The sky was this kind of blue when I was in B.C. last week.
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| ... looking west from my porch while shoveling snow ... |
The road out to Bernie Road was clean enough to walk on. Bonnie and walked in the early morning twilight. A railroad vehicle lumbered along the path -- too wide for any car to pass it as it made its way down to the tracks. Bonnie and I stood off to the side, our feet pushing into the snowbank as we watched the driver who acknowledged us buy only slightly lifting four of his fingers off of the steering wheel.
We knew we had been invited down to Janet and Glen's for supper that night. Wyona was master-minding the project with frozen food from the summer that she was using while it was still good. But that doesn't mean that Janet and Glen, or Moiya and Dave, or even the two of us didn't bring food, enough so that twenty people could have eaten -- not just the six of us who gathered around the Pilling's new oak dining room table, now expanded with extra leaves. The chairs had been brought to the west end of the table so that those who came early could enjoy the BBQ-ed chicken wings and the greek cream cheese that was covered with Roasted Pineapple and Hananero Sauce.
I only mention this because I decided -- no more eating with these people. I can't push myself back from the table until I am too, too full. They are interesting conversationalist and reveal in the joy of shared conversations
But I couldn't keep that memory of hoping not to eat any more, long enough to turn down the Chinese food and the warm apple pie served the next day when I happened to dropped in at Wyona's for lunch.
I was trying to get home after my morning walk, but I wandered down to Glen's with him, still talking to him before he began work. He had come to my house to fix a wonky tap and spotted the two of us walking on the road.
What was there to do but let Bonnie go off to work and let me stop in at Moiya's on my way back home -- she being my target for early morning visiting since she gets up earlier than Wyona. Moiya had taken me to the local fresh fruit and vegetable outlet the day before.
"No better prices than these: $6 for a 40 pound box of Macs; $8 for the Spartans and Golden Delicious."
I only bought one box. Moiya bought two and between the time she dropped me off at night and noon the next day, she had peeled all eighty pounds of the apples and now they were sitting on her cupboard, bagged as dried apple crescents or rolled in wax paper as fruit leather.
Her kitchen was clean again. I grabbed her hand to look at her thumbs which was the only place where there was evidence of all of the work she had done. Dirt was deep into the cracks of the skin on her thumbs. When I do that kind of work and it takes a few days of scrubbing with soap and water to get rid of that evidence. But my hands were clean. We are just going to eat all forty pounds of apples out of hand.
Sirloin steak was sizzling on the grill when I arrived for the third meal -- three days in a row and we still hadn't turned on the oven at our place. There were friend mushrooms and baked potatoes and a beautiful salad. I am reminded often of the articulation of wonderful moments in 2014. Someone said, "Leisurely dinners set at long tables with loved ones. That was my 2014 joy."
Yes to that person hitting moments of happines right on the head: leisurely dinners, blue skies, short walks from the doors of one set of loved ones to the next set.Treasured moments.
Arta
