Tent Time

After having the boys home with me for almost two weeks now, I've been pulling everything I can find out for entertainment. Yesterday, it was the beach tent we never got around to using last summer.

Flying Machine

I'm doing a project for Nanette, scanning all of her letters to her mother on my computer right now. I've finished 1964-1966, at 19 after graduating and moving to New York. I told her, after organizing and reading them, that it reminded me of my letters to my father when I was young. Both of us were both more open and honest than I think our parents sometimes wished we would be.
I stayed out at Nanette's Monday night with the boys and her three dogs and thirty cats. She has two outdoor heated condos for the cats.

There was a full moon that night, clear and crisp with a dry 0 degrees.

Nanette

It happens like a dream. The phone rings. I knew your father, she explains. We went to religious school together, growing up, she continues, and your grandfather was our family doctor. Your cousins told me you were living here in Montreal and gave me your number. Did you know I had a crush on your father? He was so good looking and such a nice boy. The last time we saw each other was when I was seventeen, before I moved to New York.

Nanette left Jackson, Mississippi and became a Harley riding rock star in Quebec. I can't get it out of my head, the times throughout my life that my father shared his dream of being in a band, with his long hair blowing in the wind on his harley.

Our connection was strong from the beginning. And after our three hour lunch and two bottles of wine, it grew stronger. It's one of those connections that feel brought on by a much higher power. I say that my dad, with nine years in the grave, must've had something to do with this. He said to me, this woman, this Nanette is the other life I also wanted to live. I didn't get a chance to be with her, so I want you in her life. Here she is. Now be friends.

So, friends we are, or more strangely, ghost family. The mother and daughter we might have been have found each other.

My little angels

This is one of my most favorite pictures in the whole wide world. Alexandre with the angel eyes.


Those were the days, when we could wrap them up tight and they were as content as could be.


This is Alexandre in Cuba this past summer. You can already catch a glimpse of the boy he will become, the one that threw a forty-five minute tantrum today because he didn't get what he wanted.You could hardly believe it from this picture if I told you that he's the same little boy that choke-holds his brother on a regular basis.

Winter wonderland

Almost two feet of snow have fallen this week and they're only 50% finished cleaning the streets in the city. C told me that it costs the city $60 million dollars for each snowstorm. That's a lot of money. And when you add on all the layers of winter clothes and winter boots and electricity and gas to run all the heaters, winter can get really expensive here.

I've been trying to get the boys used to the snow. Their day care lady says they don't want to stay outside at all. I say it's the Texan in them. I can completely understand.

Baie St. Paul

Coming into Petite Rivière St. François.

Full moon on Petite Rivière St.-François, at the edge of the St. Lawrence River. This is taken just outside the condo, a walk across the street.

On our way to Baie St. Paul, a 15 minute drive back up the mountain and into the Bay. It's slightly above freezing and perfectly comfortable. My two co-pilots, Alexandre and Jacob.

Pumpkin carving