I woke up this morning to an amazing amount of snow covering all of the things in the garden that I have not yet brought in - my hoe, the flat-edged spade, my pitchfork. Each year I panic about the pitchfork because I never bring it in on time, and I worry that an impaling will result before I find it in the snow. It's a terrible annual routine, really. You would think I would have learned to spare myself this. But fall is busy, and this fall was especially busy, so I will hunt for the pitchfork and forgive myself for not getting the garlic in after all.
When I was little I lived in Thunder Bay and things in our small yard were usually in the right place because my parents were good at that sort of thing. There were no pitchforks laying around, and my dad knew how to build a shed. He tried to teach me some of these practical things - like measurement, and how to use a saw, and how to change the oil in the car - but I think my brain is far too verbal and so I only remember lessons from my dad running alongside my stream of questions and little-girl chatter.
In my childhood there was always a lot of snow. And a lot of bundling up, although it was a dry cold, very cold - not the Toronto sort that drags you down and chills you to the bone. Toronto, the cold. That was not my world.
I remember sometimes having to be carried home from school during a snowstorm on the shoulders of one of my sister's boyfriends because the snow was up to my waist and I couldn't walk.
On Saturdays and Sundays if it snowed, my dad would shovel the driveway with me sitting in the big square scoop shovel (do they still make those or is it all gas-powered winter noise?). My dad would build a small pile in the front yard and then use me, in the shovel, to run it smooth. Up and down, up and down, until it was high enough to dump me off the top edge. And high enough to toboggan down. Or use my little red skiis.
There is a home-movie of this somewhere and my mission, this Christmas season, is to find it. There is also a home-movie of my mother skating with me, while wearing her Hudson's Bay coat. Malakai gave me a vintage Hudson's Bay coat for Christmas which I still need to have altered. My mission, on Monday, is to bring the coat to the tailor - and I'll find the pitchfork in the snow too!
