Another whirl of the old globe for all of us, and a friendly face or two to recall some close-to-home high times in 2022 – Panda and a 3-inch diameter slice of bamboo (a holiday thrift shop find – not from my back yard), a broken brick from three blocks away, and a new denizen and panda-pal for the Yellow House – a ladybug whose presence recalls her extensive clan.
It's a reflective time of year for me and, like Janus, the Roman god of doorways, I take time to look both backward and forward. Unpack the time-honoured Xmas ornaments and audiotapes (20-30-40 years old) and I'm comfortably off in reveries for a good week or more.
One of this week's sentimental journeys was a spin on the Google bicycle that records Streetview with a plan to check out all the places I've ever called home, the actual houses I lived in. Surprisingly, most of these are still there – including the London, Ontario, rental house where we made our cozy home in 1972-77 before heading west.
It's the centre structure. To its left is the student apartment building, where some kids first adopted and then abandoned the sweetest tabby kitten. She was a feisty little one with her Plan B, already hanging out in the yard (at spitting distance) from our own two cats. When the students cleared out, she barged in through our screen door and within days was part of the family. With a nod to the spy thrillers of the time, we named her "Intrepid – the Cat Who Came in from the Cold" – aka "Treppy."
Another memory of that house seemed to resonate with one of my life drawings in a stack I was sorting. I would sit on the sofa inside the front window, looking out onto the narrow front porch beneath the overhang of the roof. Sometimes I'd think of the women who must have lived in that house before me. Oddly enough, I'd often think of the Irish grandmother I never knew, who came almost alone to a new country (the US) and made her life there.
Young women who dreamed their dreams – and, along another thought train, young women artists who might even have made something of a name for themselves at one time but are forgotten now, like those in the book I'm coincidentally re-reading over the holidays.
Do you recognize any of these names? Gwen John, Ida Nettleship, Gwen Salmond, and Edna Clarke Hall. Before reading the book, I knew only Gwen John, as sister of her well-known brother Augustus.
And so – in this sentimental season – my memories, the life drawing, the book I'm reading, all came together in a plan for a painting – a young woman dreaming at a window.
It's not a self-portrait although I borrowed my once-brown hair – rather, it's a kind of reverie on…oh, let's say, one of youth's tasks.
It wasn't painted in the spirit of "What might have been…" or "If only…". At different times in my life, trusted listeners have advised me that both these phrases are less than helpful. And in the broad brush, it doesn't apply only to females.
Here's the final version – much less than I'd dreamed, but I can always paint over! "She Was Young Once – and Dreamed" (copyright 2022)
Today, New Year's Eve, I grabbed a not-bad weather forecast and headed for a long ramble along Kits Beach where I found lots of dogs and walkers and, happily, no lasting damage from the week's King Tides.
On the way home, at my last transfer point, I spotted just the right message for the New Year – or any year. Painted on building walls that will soon be hidden by the new subway station being built there, these young and old faces and their message seem to have been waiting – just for us.
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