Thanksgiving
This continues a web diary covering my 2004 Sabbatical.
The beginning of the diary may be found by clicking here.
Wednesday, October 6, 2004
At the home of my sister Janice, in Ottawa, Ontario
Wives, I have observed, like to be treated as though they are special. For instance, if you haven’t seen your wife for a month, she’d like it if you didn’t greet her at the airport with a week’s growth of beard and smelling like a gorilla.
So, today being the great day when Heather flew from Winnipeg to spend Thanksgiving weekend with me at the cottage, I had long since resolved to make her feel as special as possible. Not only did the plan include sprucing myself up, but I resolved to tidy up the cottage as well. In some contrast to me, Heather likes cleanliness. It is not that I like dirt and disorder, you must understand, but I am, as it were, less averse to it than she is.
Mind you, I had only the faintest hope that she would notice my attempts to straighten out the cottage - my highest standard of tidiness is, I think, somewhat at the level of her lowest tolerable standard, so there have been many times when she has come in and completely redone what I had laboured mightily to do! Still, I felt that today it was worth the effort.
One lesson I have definitely learned: change the sheets and make the bed. I made a mistake in this regard quite early in our marriage - indeed it was on our wedding night. After the wedding was over, and the reception, my three children and I all welcomed Heather officially into our home as wife and mother - I actually carried her “over the threshold” while the kids held the doors. Trouble was - after we had put them to bed, and it was our turn (our wedding night, you recall), Heather went into my erstwhile bachelor’s bedroom and - horrors - the bed was unmade. Worse, when she asked, I couldn’t recall exactly when the sheets had last been washed. It was certainly several weeks.
Well, I learned then and there that this was an unsatisfactory state of affairs. I have been reminded never to do it again by the simple fact that Heather has for twenty nine years regaled friends and strangers alike with the story of remaking a bed on her wedding night... whose sheets she says with special emphasis, “had not been washed for at least two weeks!” I think I know enough not to repeat my error - though there is little likelihood that my perfect record since that notable night will bring an end to the retelling of the story. However, if I were to slip up now, the story-telling would of a certainty grow in vigour!
So, I planned to do a laundry today, with the highlight being the stripping and remaking of the bed. Other items - such as clothing - once washed will also do a lot to reduce the chance of smelling like a mountain gorilla, I suspect.
Soon I had a big plastic bag filled to the brim, and was ready to drive in to Hawkesbury, to a laundromat.
Tomorrow being the biweekly recycling pickup, I also had a quantity of clear bags, containing corrugated cardboard and other recycling items, to go across the lake. And a bag of garbage to go in the bin by the road. Today was garbage pick-up day.
Going in an open boat, it is wise to carry valuable things in plastic bags - to prevent them getting wet. So, since green garbage bags are abundant around here, there is a high risk of confusing protected good things with actual garbage, so I have developed a practice of putting a patch of duct tape on the green bags that actually contain the garbage.
This I did, then I loaded the boat, went across to the landing, loaded the car, and drove over the hill to the gate. Unlock the gate, put the recycling beside the road, put the garbage in the bin, lock the gate, and drive down the dirt road to the paved forest road to the narrow highway which leads to the bridge across the Ottawa River and into Hawkesbury. A drive of just under 30 minutes.
I took my time, enjoying a beautiful sunny day. Ol’Harry was in a good mood - no smoking, no wheel wobble, no exhaust noise, and plenty of pep - so it was a very pleasant drive. I had thought there was a laundromat in a quaint little town named Calumet, so I drove in there to look. No laundromat, but beautiful buildings, built in the 1920’s - even a tiny Anglican church! On to Hawkesbury.
Get out of the car... do they have a change machine? Yes. Get the laundry.
Uh-oh. The bag wasn’t heavy and stuffed with fabric like I remembered the laundry to be. And there was a big tell-tale swatch of duct tape on it.
My heart sank. The laundry bag not only had in it a set of sheets, my best jeans, my favourite t-shirt (given to me by my daughter, and having the message, “Best Dad, hands down!”), I had also put in - to keep them dry - a huge and expensive book on loan from the University of Toronto Library, and my digital camera!
Back into the car. Quick! Garbage pick up today! Across the bridge, along the narrow highway, turn onto the paved road that goes into the woods, turn on to the dirt road... hurry!
Almost thirty minutes later, kicking up dirt and gravel, I brought Ol’Harry skidding to a halt beside the garbage bin... and there was the laundry bag!
But now, all sense of leisure had evaporated. I had to go all the way back to Hawksbury, wash and dry this stuff, get back to the lake, make the bed, tidy the cottage, wash, and shave, and dress, then get back into the car and drive to Ottawa..., and two hours had been deleted from the time I had set aside to do all of this!
I was supposed to have dinner with my sister Janice and her husband Peter, then at 10:30 p.m. go to the airport to greet the person in whose honour all this was being done!
Mercifully, I was only twenty minutes late for the intended dinner hour - and Janice and Peter had planned to wait until I arrived anyway, then simply have a pizza delivered. So there was no fuss. And I was even early at the airport.
Heather’s arrival was nothing short of a delight.
It is too late to go to the lake now - I refuse even to think of getting Heather into a boat at 1:00 a.m., with the cottage on the other side of the lake freezing cold and dark - so we’re sleeping over at Janice and Peter’s.
Craig’s Lake, Québec
Here we are, Heather and I, together.
We’re sitting on either side of the fireplace - a delightful fire burning away and keeping the place cozy while the temperature drops outside - and each of us is clicking away on a laptop!
Waking up in Ottawa this morning, we had breakfast with my sister and her husband. They then went off to work. We eventually let ourselves out, then paid a visit to IKEA. That done, we sped the 80 km. to Hawkesbury, where Heather did some banking in connection with her law practice, and we got groceries. Finally, we crossed the bridge over the Ottawa River, and entered Québec.
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while Heather & Tony enjoy Québec “frites” |
Back in Ol’Harry, we now travelled the narrow highway, and the paved road into the forest, and the dirt road, finally reaching the locked gate at the entrance to the trail into the lake. All the while Heather was agog with the beauty of the Autumn colours, many times asking me to stop and take photographs.
Once in the cottage, she rearranged all the furniture, re-tidied all my tidying, and complained about the various things that weren’t to her satisfaction. Clearly she was happily domestic. I went outside to cut some wood for a while.
Now we’ve had dinner, and I have an opportunity to update this web diary.
(There are no entries in the web diary for the next two days as Heather and Tony enjoy Canadian Thanksgiving together in the most perfect of settings)
Sunday, October 10, 2004Craig’s Lake, Québec
This has been a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. (Actually, I’ve never had any kind of ‘long weekend’ before, due to a prior commitment most Sundays!)
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are sent from Heaven above... |
I’ve taken a break from study and writing, and Heather and I have just been a happy pair - together in our favourite place. We’ve done projects (I installed a kitchen light acquired at IKEA; Heather has arranged kitchen drawers and cabinets to her liking); we’ve socialized with friends and relations (there was a full-fledged turkey dinner today, with Heather’s brother Ross, and Mary-Jill his other half); and we have been in a state of perpetual astonishment at the beauty of the fall colours.
Church this morning was full!
Is it because Hawkesbury is semi-rural, and folks so close to the land still want to give thanks in a church after the fall harvest? Who knows? But the pews were well filled, and everyone sang “We Plough the Fields and Scatter...” with gusto.
In Winnipeg, all the churches I have served experience a drop in attendance on the Thanksgiving weekend, so naturally I enjoyed very much being with this little congregation today, my beloved wife at my side.
But now it is our last night at the lake. We have already packed up a good deal today. Tomorrow morning we will be up early, and will close everything down until next Summer - linen will be stored in mouse-proof boxes; tools will be locked in the tool shed; batteries will be removed from flashlights, clocks, and telephone handset; the water system will be turned off and drained, and finally Jack Aubrey will be pulled out of the water and turned over.
Ross will take us across to the landing in his boat, and then Ol’Harry once more gets put to the test as we drive the six hours to Toronto.
There we’ll have another Thanksgiving dinner, with our daughter Rachael, her husband, and some of their friends.
On Tuesday Heather flies home to Winnipeg, and later in the day, I fly to England.
All good things around us are sent from heaven above,
so thank the Lord... for all his love.
Next: “Cuddesdon, England”
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