Tea Biscuits and Miracle Whip cake

In the division of family heirlooms, my brother took the large box of unsorted family photos, and it seemed fitting that I would take the according file of her recipes.

Tomorrow is November 16th, which would have been my mother's 62nd birthday.

If she really liked you, when your birthday came around, she would make you a chocolate cake with Miracle Whip in it. I suppose I could post that recipe here, but the decadence of it gives me pause.

In lieu, I'd like to offer my mother's tea biscuit recipe, which is lighter, and easily made as organic or nondairy as a west coaster might like:

Tea Biscuits

2 cups all purpose flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
scant 1/2 cup sugar
scant 1/2 cup lard (Oh my gawd lard??)
1 egg
1/2 cup raisins
enough milk to make a nice drop dough

There aren't any further directions as far as to what order to mix things, but if I remember correctly, mix the flour, baking powder and salt together. Cream the fat and egg into the sugar, then add to the flour. Toss in the raisins and then add milk until you get a good drop dough consistency. Make them as big or small as you like.

Bake at 400 F until edges are golden.

Lifesaver

Dear Mom,
Tonight I was reorganizing my kitchen cupboards, throwing out ancient spices that Chef Tony says are too old to be any good- you shouldn't keep anything longer than a year.

And I came across the box of Lifesavers you put in my stocking last Christmas. I never opened them. I don't know how old I was when I stopped liking those candies and the schmarmy "storybook" that held them. But it was your tradition, like the stocking itself, and the mandarin orange tucked into the toe.

I didn't want the candies, but didn't have the heart to throw them out or give them away. But seeing them now, just a month and a bit until my first Christmas without you, I look at them, and I miss you. And I am afraid to think of how much more I will miss you when there is no stocking from you on Christmas morning. And this rising shaking breath in my chest is because I know that things will never be the same again. And I'm mourning the epiphany that sameness is a gift that I'll never have again from you.

And you were crazy, and made me so crazy sometimes that I wanted you to be gone, but I loved you, and you are missed, you crazy bitch.

love trish

Paper Tigers and Mud Masks

It is intended to pull the toxins out of your body. Through your skin. Gross.

It's so primal and basic, we've probably been doing it forever, first to cover our scent from our prey or to cover our scent from our enemies, then to paint symbols and stories on our bodies.

I do it because it makes me feel alive; the coolness of it as it slides on, the way it makes me see every pore in my face, and then as it dries tight across my skin, my pulse throbs under the taut surface. Vital. Maybe it makes my skin look nice, or softer, I'm not objective enough to say. But I can't ignore this truth, my heart beating under my skin, alive.

Sometimes that is all the reminder I can handle. Sometimes that's the only lucidity I really want to ponder. A heart, some blood, a delicate tissue containing me and so making me into something.

And then the tension gets to me, and the mud is dry, and like I did the very first time my mother let me play with her mud when I was a child, I wrench my face into an inaudible scream, and then a supreme pout, and finally a brow furrowed by no describable infraction. And I am instantly ancient, and falling apart. And thirsty for water.

The Corner Grocery

When I was a child, my father's parents owned a corner store. It was supplemental to my grandfather's electrical company income. Some family member has explained it to me that he wanted a business for my grandmother, to keep her occupied and earning, but I'd never dare say that to her. They had a Canada Post wicket, a penny candy counter, and for a brief and wonderful time, a soft ice cream machine.

My brother and I were often recipients of last season's hockey cards, the stick of gum hard and dusty like a veteran defenseman, and Toblerone chocolate gone stale, the cocoa fat rising to the surface and making them unsellable but still edible.

Once or twice, I was tasked with wiping the canned goods of their dust, my youngest aunt, who was just a teen herself, declared I was no good at it, but Grandma packed a #2 paper bag with candy for me anyway.

On rare occasions, I accompanied my grandfather to the wholesale cash and carry where he bought his inventory. Essentially a warehouse with cash registers and dollies at the front, I was awed by the height of the shelves, and the idea of buying my favourite chips by the case. I wouldn't have been more impressed if he;d taken me to a country club.

Along with the postal counter, the store offered a brief selection of greeting cards and a wall at the back of the store displayed Ukrainian coffee mugs and traditional blouses, like the ones me and my aunts wore to Ukrainian dancing classes each weekend. As word traveled through the local church, the store became a destination for Ukrainian Babas looking to buy their granddaughters their costumes. Much to the disappointment of me and my brother, who were now approaching the age where we could appreciate the concept of working for candy, the gift ware section grew, and the candy counter and ice cream machine were replaced with jewelery cases and porcelain dolls.

My grandparents still live above the store, though the bustle of Babas looking for tablecloths and dance wear is over. The front is locked, a sign posted advises patrons to ring the doorbell to summon assistance. Inside, the store is a museum of giftware stretching back two decades, Hummel figures and Robert Bateman collector's plates sit in cases, the original price tags evidence of the inflation we've experienced since the early eighties.

The store may have passed out of fashion, but my early experience working the counter with my grandmother never left me. Now fifteen years in to a career in food retail, I think back on those early days and see them as formative. The vision of a corner store as community hub and place for convenience still inspiring.

The End of the Great Lake Swimmers

It is true, I don’t know him. I’ve seen him a few times, his hair some soft sandy curls coiffed like a gentleman from the frontier, his beard carefully trimmed in consideration of a line between the civilized and the wild.

I’ve heard him speak, and was surprised by the confidence in his voice, that he wasn’t shy or full of apology. I don’t know him, so I can’t say whether he spoke his mind, or played devil’s advocate. I could imagine him being comfortable in either position.

I have even heard him sing. How many of my friends can I say that about? We’ve known each other for years, but I have no idea if their singing voices match their speaking voices, if that thin whisper that breaks and fades over a phone line might come to life in song. But I know this of Tony; his singing voice is lonely and wise, like an echo in a canyon. He sings of a place I miss, a hard place, a place made real by the people who live in it, by the reaching out across darkness and cold landscape.

Tony is a landscape. He is here and he is there. There is time before him and there is now.

Someday I will tell him these things. After I read the books I need to, and after I consult a map and find the place that is the most perfect to invite him to, the place that is most him, I will tell him that he is my landscape. Upon his spine I will install cottages, and I’ll wind alpine strawberry runners up his legs. I will save his modesty with bits of peat and some carefully placed chips of ice. I will nuzzle fruit trees in the warmth of his whiskers and curl a bear cub into the crook of his arm. Then I’ll hold him until the sky cracks open and water rushes to form great lakes in the small of his back, the dimples of his buttocks. Then I will go, knowing my only act was seeing his premonition as more literal than most, and having faith that it is meant to be.

If this says nothing, but invokes a mood, I am okay with it. Because I too have been frozen under a heavy weight for an age, and the retreat across my body was not a gentle melting away of responsibility, but a harsh scraping that changed my topography, pushing some parts of me deep down to my core. But parts of me became more buoyant too, springing up and I think something beautiful and deciduous is coming. I want to embrace that, I want to welcome the opportunity to cast off what is no longer needed. Even if it means cyclical grief and rebirth.

New Project Alert! Is it creepy or inspired?

Inspired by seeing them play three times this year, I am beginning work on a short story collection called The End of the Great Lake Swimmers. I'm trying to work with more structure than my usual confessional style nonfiction. So I've mapped out a series of short stories that take the first line of a Great Lake Swimmers song, and use it as the final line for a short story.

Having grown up in Sault Ste. Marie, on the river that connects Lake Superior to Lake Huron, I am excited to blend my own experience and comprehension of the area's mythology with the narratives evoked by the sounds and words of Tony Dekker and his Great Lake Swimmers.



I'll be posting snippets here.

Dear Mom, What Holds us Back

This time we nearly lost you. It wasn't so different from other times, still you listless and with a rattle in your chest. But worse. More dire, that's how I thought of it. I called the aunties, sent ripples of panic through all your sisters and even your sister in laws.

The doctors and nurses said you might rally, but they shook their heads discouragingly when they said it.

The social worker they sent said that sometimes even when gravely ill, a patient will rally because they are holding on for their families. A certain gentle look on his face when he said this, like the notion might crack me, like I haven't tried a hundred ways to take responsibility for your suffering. "Have you told her it's ok for her to go?" he asks and I nod and fling my hands open and stare briefly at my palms. What more can I give?

I'm not a reason for you to hold on. I am the good kid. I spent my entire childhood proving my self-reliance, letting you know it's ok not to worry about me. Why worry about me? No, I am no reason to stay.

In your worst moment, I was alone with you. You grasped my hand. Yours was feather weight and cool against my skin. "Don't leave me," You said. "I want to die, but I don't know how."

I am always alone with you when you get this kind of clarity. Am I your confessor, do you really find yourself best when you look in my eyes? Or do you I just listen extra hard when we are alone?

You don't know how to die. But your body does. Let it do its work. Pass out of this world. Let go.

Haiku for Tina Asato

How Tina Heals a Cold

Chest tight from sickness
A warmth spreads into her lungs
Menthol cigarette

Music Review #2- Portico

Dear Portico,

Regarding the song "sincerely".

Wow, I never thought I'd look forward to my next break up, but even though I am currently happy, I now know what song I'll cry to when I next get dumped.

Thanks for pretty sounding foreshadowing. The dutiful military drumming is a very nice piece of irony, and will help me from hyperventilating whilst I have my future crying jags.

Music Review #1- Death Cab For Cutie

I slow danced with my hot date to Talking Bird on Friday night. In his living room. He seems a little skittish, maybe he's been done wrong a couple times by girls, and we haven't had enough dates yet for him to spill his guts about all that. But I can feel it. So I sent him this song, thinking, by the time he falls in love with it, by the time he lies in bed, closes his eyes and listens to the words, he'll already know I'm not the clingy type, that the windows and door have been open the whole time- like the song says.

But in case he turns out to be stilted and never gets there, I'm also posting it here, so someone else listens hard to the lyrics and can enjoy the way a pop song can alleviate commitment issues.