The Long Weekend

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.