on to him and ask him my questions.  That's what I did when I was a little girl, and that's what I would have done this time last year.  But my dad's room at Centennial Place is filled with someone else's life now, and because of that I sometimes feel lost.  I'm a bit lonely without him in the world because he was the only one who knew that I was his Princess.  I was the only one he brought strawberries to at the end of his long work week travelling on the road.  My dad was always happy when Saturday came too.

My dad always said that you have to put one foot in front of the other, and I always know what my own shoes feel like. When I was a little girl, it was something that I really really knew.   

Don't hide from yourself,  he said.  Not very many people are ever able to break free from their cocoon, he said. 

His voice comes like that sometimes, and his picture also shows up on my screen-saver sometimes too.

This is the one that popped up today....  my dad really loved being served first.

Recess

Adults should get recess too.

A Sparkler and a Bear Claw

This is Grace

At the launch party for The Camino Letters on August 7th, Grace read her task to me, and I read my letter to her.  I did this in front of friends, colleagues, my family, my neighbours.  The things I wrote about in this letter to Grace, now Chapter 7, were things that I barely spoke of except to my husband.  


And to Herb in small whispers in the courtroom. 


And eventually to Grace in my letter. 


And to my dad before he died.  

On the afternoon of the launch I was in Peterborough at a book signing at Chapters - a busy, rushed, overwhelmingly fun day.  My friends Stephanie and Morgan came just in time - they helped me pack up and pick wine.  I was grateful for them. 

I loaded the wine into their car and started the drive back to Millbrook, worried that I was leaving myself no time to put on lipstick before the party.

I started to think about reading Chapter 7 and shifted my worry to the fact that I had been calling Proud Woman without an answer.  She was not calling me back, which was not unusual - except that I had mailed her a copy of the book and was sure that she would have called once she received it.  

I pulled over to the side of Highway 115 and sat on the hood of my car with phone in hand.  I called.  She answered. 

She had just arrived home, she said.

A massive heart attack had left her unconscious and breathing through a ventilator the week before.  She wasn't ready to die yet, she said, and so she woke and gathered her strength to get home to her son, his wife, and her grandchildren. She would died at home.

This is Proud Woman

She told me that she read The Camino Letters in the hospital because her son brought it and it was waiting for her when she came to.  Because of the ventilator she couldn't talk and could only read, so that is what she did.  She said that she laughed so much that the nurses asked her what she was reading.  


Proud Woman has always laughed at me. 


I told her I was reading that Chapter tonight.  She told me to wear the bear claw.


She said that she would be lighting a sparkler at 8:00 p.m. for everyone gathering in my living room to hear me read, and then she laughed a large Proud Woman laugh. It made me feel like a very little girl and I was happy.

And so at 8:00 that night, I read the letter knowing that there was a sparkler being lit while I was reading to Grace, to Herb, and to all of the others gathered in my home.  My friend Bill came up the walkway, specifically and deliberately, to hear me read.  Bill is dying and yet he came.  He was carried up the steps into the house.  I think Bill gave me the courage to say almost anything out loud.


                                                                                                               

Snails

Excerpts from The Camino Letters...

Chapter 5 / Lorca / Step

I am not joking about the bad mood - I was in a hideously intense mood, full of rage and regret and emotions I can barely name.  

I'm not sure what caught my eye exactly, but I saw something in the dirt and so went closer to look.  I dug it out and it was the most beautiful snail shell, larger than I would have expected to find on land.  

... Today, as I dug my snails, I sat on the path in the dirt and cried a small river from the physical pain of the past five days and the sheer relief of being alone. .... I have never considered the importance of solitude in protecting myself from all of the stickiness. I am so glad that I was alone today with my little snail shells and my dirty fingernails on that stupid, horrible path.

Chapter 15 / Triacastela / Sleep

The snails cling to the thick blades of grass by the hundreds and when they die they fall to the ground and are buried.  I have a beautiful picture, which I will show you.  It is exactly what you are talking about.  There is a magical geometry to these shells - I have spent a lot of time pondering them on the path since I am now carrying all of them with me.  Snails are also very sensual beings, according to people who have seen them up close.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7YIu_fzImg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BseGLUTkD8

All of the Book

This is Lavern R. Gibson.  Today I had an unexpected visit with Lavern and received the best compliment about The Camino Letters.

I've known Lavern for a long time, relatively speaking.  I live in a small village called Millbrook near where Lavern was born and where has spent all of the last 92 years of his life.  He remembers a time when Millbrook had a hospital.  Lavern had his tonsils out there at the age of 12, on a kitchen table which was used as an operating table.

Lavern knows everything about Millbrook and has the pictures to prove it.  He has pictures of things long gone, and his memory holds all of the rest.  He also has objects, like the only private telephone from the Fallis Line where they used to lay the phone lines over the fence because that was all that could be done with them.

Lavern knows many things, particularly about mechanics and about history.  He was the Reeve of Millbrook for many years.  He had an autobody shop downtown for over fifty years.  He has spent his long life thinking, and fixing, and doing - not reading. 

A couple of weeks ago, I saw Lavern and impulsively thrust a copy of my newly printed book into his hands.  Today, Lavern came to see me and told me that he very much enjoyed the book.  He said that he enjoyed all of it.  Then, he told me that The Camino Letters is the only book that he has read cover to cover since he left school at age 16.  That would have been 1934.   Lavern said that he couldn't put this book down.  How about that.