Olivia and I had a quick pop-in to Starbucks by the mall while we were out and about this afternoon. I ordered a cold brew, and she ordered a Frappuccino. 

My drink came out almost immediately, but Olivia’s was nowhere to be seen after 10 minutes, so I asked the staff if her order had gone missing.

They had a very good excuse: while we were in line, an order for 390 Frappuccinos came in, and each one generated a sticker to be stuck on the cup. That’s a lot of stickers, and Olivia’s got lost in the sea of them. They were very quick on the rebound, and she had her drink in-hand about a minute later.

But, 390 Frappuccinos!

Who in Charlottetown ordered 390 Frappuccinos on a Monday afternoon?

How do you transport 390 Frappuccinos?

Does a Starbucks have enough Frappuccino gunk to make 390 Frappuccinos?

The mind boggles.

I find cars notoriously difficult to sketch: something about all those angles. And the confounding roundness of the tires. Something inevitably ends up being not quite right. An automotive uncanny valley.

Sketching my car this morning was instructive, in part because I realized that it’s far less red than I think of it. The red roof is a substantial thing, of course, but otherwise it’s a black car with some tactically placed red accents.

A long week, punctuated by a bicicletta under the gazebo by the shore.

My grandfather Dane Rukavina, who we called Papa Dan, had his 15 minutes of fame sometime in the 1970s, via the cover of the Brantford Expositor. My father must have requested a print of the photo, as I have this copy.

Somehow the word got out that he had the best beans in town in his garden, and he’s proudly holding them up.

The man I see in the photo is evocative of the grandfather I knew: his scruffy face, his hat, his eyeglasses, his jacket.

But I don’t recognize his smile: was this the only time he smiled? I also see my father’s face—he smiled a lot more though—and a little bit of mine too.

I was looking up a reference to the Frankfurt Protocols¹ in my book this morning—I knew I’d written something there—and I came across this passage, written October 14, 2014, just after Catherine was diagnosed with incurable cancer:

I had a good talk with the psychotherapist yesterday, which was really helpful. Not because she was able to give me any answers, but simply to give me a chance to talk about how I’m feeling, which felt like a luxury. I asked her, as we were finishing up, what I should be watching out for in my own mental health – when am I danger of breaking? She said that as long as I kept myself open to what I’m feeling, and keep talking – to Catherine, to Oliver², to others – that I won’t break. I might wither, but that’s only natural, and she stressed that being able to wither in front of Oliver is a good thing, as he² needs to know it’s okay for him² to feel things too.

I’ve recalled that guidance many times in the last 10 years. I have, however, focused more on the “I won’t break” part, and less on the “as long as I kept myself open to what I’m feeling, and keep talking” part, at my peril.

If I’d done a better job at that, the journey from there to here may have been healthier.

I didn’t break, in the end; but I managed that more by girding myself against the possibility than by being open to my feelings.

1. As explained in the book, if you’ve just flown a transatlantic red eye flight to Frankfurt, ”once you land, and while you’re waiting for the next flight, all normal protocols are suspended: if you feel like having a Starbucks Frappuccino, you have a Starbucks Frappuccino. Or two breakfasts. Or you buy that copy of People magazine.”

2. “Oliver” now identifies as Olivia (she/her). We’ve discussed the best way to handle references to her in the time before her transition, and her request was that I leave them as-is, but footnote them like this.

Our neighbours (and print shop landholders) at St. Paul’s Anglican Church have outdone themselves with this year’s Pride staircase.

It’s remarkable how difficult it is to find a simple cherry pie recipe, especially in this age of “Jump to Recipe” followed by 3,000 words of meaningless SEO bait. But I found one: 4 cups cherries, one cup sugar, 10 tsp of corn starch, and (my addition) a splash of lime juice.

Sitting on the deck having breakfast one morning last week, I remarked, looking from afar at our small urban orchard in the back yard, ”wow, that apple tree suddenly has lots of apples!”

Closer inspection revealed these “apples” to not be apples at all, but rather cherries.

As far as I know, in the many years this tree has been growing in our back yard—Catherine and her father planted it more than a decade ago—it has never produced cherries. I’d simply resigned myself to thinking of it as a non-productive apple tree.

But, wow, is it ever producing cherries this year. Scads of them. Sweet, juicy, red cherries.

There will be cherry pies. Perhaps tarts. Muffins. Jam.

There are two possible explanations for the sudden influx of cherries.

First, I may simply have forgotten that we have had cherries in the past. It’s been a heady decade; maybe I simply didn’t have the CPU cycles to notice cherries on the tree (or maybe the birds got them first).

Second, perhaps some ecological happenstance has caused the dormant cherry tree to suddenly produce cherries. We lost many trees — perhaps half the forest cover — in the back yard from Hurricane Fiona. The plum tree that is the cherry tree’s neighbour was felled (though it’s still producing plums, with one toppled foot in the grave). Perhaps pollination is involved?

Are there arborists (or psychologists) in the readership who might shed light on this?

(The line “Cowboy, cowboy marry me I’ll bake you a cherry pie” is from the Elvis Presley song A Cane And A High Starched Collar, from the movie Flaming Star. I could have just as well titled this blog post “Life is not a bowl of cherries,” which is what my mother told me as a child every time I showed any hint of privilege or entitlement.)

Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary gives a concise explanation of why Ryanair doesn’t fly transatlantic, and in doing so also explains the transatlantic business model for carriers that do.