A Canadian Thanksgiving

 

The flight to Toronto from Montreal was actually wonderful! I found a Samsonite whirly polycarbonate suitcase at the Montreal airport, they're $450 in LA and I longed for one, but come on. Here they had them on sale for $120! So I bought one and put my carry-on luggage in it. The flight was only one hour on a perfect sunny crystal clear day and I got some super pictures leaving Montreal and descending onto Toronto Island. Short ferry to Toronto and there was dear Frank waiting! We drove to his spiffy new condo on the edge of High Park, Toronto looking really lovely and exciting in the fall sunshine, the pretty quirky old houses, colorful restaurants, lush green foliage and red trees.

Leaving Montreal in a small prop plane

Approaching Toronto

Getting closer!

About to land on Toronto Island

After a quick introduction to the lovely new condo, with its stunning panorama of the park and the city, we drove to pick up Tim, who is looking quite wonderful at 89. A bit hard of hearing, and like Peter he smokes and won't exercise, but as sharp as ever, with smile unchanged. We drove to a lovely Italian restaurant in Little Italy and Elizabeth joined us. So happy to see her! And the food...I had Gorgonzola crostini and some of Frank's calamari; then the special, osso bucco and risotto, followed by cappuccino and we all shared a tira misu. Delicious! Then back to the condo to catch up with my email and sleep...

With me cousins! Tim, Elizabeth and Frank

Me and Elizabeth

View de Frank

Monday October 13. Canadian Thanksgiving Day! OF COURSE what do you think happens if you have rich osso bucco and risotto and cappuccino and tira misu and strong tea before bed? Yup, indigestion and insomnia. Didn't sleep till maybe 5 AM, got up 8:30, was absolutely socially useless, on the very day there was all the family to see, much to my dismay. Still, at least I was OK in the morning and Frank made me cappuccino (very delicious, I'm sold on his machine (memo to self: it should have a pump, be Italian, and you should grind own coffee beans). We went to a famous deli, Caplansky's, for breakfast (bagels lox and cream cheese); and we talked and talked about the family's lives and trajectories and histories, as well as our own Choices and Decisions and Plans. Never got to know Frank so well before, as it was with Elizabeth I did all the research for my book years ago. It was just the best time - so wonderful to have such cousins and to improve our friendship! Then we walked in High Park for an hour, to Grenadier Pond. Lovely country-like wildness, and ducks and swans and a chipmunk, red trees and Black-eyed Susans. A delightful time!

Found my scene. Toronto coffeehouse.

 

Red Tree in High Park

Swan in Grenadier Pond.

 

Black-eyed Susans

 

Frank then dropped me at Tim's and we were joined by Elizabeth and went over family papers. They gave me Winnie's copy of John Whitcomb Riley that the author gave her, signed by them both, and as if that wasn't thrill enough, also a lovely decorated Chinese silk scarf that Winnie or more probably Doris owned in the 1950s, that I will frame. A lovely time with Tim and Elizabeth, and Frank picked us up at 5. Drove us to Katie's for the dinner.

At Tim's

 

Mementos of the past...



 And there were Jim and Katie and Ian and their boys, adorable charming Casey and Jamie,  Frank's brilliant son Patrick, his mom Shelley and friend Jan, and various other family friends. And the FOOD! Bruschetta and mackerel spread and cheese and salmon and shrimp - and then the TURKEY and stuffing and gravy and sweet potatoes and carrots with ginger and green beans and pie. Oh my! All excellent. That was a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner, indeed. Drove Tim home and then I collapsed to sleep by midnight.

At Katie's house for Thanksgiving:  Katie, Elizabeth, Tim, Jim

Jim, me and Elizabeth

Brothers: Jim and Frank

Patrick, me and Elizabeth

Jamie

Jamie, bless him, has inherited the writerly "fairy germs" - our novelist grandmother Winnie's exact quote, in "Me: A Book of Remembrance," was this outrageously, characteristically narcissistic paragraph (but what do you expect from a woman who calls her book "Me"):

"Strip her of her glittering clothes, put her in rags over a wash-tub, and she would have been transformed into a common thing. But I? If you had put me over a wash-tub, I tell you I would have woven a romance, aye, from the very suds. God had planted in me the fairy germs, that I knew."

(Equally complacently and narcissistically) Jamie and I have both got 'em.



The feast

Thanksgiving, Canadian version!

 

Tuesday October 14.

Slept really well and Frank made me cappuccino and the very best lox eggs and onions I've ever had in my life, with a Montreal bagel of course! I packed, musician Frank practiced his bass, and then Elizabeth came at 10:30 and we went for a lovely stroll on Bloor, chatting like mad all the way, WHAT fun, as I rarely get enough Elizabeth. We had TWO cappuccinos, the first in a Second Cup garden, talking about my family and retirement dilemma and Elizabeth's life and love as well; we stopped in a shoe shop where I had a power nap, then a bookshop where I bought 2 books Elizabeth recommended (The Purchase by Linda Spalding and A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews), a pharmacy to score some aspirin with codeine; and I also plucked the most gorgeous ruffled jacket from a shop's outdoor sale rack - only $10 and see how pretty it is! Finally we rested in the last coffeeshop where we had cappi and a good cakelike nutty brownie each. Truly great fun. 

Frank's divine lox and eggs - and Montreal bagel

Walk with Elizabeth:  Perfect coffeehouse background for The Jacket

 

Then strolled back to Frank's, bid Elizabeth goodbye and Frank enormously kindly drove me to the airport. There I did internet, uploaded photos, bought an excellent Italian salami sandwich for the plane. And now we are descending into LA, I see the city lights, and we're a bit early so Paul and Pam may not be waiting for me yet, but oh how nice it will be to see them and dear Peter and the little Angel-cats! Oh there are so many wonderful things in the world. Hit plays! Friends! Food! Travels! Cousins! And now, my family and cats!

 

Back home with my dear Peter

A Little Mammoth



Old friends together on the Rock Creek trail at 10,000 feet

 

Last week I drove up to Mammoth for a couple of days, to hike with friends Leelee and Mike, whom we've been hiking with annually for around thirty years now. I think we've been to each other's homes only once (they live up north) but we've met in national parks, mountain ranges and locations including the Canadian Rockies, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Washington and the Sierras. Knowledge of the most stellar trails of our lives, we owe to them. Here are some pictures from this trip.

Lone Pine, 200 miles north of Los Angeles, 100 miles from Mammoth

 

Manzanar, north of Lone Pine, where 10,000 Japanese Americans were interned during World War II

The long and winding road. Lundy Canyon.

Lundy Canyon, just before all the aspens turn gold

Quaking aspens

Last of the asters

 

Next day's hike, Rock Creek, out of Tom's Place.

 

Looking a bit like superannuated rockers...

 

  Another hiker's poodle enjoys the water...

  

And so does Mike's darling dog Emily

Hikers 4 Ever!

Long Lake

A rest among the gentians

 

The last gentians

 

On the trail back...

An English Summer: The Fitzwilliam and Farewell!



16th century Chinese dog at the Fitzwilliam

The last, and possibly arguably the best, day of the trip. Slept well, and awoke to a softly glowingly sunny but cool (60s) English day of late summer, trees in very full green leaf with sunshine gleaming through the leaves trembling in winds. In a word, glorious. Derek baked a new bread and I had some with him and Jan, with tea. Then Jan and I walked into town, had a cappuccino and a peek into Heffers, after which we parted, she to do errands while I amused myself.

Sign seen in Cambridge

 First I walked through the cheerful Cambridge open market and enjoyed myself looking at the booths of old books and jewelry and cheeses, in full display. Then I had a meal at the attractive and convenient Michaelhouse cafe, in St. Michael's Church, where everything is fresh and good (delicious cheese scones, scrambled eggs, sausages and mushrooms), after which I visited an old favorite bookstore, the Haunted Bookshop, that wonderful stuffed little secondhand shop with the rickety stairs and an Aladdin's cave full of books, especially rich in children's literature. Most of what I bought was English middlebrow novels, D.E. Stevensons and the like.

Fitzwilliam Museum



From there I continued down the King's road to the Fitzwilliam Museum, which I had not visited in years, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. So many wonderful antiquities, beauties, and quirky things. Peter and I first visited the Fitzwilliam maybe 25 years ago, and that is where I remember falling in love with the first majolica I'd ever seen.  And the cases are so beautifully and colorfully arranged they still take my breath away.



 

 

 

 

16th century majolica, in the same case as ever...

 







The museum is so refreshingly wondrously unchanged, the same exact cases and objects are just as I first saw them years ago, when with new eyes they made such an impression on me.  How much more porcelain I have seen since then! Of course they do have temporary exhibitions and things have been moved around; but you don't feel it. There is something to be said for a museum changing as little as possible; the pleasure of seeing treasures you remember from a quarter century ago being quietly preserved and cherished, gives you a long perspective on history and preservation. The Fitzwilliam is also the perfect size, with its marvelous collection, yet you can see most of it in a few hours. I can't think of another museum that has more objects that make me smile. Here are some of the ones that did...



17th century Japanese elephant. "Live elephants did not exist in Japan, and their representation in ceramic form was therefore inaccurate."

"Nobody"



Voltaire

Saturn, about to eat his baby. I really must look up why...

  

This next group of pictures only made me smile in the sense that I was amused to realize that I now take special notice of paintings of old women. Perhaps this is because (as Jane Austen said) "now that I must leave off being young," I'm going to be an old woman myself, so it's interesting to see how they are portrayed! (Er - not kindly.)



Michiel Sweerts, An Old Woman Spinning (1646)



 



Cleopatra isn't old, but this is her asp moment

 

A few more things that appealed to me...I really think I ought to retire and spend the rest of my life just going to museums...

 





 Bust of an unknown man by Joseph Wilson (18th c.) His tortured expression spoke to me, and seems so modern.


A nice big red Breughel (1627), of an exuberant village festival.
 

Farewell to England...and to the Fitzwilliam.  For this time.



After enjoying myself to my heart's content, I rested in the quiet garden. It was quite empty, I had it to myself, but there was a tea window, and I had, what else, tea and Victoria sponge.

A quiet moment in the garden

It was probably a mile walk home, and my legs got pretty tired (especially when carrying book bags!), but instead of walking back through the town, I turned into the meadow of Lammas and wandered along the river, past fields of cows, then along the Backs, seeing the colleges across the meadows, and getting back to Marshall House at nearly four.

Pictures of Lammas Meadow and the Backs

  

 

  



Cows in the meadow


King's College from the Backs.  Hard to take a bad picture of it, really.


Back gate and the gentleman who admits you
 



Rested, and then we walked to Clara's for dinner. It was lovely seeing her and Colin, and Jan and Derek with the two blond bright little grandsons, George and Alex, three this week and ten months respectively. How beautiful they were! Little Alex actually sat on my lap and both boys smiled and kissed me when we left, what sweet manners! Clara made one of her amazing dinners, grilled tomatoes and peppers with red onions, garlic and basil, tons of olive oil and balsamic, on cheese toast, and her fish and cheese sauce dish...

  

 For dessert, get this, she mixed clotted cream ice cream with the most divine fresh English raspberries: unbelievably good! It didn't last long enough to take a picture. Then we walked back, pondering on the Pleiades, which were most resolutely obscured by the remains of the Supermoon...



Jan with her beautiful grandsons

 

Not to omit grandcat Penny

 



Next morning I set out on the train from Cambridge to London, tube from King's Cross to Heathrow, did some shopping at the airport, then the interminable eleven hour flight home...though at least I did have a window seat this time. It was eighteen hours from Cambridge to home, all told, and the "tax" for all my pleasure, as Jane Austen would say, was a week's worth of jet lag, something she did not know about.  How I shall miss my enchanted England, but I will always be visiting it in imagination.

The pond at Lucy Cavendish, my last morning

 

Farewell to Marshall House

 

Books I bought on the trip: and by no means a complete list, either!

Letters of Henry James to Isabella Stewart Gardner
John Bradsaw - Cat Sense
Susan Scarlett - The Man in the Dark
Gladys Mitchell - On Your Marks
Josephine Elder - The Encircled Heart
Jill Paton Walsh - The Attenbury Emeralds
Christopher Maxwell - French Porcelain of the 18th century
D.E. Stevenson - Miss Buncle Married; Celia's House; Gerald and Elizabeth; Charlotte Fairlie; The Blue Sapphire; The House on the Cliff; The Young Clementina

And yes, they all went in my suitcase, along with various notecards from various museums, a hand crocheted afghan from a Cambridge charity shop, a framed drawing of an old Devon leper house for Paul, a book of Cambridge poets for Peter, lovely semiprecious beads from the Cambridge market for neighbor Pam, a tiny beaded Spanish owl, a scarf...and chocs, smoked salmon and Stilton cheese from the London airport shop!

Penny's precursor cat (1740s)