No news is big news

For weeks we’ve been trying to have Do Nothing Day here on Shaw Street, but it doesn’t take. There really are a lot of things to get done, especially over Christmas. People have been coming and going all week, and in addition to cooking and cooking and baking and cleaning, I could spend five minutes twice a day rearranging the boots that pile up by the back door.

Now it’s the last day of the year, a grey, snowy, blowy day that kind of screams “Don’t bother!” at you. Even so, we walked the dog, and then I cooked up a Spanish omelette (chorizo, onion, potato, no Spaniards). I gave the dog a bath and took some photos in the back alley. We have dinner plans: an early seating and home before midnight so we can toast the New Year in our jammies.

To me, it’s kind of momentous to be able to spend the last day of the year in complete domestic content. Two thousand and five was kind of chaotic for me and just about everyone I know. I, for example, dropped everything (or sold it, or gave it away) and moved to Toronto, new job, new home, new love, new life. I hit the ground running when I got here, worked long hours, injured my back, worked harder, enjoyed near-constant motion sickness, worked even more, then finally resigned from my job to retreat and recharge for a while.

So, all the Christmas stuff has happened (it went well) and it’s the last day of the year. I’m delighted to report that there’s nothing I really need to complain about.

Happy New Year.

So Ends November

It gets cold fast in this town. We were boiling away well into the autumn; in mid-October the air was still humid and I had gotten used to pedaling home after dark with a sticky, smoggy sheen lighting my face. The leaves didn’t really turn in that gradual, terminal way they do at home. Instead it was green, green, green, brown, gone.

The day after the brown day, a searing cold wind sprang up to rake the treetops with a steely hand. We went to the dog park as usual. Where the alley spits us out on Montrose, we came across the hard-working Korean man we usually greet surveying a huge, fallen branch that lay half in his yard and half in the street.

We said “Oh!” and he shook his head with a rueful smile. “Two time already,” he told us, pointing upwards. “Big wind!”

We followed his pointing finger to the top of the newly naked tree, to the jagged crutch from which the branch had been torn. A second intact branch forked away toward the house, and about halfway along, I startled to see a very fat, round raccoon clinging to it.

The raccoon was all alone up there, totally exposed, its former digs now blocking traffic both pedestrian and vehicular on the ground below. I would guess this raccoon’s weight at fifty pounds. It turned to look at us, I think with sorrow.

I made a joke to the Korean man about the fat raccoon breaking the tree branch. We laughed, and then we carried on across the street to the dog park. I worried about the raccoon for a time. Would he have to wait all day to get out of the tree? He was a sitting duck up there. Where would he find a new home?

James found my fretting quite amusing. “Look at the size of him!” he pointed out. “He could easily go for a week up there, he’s so fat.”

We don’t have raccoons in city trees back home. I had to take his word for it.

It wasn’t long before winter had begun. It snowed on and off for three days, the snow fat and friendly at first, but quickly degrading into side-blasting, icy pellets that squeeze tears from your eyes even under your parka hood. At dusk one day, we came down the stairs that mark the entrance to the dog park.

Mid-way we came eye-to-eye with the fat raccoon, now perched in the waivering crutch of a too-thin, barren elm by the stairs. He glared at us, possibly with menace, but I felt, in the cold blue dusk, a certain desolation.

I looked out over the park, a city-block-sized dell dotted with big trees and lined on the west side by a half-acre stand of thirty-foot elms, oaks and maples. I asked James why this raccoon would choose an exposed, solitary perch so near people-world rather than a spot in the miniature forest. He didn’t know. Did he think it was the same raccoon as the one that broke the tree? Could be. Maybe.

We made our circle of the park and when we came around again, the raccoon was gone. It was nighttime now, the absence of light magnifying the crunch of our boots on the stairs. I felt a hurry to get home, even though a lot of my stuff was still in boxes and all I ever seemed to do was work, sleep, and walk the dog. I came here to live, whatever that takes. In the meantime, James passed on to me his habit of taking a cup of tea after dinner, something else I never did back home.