It is snowing in Vancouver and my old man Husky cross, Tartuffe, remembers his puppyhood. I haven’t seen him trot in months. Today, he actually gamboles across the field towards a frisky shepherd. He leaps! His old arthritic legs stiff and airborne. They don’t look sore or lame, they look hipster disengaged: a teenager too cool to use the handlebars. He looks back at me, knowing I must be impressed, his hooded blue eyes saying that singular ubiquitous word with many meanings: “Dude!”
At the end of the field, lovers are building a snowman, giggling as only the young and recently amorous do: the mister in blue down, the miss in bright purple ski. I smile and wonder if they are pretending the snowman is Parson Brown. I also wonder if Parson Brown advises them to complete thorough marriage counselling first.
I crunch confidently out of the drive way and down the street in snow tires: my “Mini the blue”, ruling Britannia over spinning sputtering mini vans. I have a meeting with a beloved colleague over a steaming cup of tea. We sip our way through a work thing that went wonky and soothe it. She says to me over her toque, mint and braids, “I’m so glad we talked this through before the solstice”. I burst into laughter, it is such a delightfully true and utterly Vancouver thing to say. What a gift of a day.
