the cassandra pages

Artists, Moving On

The deadline is October 31 at midnight; that's when our studio lease is up.

We're almost done. After a month of steady work, the furniture and equipment are gone, the files emptied, the tools sorted, the negatives and prints and artwork moved. Two days ago I sprayed my large charcoal drawings with fixative and took them off the walls - those were the last piece of our work remaining. The recycling/junk guys came yesterday and took away all the leftover books and a large wooden shelving unit. We have a small load remaining to bring home, another to take to storage (it is a small storage locker!), and another group of things, mostly tools, are going to the lake, but we can begin to imagine ourselves sweeping and mopping the floor, and turning the key in the lock for the last time.

What a saga. This move has been so much harder than downsizing and moving our household. There was simply a greater accumulation of things that we hadn't dealt with, and had to go through in detail, separating them into "keep", "sell", "give away", "recycle" and "throw away" - and then those categories ended up with finer subsections --for instance, things that we could take ourselves to the EcoCentre, like metal recycling, or hazardous waste, or the thrift store, or other things that were too bulky or impossible to dispose of -- like the many books that our bookseller friend didn't want, and friends and family didn't want, and even the thrift places and used bookstores didn't want.

The real issue, of course, wasn't just the arduous, lengthy, physically-demanding process, which simply had to be gone through, but the emotional aspects of sifting through forty years of our working lives and personal history, and preparing ourselves for the next chapter, which will not include a large space for whatever projects we decide to embark upon. For years I'd occasionally suggest that we sort through the boxes and accumulated stuff that we didn't seem to be using, but when you have plenty of space, there is such a dis-incentive to actually do that -- and we didn't. But as the rent rose higher and higher, the day of reckoning approached. We did a lot of weeding last summer, but signed one more lease, knowing that it would probably be the last one, but with no concrete plan for what was next except that we wanted to bring living and work under one roof again. In March, when we found a new place to live, that set the inevitable process in motion -- and the studio closing was forced upon us. When my father became dependent on our care, and then died, the available time for the moving process was contracted and the pressure became much greater.

It's been enlightening to see what we actually did keep over the years, and why, and what has changed now to allow us to let much of that go. I think we've learned a lot about ourselves and each other in this process, and I'm more inclined to be gentle as I look back at the people we were, rather than judging ourselves too harshly. When we started out together, as partners in marriage and a fledgling business, we had nothing, and were determined to be self-sufficient -- so of course we gradually acquired tools and supplies for every conceivable task. We bought a house that needed a great deal of work, and we did almost all of it all ourselves, from the heating in the cellar to raking the roof in the winter to prevent ice dams; my husband sanded and painted every clapboard; I grew a lot of our food, made curtains and clothing, papered and painted and sanded; he took care of the car and built furniture for us in his small woodshop; he learned how to do plumbing and electricity and tiling. We bought and mastered each new generation of computer equipment to keep our design and publishing business going without needing employees or technical assistance. This was at first a necessity, but became our way of life, and during those energetic years, we enjoyed it and took pride in it.

When we moved from a small, relatively rural Vermont village to Montreal, we really had no idea of what we were getting into, and what we might need or not - so we brought most of those tools and equipment with us. And we kept far too much in the way of outmoded tools and supplies. Our big error was not dealing with all of that during the intervening years and having to do it all at once -- but now we've done it, and we've gone through the paralyzing uncertainties about what to do, the decisions, the leave-takings, the questions about identity and age, and the sorting and packing and letting-go -- and we've survived. When October 31 comes, we will feel lighter, happier, and more free.

What I find most sobering is the plight of artists and craftspeople who still desperately need those large studio spaces, yet are being pushed out of one once-affordable but now-gentrified neighborhood after another. During the moving process, we've shared the freight elevator, loading dock and dumpster with many other tenants of this large former factory building, who can no longer afford the rent charged by the new landlords who are upgrading and changing the building into a place for small businesses, high-tech firms, and offices -- all of which can afford considerably higher rents. It is a business decision for the owners, and they have a right to do that; the building is much more attractive than when we moved in more than fifteen years ago. But as I've talked to others who are leaving, their anxiety and stress are palpable, and there are few good options for them in this city. And while a society without art is unbearable, and the governments everywhere tout their artists as intrinsic to the society's identity, very few actually give the necessary support. Relentless capitalism always wins.

Somehow, the arts and artists survive, but I ache for the people whose work and psychological health will suffer as a result of being forced into smaller, insufficient spaces. What do we care about and value, as human societies? Choosing art (and here I mean all the arts) as a way of life almost always means years of low income and precarity, but artists are not considered in the same breath as "the poor" - in fact, many people see them as somehow privileged, and governments tout them as shining examples of each culture. Except in rare circumstances, artists are not protected, and very few rise to acclaim or monetary success -- but just look at the people who use the work of artists, and their associations with them, to make themselves feel important and elite. Look at the system of grants and exhibitions and art sales, and who really profits from it -- a largely-closed system that has only been somewhat eroded by the freedom of the internet and artists taking control of their own distribution, marketing, and sales. When you look closely at the system, you see its unfairness and hypocrisy -- but the purity at the heart of art always remains, and can't be taken away. This is why, in spite of everything, it survives.

A Visual Diary

 

Sketchbook, July 2021-September 2022. (Best if viewed full screen, and you can click CC for some captions.)

It always strikes me, when I finish a sketchbook, how much like a diary it actually is. During this journey through a little more than a year -- a year that's seen a lot of upheaval and emotion and change -- the images and the choices recall exactly where I was and what I was thinking, while to the viewer, they probably look like innocuous still lives, landscapes and skyscapes. In some ways, this visual diary is more personal and secret and coded than written words could ever be.

On the other hand, I hope it's interesting to look at, whether you know any of the underlying aspects or not. From an artistic point of view, I like the two loose watercolors of Parc Lafontaine, in the fall and in the winter, and then the explorations of the sky, where the watercolors and one lone acrylic attempt to capture something that was quite new to me, and elusive.

I feel like I've had little time to really focus on art this year, which I'm sorry about, but at least there was this sketchbook which I kept going, and took with me on the trips to the lake to care for my father. It was often hard to draw -- I just didn't have the emotional bandwidth -- but the desire is coming back now, and I'm glad about that.

 

Unparallel Lives

My father died at 97, a month ago tomorrow. Queen Elizabeth II died at 96, two weeks ago. Charles and Diana were married three days before Jonathan and I were married, at the end of July, 1981. Their marriage ended unhappily, ours has endured for over 40 years, but I don't think it's because we made our own wedding cake, or because I sewed my own dress, but rather because we were free to follow our own hearts in ways that they were not. I would never have wanted to change places.

My father, too, was free after WWII to build his own life in ways that Queen Elizabeth could have never acted upon; her entire life was turned over to duty and service, constrained by rules and tradition that contemporary society has long ago discarded. How many jewels and Arabian horses and gilded coaches does it take to make up for that? For her sister, her uncle, or some of her own children and grandchildren, the tradeoff was clearly not worth it. Yet we watch this family drama, which is actually a tragedy, with fascination and even envy.

Just as our weddings were in stark contrast, so were the funerals. But given the traditional Anglican liturgy that formed the basis of both services, they shared a similar structure and many of the same words. I was grateful for that structure when I was planning dad's service, and the familiar words were a comfort to me. When I heard them again, during our cathedral's commemoration for the Queen last Sunday afternoon, and again during the televised services the next day, it was harder to keep myself together than it had been during my father's service. Out of the public eye, and without a eulogy to deliver, I was more able to grieve, and if I shed some tears, they were more for my father than for the Queen.

However, there was much to admire in Queen Elizabeth, even for this American who has never quite understood why Canada remained in the Commonwealth, and so devoted to the monarchy. She became queen in 1952, the year I was born, so in addition to being the same age as my father, she ruled for 70 years, which is the age I turned the day after her funeral. And, we share a name. Elizabeth I has been a constant presence of whom I was aware from the beginning. Regardless of what one thinks of the institution of the monarchy, and their immense wealth and privilege, it was always significant to me that there was a woman in that role, and that she held the respect of other world leaders with a quiet, dignified, and unquestioned authority. She may not have had real political power, but she led in other ways that people seemed to need, and to respect. The majority of people who watched her funeral, or tried to see her coffin lying in state, or left flowers in remembrance, were not doing so out of voyeurism or celebrity worship; something real was going on there, whether we agree with it and share it, or not.

And these were historical moments; for anyone who has studied history, religion, and ancient cultures, one has to notice the power of symbolism and ritual that, in all cultures, attempts to unite us to our ancient forebears, connect us to the earth and the heavens, and make sense of the greatest mystery of all. As I stood in a crowd of Canadians on Sunday, at the conclusion of the service, and the organ moved from the final hymn and blessing to the opening bars of "God Save the King", sung to those words for the first time in 70 years, I could feel the emotion around me. Likewise, who could remain completely unmoved by the final minutes of the Windsor committal service, when the crown and other symbols of Elizabeth's earthly and historical power were removed from the coffin before it sank beneath the floor?

Under the September sun, thirty friends and family members stood around my father's grave in the old village cemetery where I played as a young child. At the conclusion of the brief committal service, we placed the paper box containing his ashes into the same grave where my mother's remains had been buried sixteen years before. Then I took a shovel into my hands and put the first earth into the grave, passed the shovel to my husband, who did the same, and then, slowly, silently, nearly all of the people present took a turn, and we buried my father together and then strewed red roses on the grave.

People can despise the monarchy, but can't we find it interesting and significant that human beings have tried to find meaning in death, and mark this great transition with dignity and respect, since time immemorial? And in the aftermath of Elizabeth's death, can't we summon enough charity to hold our criticisms and judgements until she is at least buried? This was a woman who shouldered her unchosen and unwanted role with selflessness, and all these years later, seems to have grieved her partner's death and met her own with stoic, private courage. She was not blameless, but there is no way that all the crimes of colonialism and empire can be laid at her feet; these things go back very far indeed, and are shared by many other countries. If it is time now for some commonwealth nations to change their systems of government, so be it.

There's nothing like writing a eulogy to confront the sobering thought: what will someone have to say about me, someday? For, in fact, none of us are blameless, and I think we all hope that when our own time comes, people will be charitable,a nd remember us for our good qualities more than for our failings.

For death, I think, is the great leveler: it comes to us all, we all go down to the dust, and no one can take their earthly goods or power with them. When those deaths occur which stop us in our tracks and cause a shudder or even an earthquake in our own lives, it is a time to look in the mirror. What can we learn from the life of this person who is with us no longer? What lasts, what remains? What do we want to do with the unknowable balance of time that remains to us, and with the friends who surround us in those moments, surely far more precious than gold?

 

My Father. December 15, 1924 - August 22, 2022

My father died today: the end of a very long, mostly happy, vigorous life. We were with him. I'm grateful for so much, relieved that his suffering was short, and yet still feel like a tree has fallen in the forest: it's hard to imagine life without him being in it too. But of course, as long as I am alive, he will live in me.

Portraits by Jonathan Sa'adah, 1981 and 2021

Watery

The clouds and sky continue to fascinate me, especially when storms are brewing and the clouds become full of water. They inspired me to get out my acrylics and do this fast sketch on paper the other day: brushes full of water and pigment, making marks to depict clouds and sky, which actually have no pigment at all, just light and dust and water in various forms, from vapor to droplets to ice. It's curious when you think about it.

Water has also entered my life in another way recently: I've gone back to swimming because we have a pool in our new building. During the pandemic I haven't swum at all, and even before, it was really hard for me to keep it up as a regular practice. The best routine for me at the moment seems to be settling into every other day, around 7:30 in the morning. There's seldom anyone else in the pool then, and I can swim my laps in an atmosphere that feels extremely meditative even when I'm working hard. It feels great to enter the water, and after a few laps, everything sort of melts away as the rhythm of the strokes, the breaths, and the turns takes over.

When I began to do it seriously, a month ago, I started out fairly easily, trying not to strain my shoulders or lower back, and now I'm swimming about twenty minutes straight, and will work up to thirty. A couple of times a week I've also been doing yoga, and we're walking and biking quite a bit in the new neighborhood, which, once you get away from the main streets where there's busy traffic, is much quieter and less congested for cycling than our old one.

Moving more always feels better, but I certainly don't think of myself as an athlete, and like many of us, I've sometimes tended to do something new for a while and then get out of the habit, though I've walked regularly for years and years. However, as I've considered my father's long life, there's no denying that regular exercise played a huge role in his physical and mental well-being. Being able to make swimming the central activity would be a very good fit for me. It's hard to express how happy and comfortable I've always felt when I'm in the water. Being able to swim regularly, without the obstacle of commuting to a distant pool, feels like a great privilege, as well as doing my body a lot of good. I hope I can keep it up.

Clouds

transparent watercolor in sketchbook; stormy sky just before sunset

I've never lived up in the sky before, but it feels like I do now. We have windows on two sides of our new apartment, facing north and west, and they look out on the nearly-flat northern part of the city and its suburbs, the airport to the west, and the foothills of the Laurentians in the far distance. That's the horizontal picture. But vertically, more than half of what we see outside our windows is sky.

2B pencil

One of the best features of living in a northern temperate zone (in my opinion!) is that the weather changes all the time. I've always lived in the northeast, so I thought I was used to the pattern, not only of the seasons, but the day-to-day weather, what the clouds mean, how the air feels, the visual and tactile sense of whether it's going to get colder or warmer, drier or more humid, whether precipitation is coming or not. But I realize I had no idea of just how much change there was in the sky, the clouds, the sunrises and sunsets, and the rapidity of change during a few minutes, let alone a whole day. It's completely fascinating.

 

medium-point fountain pen

fine-point fountain pen; fleeting early morning clouds

So I've been drawing the clouds, or starting to. I'm finding that they present particular challenges if one is trying to capture the essence of a certain sky, partly because of the constant movement and morphing of their shape and form, and partly because it's not easy to draw something that is white, on white paper: unless you indicate the sky itself in some way, all you can do is draw the sunlit edges of the clouds, the shadow sides, and their basic forms, and suggest their movement through the type of strokes you use.

HB and 2H pencil

Suggesting a summer sky isn't difficult, but studying and drawing a particular cloud or cloud formation -- getting at its identity and essence -- seems to be quite a bit more challenging. All cumulus clouds are not alike! An early-morning mackerel sky, or an ethereal formation of mare's tails, give way in minutes to other forms. Likewise, painting a sky in oil or pastel or acrylic is much easier than drawing: like a photograph, you're freezing it in time, maybe even with photos for reference, and you've got the whole range of colors at your disposal.

white charcoal pencil on toned paper

Watercolor also represents a distinct challenge. Doing a realistic painting is more similar to what I just described about painting in other media, but doing a fast sketch is really tricky, and I feel like I'm just beginning to get my feet wet. These are all early experiments from my sketchbook, between July 3 and July 29, 2022.

transparent watercolor

My final comment on this post, after a month of observation, is that we can actually see how the weather is becoming much more extreme and violent. It's been really windy, not just up high, but on the ground as well, and the pace of mostly west-to-east movement of the clouds is fast. Ominous, huge, dark grey clouds appear, usually in the west, with storms developing rapidly, and we can see them in the distance; sheets of rain falling on distant parts of the city or landscape. When thunderstorms are actually upon us, the rain lashes the windows with real force. Last Saturday there was a classic anvil cloud in the northwest that was truly apocalyptic in appearance; I'd never seen a cloud like that. That evening a home in that area was hit by lightening -- the neighbors saw an actual fireball fall from the sky and hit the roof. Another afternoon, I watched a dark funnel starting to form below a large thunderhead in the far distance and called my husband to come and look; as we watched over maybe ten minutes, it was slowly absorbed back up into the cloud, and never stretched down to the land - but it was the first time I'd ever seen that, too. Tornadoes are not a usual occurrence in Quebec, in spite of the flatness of the St. Lawrence valley, but a tornado did touch down that same evening about a hundred kilometers northwest of Montreal. 

Drawing and painting the beauty of skyscapes is one thing, but I didn't expect to have a ringside seat for extreme weather. We are not suffering from the same heat levels as Europe or India or the American southwest, but our weather is definitely changing. How can anyone deny the absolute necessity of action?

transparent watercolor with touches of gouache for the city lights

What Lasts, What Sustains

A rainy evening in the clouds, the first sustained weather like this we’ve had since moving here. I like the different feeling in the apartment: quiet and closed-in, with the nearby all we can see and therefore much more prominent.

We stopped at the Jean-Talon market on our way home from my annual check-up in the eastern part of the city -- the first time I’ve seen my GP in person in more than two years -- and bought tomatoes, strawberries, a big bunch of basil, and pots of thyme and small hot peppers. Jonathan made pizza for dinner with the tomatoes and basil, and the pots are out on the balcony, getting slowly soaked with warm rain.

Coming back from central New York this time, I’ve finally realized that I always have a day or two of adjustment in each direction when I feel emotionally ragged, tearful, even angry. Arriving there, I feel overwhelmed by the house and tasks that have, suddenly, become my responsibility; I feel burdened with obligations and other people’s expectations and demands, and worried that I will fall short or be criticized -- and at first all I want to do is escape. Then the natural surroundings start to work on me; I get used to going to sleep after walking around the lake, looking at the stars, hearing the croaks of frogs, intermittent conversations of geese, and the distant lowing of cows. I get used to waking in the fresh air of early morning, fog blowing across the water, before making coffee and drinking it out on the porch or on the bench down by the shore as fish begin to rise -- and the negative feelings start to calm down. The longer I spend there, the more people I’ve come into contact with, and the more I realize we share a web of interconnections that have somehow persisted despite my long absence. Because my family’s roots there run so deep, it’s not hard for me to find ways of connecting, and when the mechanic or the truck rental guy or the clerk at the supermarket hear my name or my parents’ names, the suspicion caused by my Quebec license plate seems to be replaced by their own natural sociability, because people there tend to be very warm, friendly, and chatty. And this feels not only familiar, but refreshingly natural to me, after spending fifty years in New England and a French-speaking major city where there has been, frankly, not much of that, and seldom a ready response to my own overtures of warmth or friendliness to strangers.

Coming back here, to Montreal, the reaction tends to be a kind of wrenching sadness and grief, mainly about my father but also my attachment to that place juxtaposed with my fulfilling and happy life here, and an awareness that both marriage and family ties mean compromise -- I cannot do whatever I might want on a given day or in a given year, but have to -- if I’m to remain true to myself the values that I hold dear -- act responsibly on behalf of the people I love. And this, unfortunately, divides me. I don’t want to live in central New York full-time, nor do I want to live primarily in America again, but I do want to see and care for my father, I do feel a responsibility and love for the land that we own, I respect and care about the hardworking and straightforward people I’m meeting back where I grew up, and (perhaps this is the most significant revelation) I see much more clearly how embedded that culture and place has always been in me. Here, in my adopted country, province, and city, I am able to live more fully and freely as the person I’ve become over the years, and this is where my husband and I have built our life together and want to remain. As for community and friendship, these exist here, there, and everywhere we have lived -- and sometimes just as strongly in the strange place of online interconnection that has arisen over the past two decades, and is independent of addresses, borders, or time zones.

As I look out over the city from this high place, the clouds have risen and thinned, and lights begin to flicker on and shine in the deepening blue distance. I feel my solitude keenly and comfortably tonight, and I know that this is a quality I carry with me wherever I am, along with a natural desire for making connections, and an ease in doing so. There’s relief in recognizing that it doesn’t matter so much where I am, physically, because I’ll always be myself -- a child who grew up loving and being consoled by the solitude of nature, books, art, and music, and also learned sociability and a love of people from her father and others in a rural society that valued family, and caring about each other, above everything else.

Those qualities saved me when I left my small town and went off to find my own way in a large university, and I see them now in my father as he navigates the incredibly difficult transition from independence to a nursing home, impaired by deafness and mobility issues that would doom many people to isolation and despair. But several staff people told me how much they liked him, and I could see his efforts to connect with people, to find ways of communicating his identity and his sense of humor in spite of his frustration at his body’s failings, at finding himself stuck in that place, his grief at the loss of his partner, and all the other challenges of extreme old age.

At first I thought, “This is terrible, how difficult this is for him,” but now that I’ve thought through this last visit more deeply, it actually gives me hope that even in extreme circumstances, one’s humanity and love of others can still be expressed, and consolation found in recognized places of solace. “I can’t sing anymore,” my father said to me as he listened to a woman play the guitar and sing familiar songs -- but I saw his toe tapping, and watched his hand beat time to the rhythm -- and he had found his way to the circle of residents at the appointed time for the musical event that week. Whatever is deepest in us remains, I think, and we must not give up on it -- not now, not ever.

 

Déménagement

J. and M. on our terrace in Montreal's Plateau Mont-Royal, in 2012.

We're moving. That little statement could mean all sorts of things. But the French word déménagement is so specific, and in this case it means we're moving house. To faire le menage is to do the housework; the word ménagement, without the "dé", means "care and attention". My dictionary tells me that to speak sans ménagement is "bluntly", to be asked to leave sans ménagement mean "forcibly evicted." I like the way the word déménagement reflects the accumulation of care and attention put into one's home over the years, that one doesn't simply pack objects and oneself and move, shift locations, but that when we leave our home, hopefully for another, we also wrap up our memories and our time spent in a place that was not simply an address, but a home.

Tonight is the last we'll spend in the condominium where we've lived ever since coming to Montreal. It is one apartment of ten in our building, which, as co-propriétaires, we all own and care for together. I've been one of the people responsible for the gardens, while J. has had a much larger role as treasurer and a member of the CA, or conseil d'administration, the executive committee that's in charge of maintenance, repairs, hiring and managing helpers, and assuring the smooth running of the building. It's been a great place to live for the past 18 years (how can it possibly be that long?) and we're sorry to be leaving this neighborhood, the park, and especially our neighbors who've become good friends. However, the pandemic showed us that this small apartment simply doesn't work for us as a place to live and work as well. When we were going to our studio every day, it was fine, but during COVID, and since cutting back on our professional work, we haven't been using the studio very much, while, at the same time, the rent there has been going up astronomically under new owners. We looked and looked in this part of the city but couldn't find any good or affordable solution for a larger, brighter, recently-built space that would serve as both living and work space, and also be an appropriate place for us as we grow older, with room for help if we ever need it, proximity to our medical providers, easy access to the international food shopping we enjoy, and some additional amenities. Neither of us wants to be responsible for an aging building at the same time as we, ourselves, age.

Tonight.

To our surprise, we found a recently-developed area close to some of the food shopping -- Middle Eastern, Asian, Greek -- that takes us across the city every couple of weeks. At first we couldn't imagine living there -- so little green space, none of the genteel French atmosphere of the area where we live now, but rather a mix of large, professionally-managed residential high-rises and industrial areas and gradually-developing retail infrastructure -- but when we actually visited the buildings and saw some apartments, which offered so much more for the price than in the more traditional neighborhoods of the city, we began to consider it. In the end, we bought a condominium on the 11th floor of a 12-storey building built in 2018. We've both always had it in the backs of our minds that we might like to live in a modern, light-filled urban space, high up -- I think this realization came after some of the apartments we stayed in in Mexico City and Athens. I'm still kind of shocked that we're actually doing it, but the papers have been signed, we have the keys, the boxes are packed and the bed-frame taken apart -- and tomorrow at 8 the movers arrive. We will close our studio when the lease runs out in the fall, or perhaps before then, since we've packed up or sold quite a lot of what was there. We've gotten rid of a lot of possessions, including books and clothes, in this second major downsizing of our adult lives, and that feels great. In our new space we'll each have a workroom/studio of our own, and I look forward to this very much, and to whatever comes out of the solitude and new inspiration of the big skies we'll see every day.

At the same time as we've been preparing for the move, I've been deeply concerned about my father, and, as I've written here, we made three lengthy trips to central New York to be with him under the rapidly-changing circumstances of his health; he was first with us, then in assisted-living, then hospitalized with pneumonia, then in a grim rehabilitation/nursing facility from which I've been desperately trying to extricate him. This week our application was accepted, and he has moved into one of the excellent New York State Veterans' Homes, where they are glad to begin to know him and care for him as a veteran of WWII. In spite of our personal changes and exciting new beginnings in Montreal, part of me is there, back at the lake, wanting to spend time with my father during this uncertain final part of his life -- so we will find ways to work that out.

Desk, Domain

I'm sitting at my grandmother's antique slant-top desk. It's a gorgeous piece of cabinetry, larger than my own desk, with detailed inlays and dovetail joinery, drawers for pens and supplies, vertical pull-out holders for writing papers, and a locking cabinet in the center. I feel a bit dwarfed, a sensation which isn’t helped by the fact that all the chairs in the house are too low for it.

When we lived in the big house in town, this desk was always in the front room downstairs, its rich brown wood contrasting with the Victorian floral wallpaper behind it. The desk was directly across from the upholstered chair where my grandmother read and knitted and embroidered, drank martinis in the evening, and played canasta. Its right side touched the wooden frame of the wide doorway between the living room and the dining room -- and on that frame were scratched the heights of my cousins and myself each year as we grew.

My grandmother used the desk when she sat down to do her daily correspondence, and I think also to pay bills -- but I never remember my grandfather sitting at it. The top held various curios, most of which have now disappeared, but were fascinating to me as a child: a heavy, dark purple glass bear whose head came off to reveal a container inside; two Chinese brass vases and an ivory elephant: gifts from faraway from my mother's high school sweetheart who was beloved by the family and had gone down with his Navy ship in the Pacific in WWII; a little oval wooden box filled with tiny South American figures -- no more than half an inch high -- dressed in colorful costumes made of bits of fabric and wrapped, colored thread; and many other things that I might be allowed to play with and dream about on a special day. It was clear, though, that I was never to open the drawers or look at any letters or writing: this was her private domain.

After my grandparents died, in their nineties, my parents built a large living room addition on their own house here at the lake, and moved some of the furniture they had inherited. The desk was placed against the back wall of the new living room, fitting perfectly into the center of the white-painted paneling my father had carefully constructed. The four big drawers below held maps and stamp collections, papers and scrapbooks, but if my mother or father ever used the desk itself, I didn’t know about it; they did their paperwork on a modern desk downstairs, or on the round oak table where we ate, near the kitchen. For them I think it was mostly a decorative, formal showpiece that offered convenient, out-of-sight storage, and they kept the slant-top closed. Three Wedgwood vases stood on the top, along with a pair of candlesticks, and above them hung an airbrush painting of mine from the 1980s that is a closeup of a purple pansy, rather Georgia O’Keefe-esque. In the thirty years since they built the addition, this arrangement never changed.

During our current stay at the lake house, since we are now alone here and likely to remain so, I’ve taken a few tentative steps toward moving a few things around: a decision that feels both illicit and liberating. We had already moved a few pieces of furniture to my father’s room in his assisted-living home, so that was the beginning, and my father’s presence during that process seemed to give permission. The other night I removed several other things from the bedroom, cleared off the top of the dresser and replaced figurines and photographs with a single modern ceramic vase I’d given my mother years ago. I think the urge to do this came from the radical cleaning of our apartment we’d done before putting it on the market, but it had barely occurred to me before that I could do any such thing in this overcrowded house. I continued by clearing the counter at the top of the stairs; I stripped the kitchen countertops bare and polished the white formica before replacing only the barest essentials and stowing everything else in cupboards; we bought a mop and scrubbed the tile floor. Outdoors, I picked up a decade’s worth of fallen branches, raked leaves, pruned overgrown bushes, swept the railroad-tie steps going down to the lake, got out the outdoor furniture and put it in a different spot, and with my husband’s help, dragged a bench down to my favorite place just above the shoreline. All of this took place at a slow rate of one project every day or two.

Tonight, tired and worried about my father, I came into this room, which we seldom use, and stretched out on the couch. I did my Duolingo lesson and the Times mini crossword and Spelling Bee on the free phone app which always kicks me out after a certain point. Then I pulled a knitted afghan over myself, thinking I might take a little nap, accompanied by the contemplative robin that’s nesting in the light fixture just outside the terrace door...but my eyes kept opening and gazing across the room at the desk. After a few minutes I had gotten up, opened the top, and set to work sorting the incongruous things I found inside: a strange, heavy antique brass writing stand with two glass inkwells; bottles of disk cleaner for LP records; three old letter openers, an intricate silver one that looked Turkish and quite lethal, and two that are clearly African; a collection of DVDs; a Silva compass with a leather case; a collection of old brass drafting equipment and a velvet snap-top jewelry box filled with old Schaeffer and Parker graphite leads; a handwritten wiring map for my father’s cabinet of turntables, tape decks and DVD players. As I did this, slowly, the thought began to form: could I actually use this desk? Could I write something here? When all the surfaces and pigeonholes were empty, I removed the vases and candlesticks to the piano, and wiped the wood with a barely-damp cloth. My sketchbook and watercolor palette went on the left side, some pens on the right. Then I ascertained that, yes, there was an outlet on the wall in fairly close proximity, set my laptop, mousepad and mouse in the center of the open desk, noticing for the first time the reassuring dents and scratches in the old mahogany -- and turned the computer on.

It felt like... a moment. Like introducing your close but perhaps slightly questionable young friend to a beloved elderly grandparent. But the hinges didn’t give way, the marquetry didn’t fall out: in fact, the wood felt warm and beckoning and somehow personal, and I began immediately to write.

 

Changes

Dear Readers,

This is probably the longest I've ever gone between two posts: a lot has been going on. Thank you for checking back here.

On the morning of March 23, my father's partner Barbara suffered a massive stroke and was taken to hospital. We left Montreal almost immediately to be with him, and ended up staying for the next three weeks as we tried to help him through the death of his partner a week later (she never regained consciousness), moved him out of the home they had shared for 12 years into our own family home at the lake, and then explored options for him to stay there with help, or to move into assisted living: the latter was the choice he finally made. This would have been a huge upheaval of grief, loss, and change for anyone, and he is 97, living in a rural area that doesn't have robust, reliable social services or any transportation to speak of: almost everyone relies on their own car, even at an advanced age. The options are very limited.

Snow squalls on the way to Cooperstown.

After a lifetime of athleticism and self-motivated attention to physical fitness, including a new hip and two knee replacements, he's had increasing trouble with arthritis and declining mobility and balance over the past two years. Although we're all hopeful that physical therapy may help him regain some strength and greater comfort, it became clear that he couldn't stay in his own house safely, so he chose a facility in the small city where he and Barbara had lived, where he will be close to his friends, his partner's family who have been so kind to him, and where life will be as familiar as possible. My father is a courageous and stoic person, and although these events were wrenching and extremely difficult, I'm proud of how the three of us navigated them together, and glad I had the privilege of spending so much time with him. It wasn't all care-giving, either; we played chess and cards, he taught me tricks for solving Sudokus, and I learned a lot about antique clock repair. More significantly, the three of us had long conversations over each meal about everything from life and death, to how my father began building this house, back in the 1950s. I think he learned quite a bit more about the two of us as well.

The swamp on the back side of the lake was full of spring peepers.

We've now returned home to Montreal and are preparing for a major life-change ourselves: a move to a larger condominium that we had bought shortly before all of this happened. Our own apartment will go on the market soon, and we'll move in mid-June to our new home, in a different part of the city, and close our studio at the end of October. We plan to go back to central New York to see my father, and attend Barbara's memorial service, in the middle of May. She was a kind, generous, sociable, cheerful and optimistic person, devoted to her extended family; she and my father played golf and bridge together, did some traveling, enjoyed going out to eat, and had an active social life. The two of them were excellent companions and a lovely couple: I'm so grateful for all the good years they spent together and the joy they brought to each other's lives, so unusual in their length of years and the good health they both managed to enjoy. We will miss her.

While we were staying at the lake, another close friend of our family also died. Ray lived a few houses away, and was in his late 80s; the friendships between our families span three generations. We were able to see his children; we all tried to help each other and talked about the strange feeling of watching our parents' generation, who have been such strong and constant figures of our childhoods and the long subsequent years, now pass the torch to us when we're all getting on in age ourselves. 

The late spring weather was pretty wretched -- grey and rainy, with days of windy snow squalls -- but the lake was a reassuring presence. Every morning when I got up, I'd spend some time looking out at the water and its changing moods, and every evening when it was possible, my husband and I took a walk around the lake at sunset, looking out at the fields as the farmers began to plow, watching the migrating geese and a group of mergansers that had stopped at the lake for a while, and, to our great excitement, observing a bald eagle nest with vigilant adult birds, at the top of a tall pine tree.

Skunk cabbage.

We arrived when the days were still snowy, and by the time we left, a loud chorus of spring peepers could be heard each evening, skunk cabbages had unfurled in the swamp, and I spotted the first mayflowers in bloom at the foot of an old beech tree near the house. During our drives in the countryside, through the Chenango and Unadilla Valleys to Cooperstown and Binghamton, and up over the Madison County hills to Cazenovia and Syracuse, I was comforted and enchanted once again by the beauty of the pastoral landscape that's been imprinted on me since childhood. It's no wonder, I thought to myself, that I became a landscape painter, with deep emotional ties to the land, the light, the plants and trees, and the form of the hills and valleys that were shaped by glaciers that deposited the round cobblestones -- still seen in old barn foundations -- on top of sedimentary rock layers rich with marine fossils. All these daily sights, combined with a long personal history, became my daily consolations.