My American grandmother

 

My American grandmother, Alvina Becker Hardt, born in Alsace-Lorraine, Germany in 1902, at the very dawn of the 20th century, has been on my mind all day, almost as though her ghost has decided to pay me a visit. I half expect a drift of her perfume in empty rooms. I named the town on Alvina, Ontario in Wild Fell after her. Some of my most cherished early childhood memories are of her, her soft arms and hands, her thick German accent, the scent of her (very German) cooking, her occasionally florid emotionality, and mostly her utter delight in, and kindness towards me as a small gender-variant child. All my life I have not been able to shake the sense that my grandmother would not only have been OK with my queerness, but also that she saw it clearly before most people did, and wrapped it in a soft pink cloud of understanding, even protectiveness. I am gently and lovingly envious of my cousin Kimberley, who was able to spend more time with Grandma Hardt, and was the beneficiary of many of the things she had to teach, and her stories. Alvina died on May 23rd, 1976, while were living in Geneva. My mother must have gone back for the funeral, but I have no actual memory of her making that voyage back across the Atlantic. Childhood memories are odd things; but I will remember Alvina's tender touch until the day I die. This photograph of her was taken in our back yard in Ottawa, probably in the summer of 1972, with our Norwegian Elkhound, Prince. I cherish it for so many reasons.

Nova Scotia Thanksgiving, 2024

Tricked out in my white canvas Tilly hat like Jessica Fletcher off to solve a mystery on my annual pre-dinner Thanksgiving perambulation out past the salt marsh and the marina. The colours are a little late this year, after a warmer autumn than usual, but the cold salt breeze coming in off the water is absolutely autumnal and bracing. The sky is dazzling blue, almost painfully so.

I watched an eagle circle lazily above the trees bordering some brackish water, and on the way there, I watched two blue jays gamboling among the red leaves on infant maple leaves in the scrub forest and random splashes of red sumach.

This annual walk of mine is almost a religious pilgrimage—I took it in countryside out by the lake back in the days when we spent family Thanksgiving in Ontario. I always take it alone. It's me, communing with the beauty and silence of that natural world. It feels almost more meaningful here in Nova Scotia because the ocean makes it sacred somehow., as it has ever since I was a very small child on the Mediterranean coast, in Beirut.

I'm still high from last night at the dance at the Shore Club in Hubbards (an experience probably worth its own essay at some point, and one which engendered more joy than even I fully expected) and watching my beautiful goddaughter, Kate, as an adult among adults for perhaps the first real time; she's clearly inherited her mother's ability to own a dance floor—Kath, on a dance floor, is a vision. Of course I miss my godson Michael, who is not with us this year, but I carry the kids with me everywhere I go, in my heart. They're never far from me.

Quite apart from the utterly perfect Maritime authenticity of the spectacle in which I was fully participating, the delight of this mixed-age, mixed-skill crowd of celebrants dancing to the band was like oxygen I hadn't known I needed. Nova Scotia is good for the soul.

So much to give thanks for this year—good health, good marriage, good family, good friends, and an utterly beautiful day in the most beautiful part of a beautiful country. Even the absence of far-away loved ones is a joy of sorts, because one is reminded of how lucky one is to have them to miss.

May you all be similarly blessed.

 

Happy publication day to Nick Pullen's THE BLACK HUNGER!

I hunted down my dear friend Nicholas Pullen's stellar debut The Black Hunger on this, the evening of his publication day. I've been involved with this brilliant book since its earliest manuscript days, and there was a certain profoundly moving associative pride in seeing it on the bookshelves at Indigo tonight. It's a glorious book, and I urge any aficionado of intelligent, articulate gothic horror to seek it out and take that dark journey with him. Bravo, Nick!