The ritual of remembering

By Conrad Beaubien

Some long weekends like the past one, can be quiet. With the add-on of lockdown, it was so quiet I could hear the smoke rise from my slow burn outdoor mini fire; hear the wings of the egrets overhead returning from the south; the voice of a cardinal from fields over.
In my once home in a downtown neighbourhood, if you wanted solace and less commotion on these weekends, staying put was a bonus. The leaving of the city en masse meant highways in all directions were loaded up, so why not avoid them? Meanwhile, the inner city core arrived at a treasured stop. It was like being home alone and thinking that sharing the crowds with the rest of the world was a good thing; ask around in places like the County nowadays and the reception to the idea is generally mixed.

Seemingly having downtown city neighbourhoods to yourself on these occasions were rewards for being independently employed—while tenuous at times, it did allow for a life outside of nine to five. The tranquility of winding paths through parks and ravines was golden, and simply coasting on my bike down quieted streets and back laneways beneath old and towering maple trees was a time when I would think about how easily patterned, how structured our lives can get and how, just like actors in a play, we are mostly on stage.

Early urban planning meant street-facing house elevations designed for friendly appeal —front porches close to sidewalks fed social contact—meanwhile at the rear of houses, back gardens led to laneways where everyday business happened—deliveries, trash pickup and parking. Especially on long weekends the obliging laneways held a banquet of story and poem; a corridor of exotic food aromas; a symphony of languages from parts of the world, of voices and song and laughter. Mostly hidden from everyday, these chambers rang rich through the stillness, offering global music that epitomized all of us in our ongoing and timeless migration. Individually and as one, what rose from these lanes was a bounty of ethnicity made up of cultural expression emanating from tiny patches of yard. I pedalled this duality of inner and outer worlds humbled by the breadth of meaning and understanding I was served.

My old Dutch-made bike with the still shiny clang of a bell carried me amidst the jumble of ancient coach houses and horse stables cum garages and showed me a few fancied-up back garden gates where at one, a man in torn jeans polished his car to the music of a violin played by a woman in a silk blouse; Where marble facings and vine trellises and holy grottos of cement sat amongst used tires on rims repurposed into plant holders, the rubber cut into sunflower shaped leaves and all of it painted in yellow and blue and red. In the heart of summer, grape vines covering overhead trellises bore shade and dark fruit; Arancana hens from Chile and Silkie hens—Bantams—from China scratched at the dirt as a lady with long greying hair and wearing a pink flowered dress reeled in a clothesline of tie-dyed shirts.

Autumn would approach and cauldrons of tomatoes steamed over propane stoves in wooden garages with doors that yawned to the lane. Neighbours gathered and stacked boxes of canning jars while in the next yard stood a grape press, its worn steel handle turned with strength by a small man wearing dark coveralls and a fedora hat while a stream of juice steadily filled a carboy.

I can’t help being drawn to these memories on this early Sunday morning, this Easter of stillness. I know I’m not alone in sliding home-style memories to the front burner. Our present days invite these meanderings more than ever; the re-savouring of tender recall enlivens our depths especially when on the surface it feels like a world gone flat.

So in these days of retreat when it’s easy to count the passing cars and time is measured by the sun, I have eased into the tradition of spring cleanup; that’s why the fire on slow burn, more smoke than flame, more a plume of apple wood incense lifting into the day. You know for sure how the balm in the air opens to past rituals, more boisterous than now for sure; you know it in the remembrance of the cousins and aunts and uncles who travelled from afar just around now, now when the ice has barely migrated. It’s my thought that it’s the texture of social bonds, the texture of intimacy that lingers, that won’t leave us yet leaves us wanting. Rural life by its very nature factors a remoteness and standalone lifestyle yet nurtured daily by open landscapes, lake horizons, big sky and its people.

My life had been enriched by being neither city boy nor country boy and somehow without label, I am both. I guess one could say it is the nature of Geminis to simultaneously be extrovert introvert. In the shadows of the sunrise this morning my offering into the ether is a mourning and joy bound into one; mourn in a way for how conformity, how sameness is governed by algorithms, the texture of intimacy can’t be found on Zoom or in any app. Intimacy of family, intimacy of front verandas, intimacy of backyards and uniting corridors of our individual beings lamenting for a dog bark and the ring of a distant bicycle bell; a corner store, a nearby bakery and town square.