My phone rang at work, it was my kid, Gamma, crying; they have to spend another night in the ski area, it’s snowing too hard and roads are closed. Gamma is a person who likes her schedules, and they had been supposed to come home today, so she was unhappy.
Her grandmother got on the phone and explained. I hadn’t heard anything on the radio of the intensity of the snowfall in their area. She said the roof of the place they were staying was being shoveled off because 1.5 meters of snow had accumulated.
It’s a father’s nightmare: your kids are far away, trapped in the snow. Okay, not exactly trapped in the snow, trapped in a snug apartment with central heating and a teevee, with their grandparents to take care of them. But you know what I mean: they’re there, and they’re supposed to be here, and they’re not and you can’t do anything about it. I couldn’t even drive there and get them if I wanted (and I do!) because, ehn, roads closed.
It is hoped that they will return tomorrow. So until then, I just have to survive somehow. Beta phoned this evening, she was all, Some people don’t want to drive home today because allegedly the roads are closed. She’d rather be home, too. It’s good when the family members like each other and more or less get along. When you try to make a house the kids will want to live in, and they actually do.
But tonight, they can’t. I hung up the phone at the end of our conversation and did whatever it was I did. Sat back down at the kitchen table and went back to work on the bottle of Beauxz Boojolay Boujeaulais Beaujolais I had purchased at the store on my way home, and the baguette, and the two types of cheese, and the olives stuffed with goat cheese, and the cold cuts. Read the papers undisturbed. Went upstairs and checked my email, and my statistics. Fed the cats, let them out, and in, and out, and in.
Changed my clothes. Had some more wine. And some more. Filling that empty time before bed. Still, time remains. Practice cello? Paint, finally? Write something? Read? Emptiness weighs heavily on us at times like this, but somehow we muddle through.
beajolais, even?
poor kid. she’s so sweet though, crying because she wants to be on schedule! (of course with the wish to see her pop).
see now i was trying to type in ‘beaUjolais’…!!!
i know the feeling you express in this very well. there are times when you wish for alone. you wish you could just work on this paragraph uninterupted, or not have somebody ask “what are you doing?” then, when that time comes, you bounce around the place and feel a strange disatisfaction in your gut. you snack. you wave your arms. put on a record, whatever record you want, and it doesn’t work. you miss them all.
Hi,
sitting here in my apartment in Montreal on this fine sunny and cold february day, and having made major changes in my life lately (I have ditched a lover of 9 years and a stressful job of the same length) I read your comment on Jorane, and I suppose it must have been the song Pour ton sourire that affected you so? I met Jorane when she was playing in the metro and she was not a person (music-wise or otherwise) who impressed me…and yet I remember her vividly. The song Pour un sourire seems to have an amerindian enchantment in it…in her video (same as for recording on album I think) it’s Florent Vollant, a Montagnais indian guy who is singing with her. There seems to be some magic between them in it. There is something there that goes thru to your bones, or deeper still, if you were born on this continent, something manitou-ish about it. And it’s you Americans who have the island where He resides, Isle Royal on lake Superior eh.
Having paid thru the nose for a Toyota Corolla with my ex-boyfriend, (which nevertheless permitted us to explore our country during our vacations, and was very dependable) I shall remember your creature the Grymeaon. My personal steed is a Halflar, or maybe I’ll come up with a better name, a small, lightweight but swift and strong beast far faster and manoevrable than any Grymeaon, far more in tune with the Earth, and it just happens to have the same length and width as a good quality mountain bike with baskets and fenders. It stays tethered on my balcony during the cold, slushy, salty months, but gives me immeasureable freedom from April to November.
Oh yeah and I fucked a really cute 24-year old elf the other day. Or maybe he was like 350 and uses a lot of oil of ol