September 6th, 2010
Among life’s momentous acts of self-definition
My (and everyone else who knows her’s) beloved Kate got married yesterday to her just-as beloved Paul, in a ceremony that was probably the most lovely wedding ceremony I’ve ever attended. The bride was Kate, of course, which was part of the splendour, but she was Kate-ier than Kate even, in her flowing dress with the pink flowers, her beautiful golden hair, the perfection of her sun-kissed complexion, and the happiness she radiated. Her absolute faith and confidence in the wonderful man who’d just been made her husband, and I was overwhelmed at how rich their two lives are now that they are two lives together.
The sun came out for the ceremony, which began with the little people, the children of friends of Kate and Paul, who are generous enough to include them in the day. And though Harriet can walk now, I opted to carry her just to make things simpler, but she held her own bouquet, which was her job basically done. Followed by families of the bride and groom, and finally everyone was there together in that beautiful garden, and the children were squawking, a plane flew overhead, and we heard a brief roll of thunder, but no storm came our way.
The readings were “Having a Coke with You” by Frank O’Hara, and then the following from “Goodridge Vs. Department of Health” by Massachusetts Supreme Court Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall: “Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support; it brings stability to our society. For those who choose to marry, and for their children, marriage provides an abundance of legal, financial, and social benefits. In return it imposes weighty legal, financial, and social obligations….Without question, civil marriage enhances the “welfare of the community.” It is a “social institution of the highest importance.” … Marriage also bestows enormous private and social 
advantages on those who choose to marry. Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family…. Because it fulfils yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution, and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life’s momentous acts of self-definition.”
After Kate and Paul agreed to keep on doing what they’ve been doing, but just to keep on doing it forever, everybody was treated to brunch inside. The food was fantastic, and the company was even better, including best friends and other friends who haven’t been seen in some time. Our friends Erin and Rebecca had brought Harriet a wooden apple pie set (!!) which was so perfect, because nothing short of a brand new amazing toy would have kept Harriet playing happily through the meal and after, all the while she should have been having her nap.
For dessert, there was so much cake, a variety to choose from and we could pick more than one (and pink velvet was my favourite). And ice cream! And then Harriet made out with the ring-bearer, under the table cloth. I guess you pull out the wooden apple pie, and one thing just leads to another). This bodes well for Harriet, because the ring-bearer was two-and-a-half, dashingly handsome, and suggests she might end up better off than her parents, neither of whom anyone made out with until embarrassingly late in teenaged life, but anyway. It was funny.
And it was wonderful too, just to be there. To be called upon to witness this day in our friends’ lives, and to celebrate them with them, and us with us. To celebrate love and to family and friendship, and how the lines begin to blur so these are all the same.
(Thanks go out to Erin for showing up with a camera whose battery wasn’t dead).
August 8th, 2010
From what I read over the past week
Another literary lost umbrella(!), this time in Barbara Pym’s thoroughly enjoyable A Few Green Leaves: “It was not until she had gone too far along the street to turn back that Emma realised that, possibly in the stress of some obscure emotion, she must have taken Claudia’s umbrella in mistake for her own. And it was an umbrella of inferior quality. She wondered what the possible significance of that could be.”
And then I fell into At Large and At Small by Anne Fadiman, my one complaint about being that its lovely cover got a bit manky when I used it to kill a mosquito. “One of the convenient things about literature is that, despite copyrights– which in Emerson’s case expired long ago– a book belongs to the reader as well as to the writer. The greater the work, the wider the ownership, which is why there are such things as criticism, revisionism and Ph.D. dissertations. I will not ask the sage of Concord to rewrite his oration. He will forever retain the right to speak his own words and to mean what he wished to mean, not what I would wish him to mean. But I will retain the right to recast Man Thinking in my mind as Curious People Thinking because time has passed and the tent has grown larger.”
Then I turned to Margaret Drabble’s The Millstone (except that my copy is called Thank You All Very Much, which was the title of a film upon which The Millstone was based). “I was not of course treated to that phrase which greets all reluctant married mothers, “I bet you wouldn’t be without her now, so often repeated after the event in the full confidence of nature, because I suppose people feared I might turn on them and say, Yes I certainly would, which would be mutually distressing for questioner and me. And in many ways I thought that I certainly would prefer to be without her, as one might prefer to lack beauty or intelligence or riches, or any other such sources of mixed blessing and pain. Things about life with a baby drove me into frenzies of weeping several times a week, and not only having milk on my clean jerseys. As so often in life, it was impossible to choose, even theoretically, between advantage and disadvantage, between profit and loss: I was up quite unmistakably against No Choice. So the best one could do was put a good face on it, and to avoid adding to the large and largely discussed number of sad warnings that abounded in the part of the world that I knew.”
Next was Zadie Smith’s Changing My Mind, which was beautiful and difficult, and uncannily channelling Joan Didion in spots. “‘Blackness’, as [Zora Neale Hurston] understood it and wrote about it, is as natural and inevitable and complete to her as, say, “Frenchness” is to Flaubert. It is also as complicated, as full of blessings and curses. One can be no more removed from it than from one’s arm, but it is no more the total measure of one’s being than an arm is.”
And finally, Darwin’s Bastards, which I’m not finished yet, but how (in particular), I’ve loved short stories by Jessica Grant, Douglas Coupland, Mark Anthony Jarman, Timothy Taylor, and Elyse Friedman.
Such fun. Honestly, my vacation books could not have been more perfectly chosen.
July 28th, 2010
You’ve got to court delight
You’ve got to court delight, I think. By which I mean that things don’t just turn up in the post. You’ve got to send small gifts across the country to get a thank-you note in return, and subscribe to literary journals and magazines, and have a friend who lives in Antarctica who sends a postcard from time to time. Or rather, you have to go out of your way to buy a red teapot so that you can be a person who has a red teapot (unless you’re a particular fortunate person for whom red teapots arrive in the post).
Anyway, the point is that I received two letters in the post today upon whose envelopes my name was inscribed by hand. (And it wasn’t even that deceptively handwriting-like font that Bell Canada puts on all their envelopes when they send missives begging for the return of my custom.) Two handwritten envelopes is practically unheard of! I tore them open in a hurry and was not the least bit disappointed by what I found inside.
But let me backtrack. I joined The Barbara Pym Society earlier this year, because it seemed a strange, funny and Pymian thing to do. (I was inspired by this article.) And I also made friends with a brilliant writer/almost birdwatcher, and had her over for tea last week. As a result of these two things, I today received a lovely letter from a fellow Pym Society member who is looking for a Canadian meet-up*, and an absolutely beautiful thank you note from my birder-writer friend (who is truly as master of the form). Both of which made me exquisitely happy.
So you do have to court delight, I think. Though there’s also the point that if you wish to be perpetually delighted, just look for the pleasure of tiny, wonderful things. (Or perhaps I need to get out more…)
*Fascinatingly enough, the Pym Society member had sent me this letter unknowing that we’d corresponded in the past! Three years ago, she published a beautiful essay in The Globe, and sent me a note after I’d mentioned it on my blog. And now we find ourselves two of the very small population of Canadian Barbara Pym Society members! How marvelously tiny the world truly is…
July 19th, 2010
Want to get your hands on?
There is no way I can describe to you how much I was enjoying reading CNQ 79 this morning, sipping a splendid cup of tea with the morning breeze drifting in through the window. And not just because it’s the first day in recent memory that nobody local has been operating a sledgehammer or chainsaw outside, nope. It’s because the magazine reads as good as it looks. My favourite kind of writing– critics passionately advocating for the work they love best, and for the short story form in general and particular. Reading the pieces that opened the magazine, I felt so inspired, excited, and lucky to be reading in a time in which, however much the form is maligned, incredible short stories keep getting written. (And celebrated).
Due to clerical error, however, I have ended up with two copies of this magazine. If you live in Canada and would like me to mail you my spare, please email me at klclare AT gmail DOT com and tell me the title of your favourite short story. I’ll pick a response at random this weekend. Good luck!
June 28th, 2010
I love pruning
“I love pruning. If gardening is unsuccessful, I’m going to be a hairdresser.” –overheard through my open window, from one of the two wonderful women working in the garden down below
February 26th, 2010
In the post and etc.
I just tramped out through the snow to collect today’s brilliant postal haul, which included a writing cheque, my new spaceage autoshare keycard, and a copy of Susan Telfer’s absolutely beautiful collection House Beneath. And really, it tops off the most wonderful morning, which I’ve spent listening to DJ Bookmadam’s playlist, reading An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym and issue 32.3 of Room Magazine. Drinking pear lychee green tea, while Harriet napped for almost two hours (!!). This morning following an evening during which I went out and spent my time in the company of inspiring, amusing women and ate lots of cheese while my husband put the baby to bed without me for the first time ever, and they both did brilliantly. All of which is to say that I am terribly, terribly happy today, and I tell you this not to be smug or rub it in, but because this is one of those good days that I want to collect like a postcard, to pickle away and keep always to remember just how fantastically beautiful the snow-covered world is outside my window right at this moment.
February 10th, 2010
Things India Knight likes
Writer India Knight has long been included on a list of things I like, but today she has managed to drive me mad with ecstasy via her blog Things I like. Now with Search Button. In particular, her things to read tag, from which I found myself directed to Curious Pages, The Reading Weekend and Missed Connections. Pre-Miffy Bruna– amazing. I now want a beautiful house in Brussels, a giant owl, and to be Tavi. Such a wonderful catalogue of marvelous things. Image from this post– turns out Salinger’s covers weren’t always so enigmatic.
December 29th, 2009
Bookish Christmas
Not only did I have a wonderful Christmas, but I received some wonderful gifts for Christmas. Not least of which were the bookish ones, including a gift certificate that will buy me several Barbara Pyms (exciting). In books unvirtual, I had several wishes granted: Penelope Lively’s latest Family Album (which was one of the New York Times‘ notable books of the year), Bugs and the Victorians (which was my heart’s desire), and Karen Connelly’s Burmese Lessons, which I just finished reading and was everything I wanted it to be.
I am also going to become card-carrying member of the Barbara Pym Society. This is very, very exciting.
November 23rd, 2009
Happy Birthday, Stuart!
Every year around this day, or to be more specific, on this day, I get to say aloud what I think all the time, which is, “What a terrific man is this Stuart character I’ve somehow got myself hooked up with.” Because he really is fantastic, and in seven years I’ve not even begun to get enough of his marvelous company, and I’m so proud of the thirty-year old man who’s made a life for himself that that twenty-three-year old I met years ago would be in awe of. So grateful also that he’s so unfailingly good to me, and for the life we’ve made together.
In short, he’s fantastic, and during the past six months he’s been put to the test, with his patience, caring nature, hilarious sense of humour, much relied-upon ingenuity, and his understanding rarely waning. And that they rarely waned rather than never did only shows he’s human, but what an extraordinary one. Harriet and I are so very lucky, because he’s an excellent husband and a wonderful dad. I love him very much.
Happy Birthday!
October 2nd, 2009
Let it be known
Let it be known that the scones at the Royal Botanical Gardens’ Turner Pavilion Tea House are some of the best I’ve ever had. And scone-wise, I’ve been around, so that is saying something.
Let it also be known that some days maternity leave is sinfully delightful.
