“Stay calm and decolonize”: I, II, III.
Dear P____,
So nice to hear from you again. And gratifying to know your mother remains in vigorous good health — something none of us can take for granted as we age, no matter how “healthy” we may have been in our younger years.
My mother has been on my mind quite a bit of late. Pandemic precautions would have been too much for her, I suspect. Lois loved to have people drop by for a visit and was especially protective of time spent with her two grandkids. At this juncture Christmas looks like it might be celebrated in isolation, a prospect that would have thrown Lois into a dark sorrow.
“Visits” — these were super important to her, particularly family. She made a point of attending cousin gatherings whenever and wherever they occurred. In fact, if memory serves her final road trip was to a cousin-fest out west. When the pain of her condition kept her housebound the cousins had to come to her — one or two at a time.
Somewhere around the turn-of-the-mil she made mention of a beloved cousin moving from the Maritimes back to Manitoba. His boy had trained as an opera singer and went pro for a stretch in Europe. The boy eventually married another singer, a Dutch girl, and when they became in the family way they relocated to farm in Canada, eventually winding up in Manitoba, where they took over an old Mennonite housebarn for their purposes.
 |
| Still humble, still home: source |
For Lois this was cause for great delight. When my parents moved back to Manitoba from California one of her first orders of business was to get in touch with the cousin, reacquaint herself with the boy and meet the family.
It must have been a robust and spirited gathering, because thereafter Lois had five or six stories from that visit that she could be depended upon to trot out and recite for us during visits or phone-calls of our own. When it was time to sell the house and divest, Lois earmarked a few vintage pieces of furniture for the boy’s family and their housebarn — “Unless one of you kids wants them,” she was quick to add. She was safe — those pieces would only take up valuable space, none of us three was living large enough to accommodate them.
The boy and his housebarn loomed large in the imagination — Lois’s, and now mine. He’d be my second-cousin, probably a couple years older than me.1 We’ve yet to meet.
There is no shortage of farmers in my family, but they are all farming on a very different scale from this second-cousin of mine. And taking over a housebarn would probably strike the others as . . . well, why speculate? Suffice to say my second-cousin is the ONLY family member living in a housebarn and “farming small.”
When I contemplate these two agricultural models of commerce there is a curious juxtaposition of value at play. Both are committed to immediate family, and the community around them. Both are transacting with the LARGER community — the nation state, the open market. And both are steering by slightly different constellations.
I mean — opera. You’ve got all that sex and guts and blood and ethereal striving and some more sex, please.
Bringing that soaring culture into the housebarn thrilled Lois. You go from working the floorboards in Vienna to working the soil in Manitoba — the sex-and-guts-and-blood still apply, to be sure, albeit on a more intimate scale.
Coincidentally, my second-cousin is neighbour to another Mennonite artist, of whom my mother was an early patron. Margruite Krahn lives in a housebarn of her own with her husband Paul, just up the road. Currently Ms. Krahn’s artistic impulses seem to be pulled by the same team of horses, albeit in a direction uniquely her own. Check it out. Lois would have been super-chuffed, needless to say.
Take care, and let’s us yack again — soon, shall we?
Love, D___
No comments:
Post a Comment