remembrance

Home - to bushels of yellow leaves littering my new front walk and my own lengthy List of Things to Do. But the crabby cat actually, perhaps, allowed a momentary flicker of affection in those green eyes. So you're back, she says. About @#$# time.

As my mother grows more frail and vulnerable, our bond grows stronger, to something primal - she is my mother, she is in need, I must help. There is a huge love. Hard even to write about. It meant a lot, this year, that we watched the Remembrance Day events together, the camera panning past the elderly faces of the veterans, and I sitting beside one, my mother, veteran of the British Land Army, then a code cracker at Bletchley Park. What stories she tells - thousands of people working there, cracking German submarine codes on the Enigma Machine, yet the place was top secret for years.

We salute and thank you, veterans. Like heroes in the Greek legends, you saved the world from a monster.

We took special note of that minute, eleven minutes past eleven, or 11:11/11/11/11. "Next year," I said, "I'll come for December 12 and we'll celebrate 12:12/12/12/12." Let's, Mum, okay?

Next year, she will be a great-grandmother. We're all rolling along on the conveyor belt of life. Celebrating the too-fast, never easy, ever-changing ride, as we head for the edge.

British cooking at its best

I found a wonderful recipe book in my mother's bookshelf yesterday - her grandmother's turn of the last century, very British, yellowing and crumbling cookbook, that her daughter, my grandmother, used in her village kitchen. I'd like to share a few recipes with you; I hope you'll tackle them forthwith. These are copied verbatim.

POTTED TONGUE
Get's a pig's tongue, boil it gently for 2 hours till tender. Remove the skin and root and put it through a mincer; add 1/2 a teaspoonful of salt, some grated nutmeg, and pepper to taste. Melt 1 oz. of butter, mix one half of it with the tongue, press into mould or dish, and pour the remaining butter on top. This will be found a very nice relish for breakfast. Tested and found good.

The recipe SAVOURY SHEEP'S HEAD begins, Soak the sheep's head overnight in plenty of salt and water. The section on asparagus suggests boiling it for 20 or 30 minutes.

HAGGIS
Take a sheep's stomach bag along with liver, heart, and sweetbreads. Wash stomach bag and soak in cold salted water for 20 hours. Plunge into boiling water, then take out, and turn outside in to scrape thoroughly. Then put back in salt and water until needed. Wash liver, heart etc. and boil for about 1 hour. Grate half of the liver and mince the heart, cutting away any skin or gristle. Mince 1/2 lb of suet and toast 1/2 a pound of oatmeal before the fire. Boil 1 or 2 onions for 10 minutes. Chop finely and mix all of the ingredients, season with salt and pepper, moisten with about 1/2 a pint of stock or water, mix well together. Put mixture into stomach bag. Do not fill more than 3/4 full. Prick bag with a needle. Sew up and drop into boiling water. Boil for 5 hours.

MMMMMM.

I go home today. We've had a great visit; I have done a ton of cooking, though unfortunately not haggis or any other part of a sheep's body, and right now, we are sorting and organizing (and I surruptitiously throwing out) the toppling mountain of paper and bills. We've laughed a great deal and argued not at all. It has been a joy. Now I'm exhausted and need to go back to my own chaos.

Ottawa

It's a bright chilly day, and I'm in Ottawa, visiting my mother and aunt. At 88, Mum is thinner again since I was last here only a few months ago; she uses a walker now and is more forgetful, but then she smiles at me with those bright blue eyes, and she looks 12 years old. Both she and her sister Do, who's 91, live in their own places and do their own shopping and cooking - though Mum has some help three times a week, as now she can't drive. Do still drives, though I'd prefer not to be in the car with her when she does.

Mum and I have spent the morning deciding what needs most to be done during my time here; by the time we came to a decision, which naturally was going shopping, it was lunchtime, and now it's naptime. It'll take us quite awhile to get dressed to go out, to get downstairs, to get the walker into the car, and then out the other end, let alone into the shopping centre to find what's needed - pants with stretchy waistbands that fit, for example. It will be slow, and I, a very speedy person, will need all my patience. Must go into a zen zone. There's a movie called "Poetry" playing here - I'd wanted to see it in Toronto, Wayson said it's a must, about the power of writing; I missed it there and, for a moment, had a fond fantasy that I could take Do and Mum to see it here. I don't think so. Just the thought of that much organizing is exhausting, plus Mum would fall asleep anyway. We all started watching "Born Yesterday" starring Judy Holliday on TCM yesterday after supper; what a pleasure, a wonderful intelligent movie starring a wonderful intelligent actress (she was, I must point out, the child of immigrant Russian Jews.) Do saw some of it before she slept; Mum slept all the way through, except to wake up periodically to complain about Judy Holliday's voice, and then drop off again.

I brought Mum a CD of Haydn quartets played by the Jerusalem String Quartet, the superb group I saw a few weeks ago. She knows a lot about chamber music, so I wanted to see if she liked them as much as I did. She did; she loved their musicianship, the romantic delicacy and yet power of their sound. We sat at the dining room table, eating a boxed pizza, listening to the exquisite strains of Haydn, and I thanked the powers that be, with all my heart, for the joy of this time with my mother.

Incidentally, just received an email from friend Ewa, who pointed out that in a recent post, I said that I "wrote my bike" to a movie. She said, even on your bicycle, you're a writer. Or simply careless, one of the two.

November pix

Incredibly respectable new front yard

Incredibly respectable new

backyard - with fence

Autumn in Cabbagetown

Mr. Choy surrounded by eager writers

Gillers yes

10.05 p.m. Just came back from teaching and wanted to watch the Giller Prize. But the CBC has relegated it to some obscure channel - tried and tried, couldn't get it. BUT - I finally picked up a live stream on the computer, just in time to see Esi Edugyan win against the formidable Michael Ondaatje. A young woman of Ghanian background, with a new baby, wrested this huge prize from one of the giants of Canadian literature - thrilling. She spoke with humility and sweetness about her editors, her publisher, and her family, calling a greeting to her father, who emigrated from Ghana in the 70's and who was watching the program.

Glad glad glad. I guess I'll have to read the book.

Wayson came to speak to my Advanced class at Ryerson tonight; students from all my other classes came as well. He was his usual eloquent, moving, inspiring self. "Think of your ideal reader," he told us. "The ideal reader is ... you."

"Pay attention," he said. "Look for detail. You're a writer. Writers, artists, are witnesses to the human drama."

"Your family has secrets," he said. "Your family is an epic. Find it out."

And he told us about his great luck as a writer, how everything fell into place for him. As everything fell into place, tonight, for Esi Edugyan.

At midday I played hookey and had a wonderful treat - wrote my bike down to TIFF to meet dear friend Ken, who rode his bike down to TIFF, only he is in his late 70's and in Birkenstocks. We saw "Le Havre," a beautiful Finnish/French film, a kind of fantasy and yet a powerful, real story about immigrants, poverty and love. About dignity and generosity ... and love. Wonderful.

I salute you, writers, Wayson, Esi, Aki Kaurismaki the writer/director of the film. Thank you for witnessing the human drama, and working so hard to bring us your version of truth.