who says alberton isn't exciting

what with 10th birthday parties...
stanley cup victories...
and digging up a twenty-years-dead-and-buried whale...
i'd say it was pretty exhilarating around here!

new roofs to climb

an hour before evening service on sunday i looked out my window and the fact that the porch roof was RIGHT there finally registered. so i merely inquired if...

'dad could you build a deck outside my window?'

'no, rachel, i can't build a deck outside your window.'

so i started figuring out how to get out there anyway. my window is an ancient and ridiculous one, incorporating about eight different layers of glass. i managed to heave it open to the screen, but no amount of panting and shoving could get the screen out.

'i could always cut it and duct tape it later...'

'no, rachel, you are not going to cut your screen out.'

so maybe we were going at this the wrong way. joanna decided to try from the outside. she pushed the garbage bin up to the house and put a large metal spool on top of that, and then hoisted herself up to the roof. meanwhile, inside the house mom was taking apart the window methodically, pane by pane. but even without the many layers the screen still wouldn't come out. luke's friend climbed up on the roof same way joanna did. 'look, i can take the screen out no problem,' he boasted. 'we break into houses all the time.' which dubious statement i chose to ignore and handed him the pliers. exactly one minute later he handed me the screen.

this is dad's face on learning my window was completely dismantled:
this is joanna trying out the shed roof in the delighted freedom that comes when you've conquered something new. like roof climbing. luke just wishes he was taller so he could as well.
and finally, luke's friend resting proudly on the roof after his labors. now i know who to call when i want to break in. not that i would call...
but it is nice to know right outside my window is a little retreat looking out at the fields and the trees and the birds and even the occasional fox. a cup of tea and a journal good. if only dad would build that deck so i wouldn't live in fear of rolling off one day...

first home, second home, home home

my first home is alberton; my second home is moncton; my home home is margaree.

dad and i went for a quick three day trip the end of april.

this is my old backyard.

this neighbors my grandparents' property.

this is after the arduous trek down the cliff to the river. when i was a child it was all rock, but now soil is wedging itself between the stones, and this reedy bush grows, and leaves and natural refuse catch on the branches and look like some sort of earthy flower.

this is the road by my grandparent's house. it's gradually returning to the earth. forgotten by any officials in charge of road repair. and this is not the worst of it. on the bright side, it's a really fun road to drive because you never know what surprise awaits you!

last year i wrote a piece for class on how there was a little piece of land in margaree that i wanted more than any other.

excerpt: ' When I was less than 10, my mother, my younger brother and I walked halfway up my grandpa's mountain to visit my father at work. I can still remember the heat of the sun-warmed land, and my father sitting on a log in his orange gear, dirty and tired, the brush spread haphazardly over the cleared land, and then I ask about a single towering tree upright, smack in the middle.

"Grandpa couldn't cut it down," Dad tells me. "It's been there for a long time."

Being in Margaree for a weekend is beautiful, but then comes the leaving part, which we've done many times. Leaving repeatedly emphasizes the need I feel to put down roots in a place, for the first time I left Margaree, it taught me to fear change. Leaving makes me hang on to every tree, every memory and every tradition. Though there is always a time and a place for leaving, I hate it: goodbyes, packing, sitting on my suitcase to shut it, everything, all of it. I want to cling to that one tree of my Grandpa's because if someone didn't know, they might erase it off the mountain. I want to save it. I never want to let go.'

for me that particular elderly tree is a powerful image of the sense of survival that margareers know instinctively. the harsh canadian landscape typical of canadian lit is cape breton. the struggling and scratching to survive is natural to the descendants of the scottish settlers who left scotland for cape breton in hopes of a chance of survival accepting the nearly impossible difficulty of farming in the mountains because it reminded them so much of home.

it's instinctive, as i said previously. the love for the harsh land summed up so beautifully by Alistair MacLeod in No Great Mischief. the unbreakable bond of family drawn together by the need to survive, together. the forced exodus to the wealthier states, and then the helpless return to cape breton, because...

here i have a home but i have no money. there i have money but no home.
- No Great Mischief

i'm off track.

the reason dad and i traveled back in april was because of illness in the family. grandpa, he who would not cut down the tree, though he was in the business of cutting down trees. he respected the way the tree clung to the earth in survival. anyway, grandpa is ill. we went back because of it. it was a difficult three days.

dad had read my little composition. he liked it because he understood it naturally; it is even more his heritage than mine. so while we were in margaree, dad hiked up to the tree. like me, he searches out sentimental moments. but we didn't realize how sentimental this moment would be.

it was dying. he hid in the sawmill and cried.

later i said: 'if that was a metaphor in a book i'd think it was awfully heavy-handed'

i went down to the river for a long time and i wished i'd never written a word.

anyway. Grandpa and the tree. there's fight left in them yet. aren't they practiced in the art of survival?

i came by speed-reading honestly

aren't they cute. notice the pile of back-up reading material on the floor.

we all read. but Luke is infinitely more interested in bionicle and redwall than the rest of us at the moment. oh and he actually does have all his limbs intact; i've no idea why he's using his foot as a bookrest.

captain johnny thinks we are all ridiculous and would rather bury his head in the couch than read a book. in other pet news...

i think i've convinced my family that a dog would be nice to have around the house. the tipping point was when i reminded dad of his favorite childhood book Walt and Pepper about a dog and cat that fight like - cats and dogs - but realize they quite like each other at the end. i said we could name the dog walt. and then we spent an hour thinking up good names (mostly from books or after hockey players) but of course we'll only know the name once we know the dog. actually dad would prefer a fat sassy cat (his words) but the rest of us have a soft spot for canines.

and all things are nice and quiet here in alberton.