Dispatches from Kelowna | Episode 5
On cherry season in Kelowna and our toddler's second birthday.
An open letter to my first child who turned two on Monday:
It’s cherry season here in the Okanagan and the air is filled with their sweet, red scent. When Granda was here, there was a cherry orchard beside their AirBnb and he snuck between the trees and plucked a handful from some branches.
“Granda!” I said when I saw his palm full of the small, fleshy stone fruit.
He snickered.
I tried one, then two.
You tried one, and your lips puckered and you spit it out and gave it back to me.
They were tart but extraordinary, though not as ripe as they are now. We all ate the seven or eight stolen fruits and I looked around anxiously, hoping we wouldn’t get caught.
Now that they are in season, my fingers are perpetually dyed a bright crimson; the corners of your lips, the same. Last night we did your entire bedtime routine— tidied, bathed, brushed your teeth, played in the crib and stacked all your babies in the corner, read a book, put on your sleep sack, said goodnight to the cats and your baba and your sibling and to our family in the photos on the wall (this part melts my heart, when you point to someone and tell me you miss them with your eyes)— and as I sang the first words of your lullaby you told me you were hungry.
I always listen when you tell me you are hungry.
My brain says you’re stalling. My heart says you want a few extra, precious moments to sit in my lap and nibble on a cracker while I hold you and kiss the side of your face.
I understand.
Last night, during this occasional post-bedtime-routine snack, we shared a piece of Aunt Kathleen’s cherry yoghurt cake that she made for your birthday tea party picnic on Sunday. I know, I know, we’d already brushed your teeth but it was out and ready for me to eat and, let me tell you, it was luscious.
Many of the cherries, mysteriously, she said, had sunk to the bottom of the cake. I recalled her face as she puzzled this out, mumbled about her baking process, on the blue picnic blanket in the backyard.
Your aunt’s furrowed brow occupied my mind as you picked out every cherry and gleefully ate it, leaving me the rest. I thought about how perfect the cake was, how textured and how happy it made us and I thought about how, even then, your aunt seemed to feel it was a flawed; imperfect, with those sunken fruits.
During the day, we’ll ravage a bowl of cherries. Mine land on my tongue whole as I chew around the little pit, while yours are cut into quarters on your plate, each piece sitting in a small puddle of juice.
Roadside stands sell a pound of cherries for $5 or less. I’ve never seen so many for this price. Back in Ontario, once a year I’d splurge on a big bag of BC cherries. I’d spend $10 or $15 dollars on them, I think, and I’d sit and eat them all by myself. I am filled with a strange sense of nostalgia now, to think of this time in my past that also, in a way, feels like I’ve taken a direct step into the future. A direct step into today. To living in the place those cherries grew.
I loved those cherries, and I loved that your baba never wanted any.
“I didn’t like cherries until now,” baba says.
There are more than cherries here. Massive tree fruit orchards hug the sides of roads that wind through mountainous hills that make up Kelowna. There are apples, peaches, pears, apricots, and plums. There are orchards of grapes, too; there’s so much wine. We get local strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries from nearby farms and all of them taste exquisite. The cantalopes are ripening. I am very eager to share one with you. This is the highest quality fruit I’ve ever had, right from the vine, the branch, handpicked by the person I hand our money to. I bet you can imagine how this city smells. It’s divine.
If there’s a place in the world that’ll keep the bees alive, it’s this one.
I have always admired farmers and held them in great esteem. To sew a seed that’ll grow with rain and sun and love into something you can eat! Magnificent. I hope that living here, you will learn the value of this work and cultivate an appreciation for the ways in which we get our food. How far it travels. Who tends the soil in which it’s grown.
It rained on Monday and I thought it was auspicious. You were born under a thunderstorm. Thick, dark clouds in a 4AM sky. We’ve had a few solid rainy days here in Kelowna, but the rain is nothing like Ontario rain.
I’m told this is rare— for rain to fall in July or August in Kelowna is uncommon. On one of the rainy days, when it poured heavy like a bright Ontario shower, one of our friends told us she was very worried about her child who was at baseball camp.
“He’s afraid of the rain,” she said.
“Oh, wow,” I said. “Do you know why?”
She shrugged, “I guess it’s because he’s an Okanagan kid. It doesn’t ever rain like this.”
This made me laugh and then you laughed. You were right beside me. I told you that I love the rain and, in fact, I took you outside to stand in it, to feel it on our faces. That day, we saw rainbow after rainbow across the mountainscape.
Growing up, your grandma would get visibly excited when summer thunder rolled in. She’d go outside under a giant umbrella or the trailer awning if we were camping so she could watch the storm roll in. I loved this; I loved seeing her face, with such a massive smile and a palpable excitement.
I hope you learn to love the rain. Here, rain means something different than it does in Southern Ontario. It offers hope; reprieve from potential wild fires. But lightning puts folks on alert. Lightning can start a forest fire, and if there’s not enough rain to sate it, well, you can imagine what might happen. There was a wildfire near our house a few weeks ago. A four minute drive away. Evacuation orders put in place for our nearby neighbours. It happened fast, and took four days to control. This is our new reality.
Last night, after the cake, I sang to you and laid you in your crib. You had piled the most number of stuffies, babies, and friends I’d ever seen you pile at the foot of your crib. Twenty or forty or maybe fifteen, I’m not sure. It was a great many. You kept asking for another, as though you were worried they’d wake in the middle of the night and feel left out. Or you’d see them once you were alone in your crib and be unable to get to them and this would be an enormous travesty.
I said yes to each and every one you asked for.
For a moment I wasn’t sure there’d be any room in your crib for you. I was pleased to see, in the end, there was a nice rectangular space for you to rest your head.
I came out of your room and your baba, who held your stirring sibling in their arms, smiled at me and said, “Two years. Can you believe it’s been two years?”
“No,” I said, as the weight of 730 days settled in my body, along with all the work we did beforehand to get to that precious, unknowable day one.
“We’ve only been parents for two years,” your baba said. “Think of our entire lives before and think of our lives now.”
My mind collapsed.
“It feels…” I had to pause. What did two years feel like? A blip. But also everything.
I thought of the person I see in the bathroom mirror in the morning. How much older she looks. How her friends who all live far away in other cities have yet to see all the grey hairs she’s grown. How behind she is on sleep. How hungry she is, all the time. How different her body feels now, being in it. I’m not sure they’d recognize me now, so transformed by your love; by my love for you.
I thought of all the places we’ve been and the things we’ve accomplished. Two years. Teaching. Moving. Travelling. Climbing up. Skiing down. Driving to Disney for your first birthday (and our one-year-as-parents celebration). I thought of our move across Canada with the cats, how we’ve landed in this bountiful city full of farmland, black and brown bears, hiking trails, a large, cold lake, an endless, unforgiving, summer sun— and our favourite cinnamon buns.
I thought about our family. How I’ve spent a third of my life without you all, and I cannot feel it. I cannot feel the time I’ve spent without you.
“It feels like we have always been together,” I said to your baba. “Even though it’s only been two years.”
That’s because you were always here. It’s impossible to articulate, but it’s something I am sure of. You were always in our future.
Happy second birthday, baby. You have such a beautiful life ahead of you. I’m so glad I am a part of it.
I love you,
Mama
If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?
- Arrival, Dir. Denis Villeneuve (2016)
