The last few days have been lived looking back.  It's such a weird combination of things putting me there.

It is knitting this.  It's the green and the rust and the colour work.

It reminds me of knitting this.  

He wore this so much that last winter.  It kind of kills me now, because, in a world where I was not familiar with how weird cancer can be, it didn't strike me as odd that before then, it was to warm to wear unless he was sitting in our chilly basement when the furnace wasn't running.   I loved knitting it and it turned out so well too.  But it was a sign and I missed it.  

And then because my mind is all full of my Icelandic knitting and Brian's vest and things that were and cannot be changed, I cannot tell you how it was that this morning, with him gone for six years, I saw bags of bright yellow split peas, green split peas, and nice little brown lentils, that I sat in the aisle at the grocery store, helplessly bursting into tears for missing him.  

In the seconds it took to put a bag of them in my cart, I was transported to those harvest days where he would be on the swather and get so stuffed up because of being allergic to the pea dust.  I remembered the years where yellow peas and lentils came from the big granary back in the bin yard behind the house and how one winter our meals repeated in a pretty short cycle:  roast game, venison cutlets, pea soup, roast game, stew, cutlets, potato dumplings, lentil soup and around and around again.  If it didn't come from the farm or had been hunted, we didn't have it and it didn't matter much because we were together, our kids were healthy and we were warm and well-fed.  I lived a decade in that moment it took to put the bag in my cart, a sweet long ago decade.      

My sudden red watery eyes were noticed by a very nice lady going the other way down the aisle.  She asked if I was okay, or if my eyes were just watering because of the harvest dust in the air.  I had to laugh and say it was even dummer than that, because how can you possibly explain the longing for that decade so long ago, and that one person who shared those things with you?  

 

We used to talk about those times, sitting in the hot tub with a large glass of sherry, the kind that slips down your throat warming everything from the inside.  We would laugh at the way it used to be and at kid stories and so many more memories. There isn't anyone to talk about them now, and it is mostly okay, because I can write them and maybe, sometime far in the future, my grandkids will wonder who we were and how we lived and will find the books of this blog.

So there you have it.  That is today in my world, filled with yellow peas and ham for soup, and vests of green and rust.  You may think this is a sad post but it isn't.  I have a good life and I am thankful for it.  I am privileged to have the time and the peace to think of these things and honoured to be able to share them with all my little people.  Not everyone is lucky enough to get that chance.