A French Flair Halloween

This year I celebrated Halloween for the first time by accepting an invitation to a Halloween lunch with four other ladies in our apartment building. I was the only one under the age of seventy and couldn't participate in reminiscing about the dashing looks of Clark Gable and James Stewart. But I could participate in savouring the audacious lunch hosted by the oldest in our group, Gerty (85).

Gerty festooned her apartment with orange and black balloons, a carved pumpkin, black dinner plates and dark purple champagne glasses. In the spirit of Halloween, Gerty had black witches' hats, orange pumpkin hats, or red and black wigs for us to wear as well as black garlands with orange pumpkins. I opted for the dramatic black pointed hat.

I brought the starter nibblies to enjoy while we sipped Gerty's delightful raspberry champagne surprise from large bubble wine glasses. Gerty loves to entertain and Halloween is a good excuse to throw a luncheon party. I was already having fun but Gerty's recital of the lunch menu had me doing back flips.

"Ladies," she announced in her Jamaican accent, "I am quite hooked on 'French Cooking at Home' on the cooking channel and so this is our menu. First we'll start with a vegetable soup and home-made olive bread. Our second course will be the anchovy salad Freda brought. And then the main course is a baked tortière, stuffed cabbage, roasted carrots and butter squash, asparagus with stuffed olives and a seafood risotto. Ginger brought pumpkin pie for dessert and Iris baked lemon squares."

Our contributions to the lunch were meagre offerings compared to the spread Gerty had single-handedly pulled off. "You must have been so busy preparing all this!" we gasped. "Oh," Gerty dismissed the praise, "I do a little bit every day and then it isn't too much. Besides which" she smiled, "you are all my guinea pigs."

What a time to be a guinea pig. What a privilege to participate in this extravagant meal. What an honour to be invited to Gerty's Halloween celebration with its French flair. M was just as thrilled with the leftovers I took home for him. He lost out on the atmosphere but he still got to enjoy all the full flavour of Gerty's French cooking.

A Crown of Feathers

We've turned a corner, I would say. We don't talk anymore about finding another home for her, M would say. Not that another home for Brooks would've happened in reality because her saving grace has been that when one of us is ready to send her back where she came from, the other is defending her.

And so Brooks has stayed and we have persevered. We always had the magical six months to carry us through her bad behaviour and busy antics. We'll give it six months, we would say, six months to settle down and adjust, otherwise...

Brooks made it past the six month mark a couple of weeks back. And she's pretty relieved she gets to keep her pride of place as M's crown of feathers. Since M's saved his neck by stopping her shoulder rides, Brooks has taken up residence on his head. She holds on to M's hair as though she's sitting on flattened elephant grass. She loves her fast rides through the apartment when she has to hold on tightly.

She loves busyness and excitement and when there's not enough of it, she makes her own, chattering at a high pitch looking for something, anything, that she can dive bomb. Then she and M play fight until someone gets hurt, always M with a bite to his fingers or wrist. When I can't take the high pitched chatter from the play fight any longer I hear my mother's voice: "Will you two stop fighting!" "But she loves it. She's having a ball," comes the reply. "Yes, but someone's going to get hurt." I hear my mother's voice again.

I've discovered that Brooks turns to mush when I talk to her in a high pitched cootchy-coo voice. She melts like butter in a hot pan and so I use it all the time to win her over. She even does her love jig for me, usually only reserved for M, when I talk sweet nothings to her. The other night, in her sweet moment of listening to my nothings, I high-pitched, "See Brooks, I told you I'll beat you. I told you I'll win." (see Bad, Bad Brooks May 2010)

She wagged her little body and chirped her little chirp.

Fried Pears

If you haven't noticed, I like food and I like to eat. I also like to cook, most especially, when it is just for M and myself because then I'm not striving for perfection.

I must share with you my latest delight: fried pears.

Melt butter in the pan, add ground coriander and brown sugar and stir. Add the pears, either sliced or chopped very chunky, and fry for as little or as long as you like. Add cracked black pepper.

Now if you think this is a dessert you are wrong. It is an excellent accompaniment to pork anything. I've served it with a pork loin and with kasseler. I first tasted it in a salad. It is just real yummy. Try it, you will like it!

Fish and Chips in White Rock

A favourite ending to a favourite way to spend a Sunday afternoon (see Royal Albert Tea October 2010) is with fish and chips in White Rock. Perhaps because, after visiting Nell and Joe, we are close to White Rock any way or because it is a meal we have enjoyed a number of times with them in Steveston, another great place for fish and chips.

But first a stroll along the board walk to work up our appetites. Gorgeous, just gorgeous. The sun shines, the clouds are sparse, the air is brisk and mildly warm; the board walk bustles with patrons. We take a trip out on to the pier. It is packed. I start to feel like I'm caught in the sardine run up the Natal Coast.

We leave everyone on the pier and head for our fish and chips. My restaurant of choice is a pub with heavy dramatic chandeliers, red leather couches, brown leather chairs, dark corners, gothic candles in empty wine bottles, heavy drapery and a brick wall. I love the drama combined with the simplicity of a meal of fish and chips. We sip our room temperature lemon water and talk.

This is a favourite moment of my life.

Royal Albert Tea

"She was heartbroken. We thought we were going to lose her to love sickness," says Nell. "He was very good looking."
"Like Joe?" asks M.
Nell looks across at her aged husband. "Oh, he was good looking but this man was special."
We laugh. Joe shrugs his shoulders and sips his tea.

This is a favourite way to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon: drinking tea from Royal Albert China, nibbling Dutch treats and being regaled by Nell and Joe's stories of yester year. "It's so nice that you kids come and see us," she says. "When I was young I didn't like old people."

Nell launches into her next story: "Once at church there was this old man who couldn't hear and he asked me to find the song in the song book for him. And so I did, but I found the wrong one for him. He couldn't hear that he was singing the wrong song. We young people laughed so hard we had to leave the church." She pauses. "It was funny then but not very nice."

"And now you can't hear," says M speaking louder for Nell to catch his words.
"I know," Nell says. "I spent $3,000 on a hearing aid I don't like to use."
"Yes," adds Joe, "she hears much better now that it lies on the kitchen counter."
We laugh and, after 60 plus years of marriage, Nell lets the comment go.

Joe takes the gap and starts to tell us of life in the slow lane of old age. At 91 there are a lot of things that he has had to let go and can't do anymore. Nell jumps in and explains how a caregiver comes in once a week to help Joe bathe.

"Even if he baths today, and the caregiver comes tomorrow, she will bath him again. You know," Nell continues, "where I come from, things were a little different. We bathed once a year at Christmas." We all laugh again.

I look at the old woman across the table from me and I search the folds of her skin for the youthful dark-haired beauty she claims to have been. I picture her as a girl growing up dirt poor in rural Norway. "By the time I was eleven, I lost all my teeth," she will say and Joe will sympathetically nod his head. And yet, she tells her stories of poverty with gusto and oodles of humour. Nell loves to laugh.

"God gave you a back-bone not a wish-bone," she often says. And I know that philosophy of life explains her transition from serfdom poverty in Norway to a comfortable middle-class retirement in Canada serving tea in her best tea pot. With, of course, oodles of stories in between which fill the 94 years of her life.

Other than the tea and treats and the sense of family we enjoy on our visits to Nell and Joe, I value the life lessons I glean from their stories, lessons on how to live life well, right up to the end.

A Thanksgiving Turkey

Candles flicker. The children talk happily at the dinner table. Adults joke in the kitchen filling their plates with turkey meat and ham, gem squash and peas, mashed potato and cauliflower au gratin. I sip champagne and live Will and Glenda's stories of the family trip to Europe this past summer (see Memoir on Paris July 2010).

The opulence of Versailles, the majesty of the Eiffel Tower and the sounds of Barcelona accompany our Thanksgiving turkey dinner replete with autumn leaves scattered on the table. Stories of travel abound. I feel wanderlust stir in me again.

I call my thoughts back to this Canadian autumn and our Thanksgiving dinner with long-time friends: thirteen years of friendship with Will and Glenda, and an even longer friendship with Reid and Allie, who were guests at our wedding. We catch up on news and happenings in each other's lives.

Were we together for Thanksgiving dinner last year? somebody asks. And we all rattle our memories twelve months. Yes, Glenda says, remember it was at our place and such and such were there too. Yes, yes, that's right, we all agree. Was that just a year ago? It seems so much longer.

A long while after dinner and dessert, we pull ourselves from pending slumber on the couches to collect in the hot tub. The October night air is brisk on my skin. I enjoy the warmth of the water. Glenda joins me, as do Will and Reid. M hops in and the water rises even more. This is going to overflow as soon as Allie gets in, someone says. Yes, says Will, this hot tub is a bit small for six adults and a turkey.

We laugh, and laugh again. Put Paris and Barcelona on hold, this hot tub is just the place I want to be.

A Snail Snooze

The sun lulls us and we eat our tuna sandwiches in companionable silence. M sits on the table and stares into the space just above the ground. I sit on the bench with my back against the table and watch a snail slowly trail across the gravel towards the grass.

Not having legs, I'm fascinated how he moves his black slimy body. And not having a shell, I guess he is actually a slug. I've seen a number of his compatriots squished into a mess by bike tires on the road. I wonder where he is journeying to. He's in no hurry; he has all afternoon to get there.

He slides onto the grass and a small piece of gravel stuck to the end of his body slides with him. I watch as he curls up underneath the leaf of a dandelion weed ready to take his Saturday afternoon snooze.

"Look!" I say to M. "This snail has just curled up to go to sleep."

M opens his eyes, "Perhaps tomorrow after church, I should go and pick up the shoe boxes from Willingdon."

I look back at the slug. The wonder at his little life is going to be mine alone. M and I fall silent again, he, preoccupied with thoughts about deadlines and Samaritan's Purse shoe boxes, me, I watch a slug sleep.

I look again at M. His eyes are closed, his head bowed, enjoying the warm sun. I take my cue from him and close my eyes too. And so we snooze in the mid-afternoon sun: M and me - and a slug.

An Outhouse

"Hey, have you seen that these long-drops have skylights?" I shout to M as he bikes ahead of me onto the grass and to the picnic table where we always have our rest break. Pretty stylish for a forest.

I get off the bike scolding myself, "Outhouse, outhouse, I've got to remember it is an outhouse." After thirteen years of living in Canada I still often default to South African terminology (see Bob's My Burger February 2010). And 'long-drop' is one of them.

Once in a conversation with Jean, we were talking camping and I was merrily versing about long-drops. Jean interrupted me, "They're called outhouses." Whatever else I was going to say went down the toilet.

"What? Don't you like the word 'long-drop'?"

"No, it is too graphic."

South African frankness meets Canadian politeness.

And looking at these cabin style units with their clear Perspex skylight roofs, I suspect they've earned the more stylish title of 'outhouse'. But, whichever way I word it and for whichever reason I use it, certain little functions still have a long way to drop.