It’s Family Day weekend here in
Ontario; no school or work on Monday. Almost everything will be closed tomorrow:
shops, recreation centres, provincial offices, and of course schools. It’s almost
more sacrosanct than Christmas Day, I think. Across the border, the U.S. is
celebrating President’s Day. In Manitoba, a friend there tells me, Monday is Louis
Riel Day (raise your hand if you have heard of the 1885 Rebellion: http://library.usask.ca/northwest/background/riel.htm). In Nova Scotia, it’s
Heritage Day, and in the province of Prince Edward Island, what else but Islanders’
Day. I thus conclude that by the third weekend in February, most North
Americans seem to be ready for a break. (This particular North American is ready
by the first weekend of the month, so my artist friend and I have evolved a
tradition of celebrating SuperBowl Sunday and Groundhog Day. Give it up for Punxatawney Pete
and the NFL. Well, for Pete, anyway.)
This year’s long weekend
corresponds with Valentine’s Day, which is awesome, as it means that there is
no school, which means no last-minute rush to the shops to buy boxes of tacky
little cards to stuff in minuscule envelopes which need to be labelled with the
names of all the girls in the classroom, but not the boys, forgetting no one,
and deciding whether to include the teacher, and if the teacher, then also the
student teacher? The French teacher? The librarian? And so forth. Check the list once more to ensure no one is
forgotten, then dig up the remnants of last year’s box of pink hearts because
there is always one more name than there are cards in the box.
Valentine’s Day also corresponded
this year with a night when all three children happened to have invitations to
be other than home, while husband and I had none. I cannot remember the last
time the stars aligned so fortuitously and romantically. We cooked exactly what
we liked for dinner (slivers of smoked trout with peppercorns and horseradish
cream on cucumber slices--thank you, Irma Rombauer, grilled lamb chops, and
Mediterranean vegetable stew, olive ciabatta, and for dessert, squares of dark
chocolate with toasted quinoa). We got our very own choice of movie, though we
did have to ring the middle child at his friend’s house before we figured out
how to make it play. Youngest child attended a slumber party, and eldest child
is at a yurt with half a dozen friends.
A yurt. In February. A February
in which we are experiencing record cold temperatures. It is currently minus
22C in Toronto, and even colder out in yurt-land. In Fahrenheit that’s the less
scary-sounding 1 degree but damn, it is so cold. I fear for the kids’ fingers,
toes, and noses, to list just a few of the body parts I value in my son. The
yurt is said to be winterized, but even our house is having a hard time keeping
the outside temperatures at bay. How can the yurt manage it? I ask again, whose
bright idea was it to settle in this arctic plain? Something has gone horribly
wrong in human history, I tell you.
Son texted me that he is still
alive and not frozen and please could I stop texting him? And by the way, he
has learned to snowboard!
Oh good. Another way to freeze.
