a song sparrow chose to rest his wing,
and sweetly raised on high its morning hymn
a most welcome, venerable sign of spring.
the trilling song was most melodious.
Whoever would have guessed- this tiny bird
could cure me of my long held weariness.
Jill MacCormack
This past winter (2013-2014) my beloved PEI was blanketed with fully twice the amount
of snow as last winter and the most snow recorded in 42 years...which
means the most snow of my lifetime thus far.
Feeling too deeply winter's etchings upon me...lack of sunlight, housebound repeatedly by storm after storm...too much isolation, too much inside my own head...like lovers who've spent too much time together, winter and I need some space this year, some time apart so as to better appreciate each other again next year.But, like a great many others, a trip south was not in the cards for us this year, not that it ever has been a consideration for a number of reasons. Thus leaving me, like so many, desperate for those signs of spring that lift the spirits, searching outside of myself towards spring:
Crows carrying nesting materials, pairs of goldfinches at the feeder; the male becoming increasingly more lemon coloured with each days passing, a sighting of newly returned grackles, the great blue heron huddled in an open corner of the pond, the fat little robin who returned too soon weaning himself off of my stormy days cranberry handouts, a pair of bluejays attempting to get seed, a song sparrow sitting pretty on the low edge of the snow bank still mid window high outside my dining room, a pair of Hairy woodpeckers tracing a stump of birch out back with their hungry beaks, the snow slowly receding from the driveway and roadside edges resulting in gurgling, muddy rivulets and the smell of wet decay, Lucas' ecstatic discovery of daffodils broaching the earth beneath the living room window, persistent fellows...all! It may be weeks before we see the crocuses or buds on the Maple reddening and my patience with much has grown thin but spring, however late, will come.
Yes, I'm winter weary and it shows in my face, my enthusiasms, but I should not complain. I think to my mother's retelling of "the dreariest day of the year", a tale from her own mother's childhood, a tale of the bleakness of late winter on the northeastern side of our fair Isle, in the 1930's. Her mother's story was one of poverty and illness, lack of resources, and winter weariness and truly being isolated and housebound. It makes me wonder how I would have navigated such times. It certainly etched itself on my grandmothers generation with a deepness and acuity that would make my complaints of being tired of winter pale in comparison. Although, undoubtedly, the sensitivity to environment is evidenced as having passed through the bloodlines to me.
Jill
THE DREARIEST DAY OF THE YEAR
I was just a young girl when my mother told
me this story from her childhood. It was
March 11, 1933. A three-day blizzard was raging from the south and her mother
was sick in bed upstairs. All eight kids
and their father were in the kitchen, the only heated room in the house. Snow
covered the windows darkening the room. The strong winds whistling through the
drafty old house meant moving the kitchen lounge closer to the woodstove to try
and stay warm. As there was no tea in the house, her father resorted to
toasting some wheat on the stovetop to
try and make a drinkable substitute. He kept the wheat in a storage bin above
the kitchen. Tea was a basic necessity to a Northsider like himself. Because it was impossible to get to the river
for drinking water, their dad melted snow then boiled a big pot of potatoes in
their skins. This was clear evidence of
how much their mother was needed in the kitchen, as all the kids hated unpeeled
potatoes. To pass the time, the kids
played store with an orange crate and food from the pantry. The bleakness of
that day was to become an indelible memory for my mother and her siblings, a day they
vowed to remember for as long as they lived. They wrote the date on as many
places as they could, including the walls of the outhouse and the school. Down
through the years on March 11, my mother would relate this story and upon
phoning her sisters or a brother living out west, would ask if they remember
what day this was. The answer was always the same-“the dreariest day of the
year, March 11, 1933”.
Written by Arlene McGuigan as told to her by her mother Maud MacDonald (nee O'Hanley)
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