Sadness, Soup, and Snow

I don’t usually know what I am going to write about until my fingers touch the keyboard. It’s the way I have always written. All the lessons we tend to teach as English teachers are about coming up with a plan - making sure you have a clear introduction, body and conclusion in factual writing; ensuring that your creative efforts are plotted out before you actually begin your stories. This has seldom worked for me, except in the most academic of pursuits.

I’m spontaneous and a bit haphazard by nature, and my best writing seems to come out of the same place my dreams do: some subconscious well of knowing and depth that I can easily tap into. I guess it is a combination of intuition and practice that gets me there.  I love to go plumbing for the treasures that are shining at the bottom of the sea where one can’t for too stay too long without air, yet there is such beauty to bring back to the surface.

I went to bed agitated last night. The day had been pleasant. It was a blue-sky-white- ground day in an area of the world that is always lush with green and the palette of blue and white is seldom seen together. Everything looked different to me, as if I were in a completely new habitat. The looming mountains had woken up, finally christened with the long-awaited snow, and everything gleamed as the sunlight reflected off the mirrors of snow,. Don and I went thrift shopping for kitchen supplies. Now that we know our new lives are starting soon in this part of the world, we’ve decided it’s okay to start finding useful items to set up our Vancouver Island home. Today, we came away with a few old Corning Ware pieces that our mothers had used when we were kids, some 1970s vinyls to add to our growing collection that is still without a turntable, a griddle pan so Don can make Charlotte pancakes this morning, and a Pyrex bowl that we can make my family’s famous bread in. (I will leave the recipe for you at the bottom of the blog. My sister makes it at least once a week and it is better than anything you can buy at a store, and surprisingly easy to make.)

I made soup in the afternoon - my Oma Rempel’s grune borscht or summer borscht. Some people call it weed soup because it is so full of greens: summer sorrel or beet leaves, dill, parsley, green onions. Barley and potatoes give it starch, and is flourished with buttermilk and farmer sausage. A boiled egg is plopped into each bowl, and you slice it in, using the edge of your spoon. It’s an odd combo, but a famous one in Mennonite circles, especially for those who lived in Ukraine during those years of extreme dearth. It’s a soup borne of necessity, carried on through tradition, and loved by those of us whose grandmothers lovingly prepared this repast for us while telling stories of their pasts all the while. Memories of sitting at my Oma’s arborite kitchen table with the orange upholstered daisy chairs as she chopped potatoes and stirred vigorously, always in her modest dresses with an apron on and her green cat eye glasses - these cannot grow old for me. She may well have given me my own storytelling genes. I can’t seem to write without telling a story…

So we feasted on soup, repaired to the living room and lounged, reading and crosswording, and feeling cozy, but I just kept shifting back from how lovely this scene was to why we were in this scene to begin with. We were in this bungalow in Vancouver having a lovely day together because our Emily took her life. We are here to mourn. Emily should be here with us, laughing and telling us she’s not a soup girl but eating it anyway, and then making commentary on the Northern Exposure we just watched and telling us how she’d like to live in a small town in Alaska and build a cabin there; she’d be the disciplined one, heading to her bed early to get a good night’s sleep so she could start with her routine in the morning. She should be the one making us coffee, and she would be mortified that we are using a Keurig coffee machine, coffee snob and barista that she had become. She would be the one insisting I do my Pilates challenge for the day (I didn’t), saying, “C’mon Mama, I’ll do it with you.” And we’d laugh our way through it, her the flexible, lithe one, me the pudgy one in my pajamas.

But we are here because of her. Because she is no more in her physical form. So I have to go out and seek her - through walks and meditation, through my writing, in my dreams. I need to believe she manifested this little house for us and that she is keeping us tucked in and cozy. 

The day after Emily died, when I was finally able to come up for air and shower, I heard her voice in my mind saying, “Now it’s my turn to take care of you, Mama.” Please do so, baby girl. Please align with the universe and care for your heartbroken mama and papa and sister and friends and family. We all need your caretaking and comfort.