reunion

I pull the garlic and finally, I have a bulb that fills my palm. We’ve had a hard time growing anything larger than a hazelnut. I text my husband a warning before I send him the picture of the bounty, “This could make you horny…” I want to get a soil tester for the fall, we should be doing better with our root plants. So much I want to do and get and try and learn and and and…home-owning. You know the feeling, I’m sure.

I pull a bushel of weeds and feed them to the hens. They have been particularly loud lately because frankly, we have too many. My Fellow dragged me down to the coop two months ago with a sheepish grin on his face. “What? What is so important we can’t discuss from in the house? What can’t I see from our balcony?” He opened up the coop, four baby hens were huddled on top of the feed cans, docile enough to cuddle. “Don’t you think we have enough, honey?” He grinned under his Surrey Fire baseball hat, scooping up a speckled plymouth rock. “I…well…I might have a chicken addiction…but look how cute they are. Did you see the white leg horn? And I really wanted one of these beautiful Rhode Island reds…”

Our coop is technically large enough for twenty one birds but we’re only 1/3 of an acre here and the hen house sure gets rowdy in the morning. This is largely due to Odd Maud, the spindly broody black araucana, who won’t move her hen pecked miserable little butt off the favourite roost. We have eight roosts, ladies, seriously, SHARE! 5am I am thinking about chicken soup…

I haven’t been blogging because I’ve been writing a novel and I’ve also been in Alls Well that Ends Well at Bard on the Beach while running my BnB and being a Mom and wife. We just hosted a fabulous family reunion for Scott’s side of the family for two weeks. At its peak, the Robbie clan reached 33 people and it was only made possible because everyone was pitching in, especially my kids and Scott and sister-in-laws, Cathy and Kylie, who did a lot of housekeeping while I pranced around on stage spouting Shakespeare. Bless them! The family reunion was wonderful, the show at bard is gorgeous, my beloved mother-in-law was feted and loved for her 80th and right now, all’s well that ends well, indeed!

the exquisite Sarena Parmar in Bard on the Beach All’s Well that Ends Well photo by Emily Cooper costume by Carmen Alatorre

As I lay the garlic out on the patio table to dry and set up a boundary so the bunnies can join me on the deck, I sit down with my coffee and computer to enjoy the view and keep the bad eagles from airlifting a rabbit for lunch.

I sip my espresso, gaze at the geraniums and ponder how my children will remember these Bowen days. I hope fondly:

“Remember when we had that four hundred pound cast iron stove in the basement and then moved it to the porch for five years, then it sat in the driveway for another five years because Dad thought he could sell it and it eventually became a planter that Mom predicted it would be in the first place?”

“How about the plum tree that was dormant for four years and Mom finally agreed to let Dad chop it down and then it bloomed like mad with fruit nonstop for the next ten years and she changed her mind and he never did get his root cellar built?”

“Before dad built his shed, remember, there were stashes of tools all over the house and piles of boards and bits of plumbing and paint cans everywhere? How did Mom stand it for twenty years?”

“Oh, never mind, what about Mom’s continuous sewing and canning projects that took over the house for months? That big scary pressure canner going on the stove with piles of tomatoes ripening in every window and piles of egg shells drying in the oven? Fabric across half the dining room table only to result in horrible looking curtains? I’m sure it would have been cheaper and easier to buy canned tomatoes and curtains…”

Probably to be rebellious our children will decide to live in only one sparkling clean house for the rest of their lives and own a Costco membership.

I really love the people I am working with right now, from Christopher Gaze the artistic director, to Chris Crud who is the head audio dude. to Rhea handling my contract, to Ingrid and the volunteers, the costuming team, our directors, the crew, the cast…everyone. The show is set in India so it’s primarily a south Asian cast, as Pam put it yesterday, “Brown girl power.” It’s brought in a significant increase in south Asian audience members as far as I can tell. (usually theatre is a sea of white) I think the play speaks into a painful time in history for India: partition, something few of us know much about I suspect.

Being a lover of language, it’s a joy to bite into the text every night and wrap my mouth around those consonants. Alison, the gracious vocal coach, helped me wrangle out some of my Alberta-isms that Johnna caught, like saying “bolth” and “gifs” instead of both and gifts. The four hour commute has been hard on my figure, all that sitting has resulted in some extra pounds, but I hope to get on my bike this week now that the family reunion is done. I digress: the point is, managing director Claire Sakaki and artistic director Christopher Gaze have set the tone for the entire organization, tone starts at the top: relaxed elegance, artistic beauty and intelligence, and a sense of belonging to a family. 

This makes me think how Judy, my mother-in-law, set the tone for the family reunion: a production unto itself, with similar values, actually. Everyone came together to celebrate her for a reason just like Bard has been around for thirty years for a reason. Sure, with our show there were clashes between tradition and innovation and adjustments on both ends for the emerging artists and the veterans, the various feelings and opinions around how history should be portrayed, that sort of thing. Just like with family: the liberals egg on the conservatives around the dinner table, the kids are cajoled into playing their instruments for grandma, and the aunts and uncles sip their alcoholic beverages and sigh while they patiently try to teach the nieces and nephews how to play cards. We make room for each other. We celebrate and support each other. In doing so, despite the mucking about and the happy mess of it all, we make something really beautiful and important happen.