Being without power on an island is a
difficult way of life, especially when it’s overcast. We made breakfast of
toast and bacon on the barbecue, and heated some water for tea. The dishes were
washed with lake water, and Ben followed me around the house using his
flashlight to find the dust while I swept. We left four days early, leaving the
pounding rain and thudding wind behind.
“I missed this house.” I turn
from the kitchen sink to see Benny slowly walking down the stairs, kissing the
banister as he goes. “I missed you, house.” He rests his cheek against the dark
wood and closes his eyes, content.
Today Benny and I went to Blue
Mountain Village, a little outdoor shopping area with coffee shops, retail
stores, restaurants and –to Ben’s delight –ice cream.
He painted
a new fighter jet at Crock a Doodle, the pottery shop. Then we got poutine
without the poutine (he just wanted French fries), and looked for frogs in a
small stream under a bridge. We spotted some but didn’t catch any. We got Ben a
Moose Tracks ice cream cone and walked around the spouting fountain while he at
it.
I’ve never
seen a messier eater. It’s a talent, truly. The chocolate-vanilla ice cream
covered his mouth, cheeks, nose. It dripped down onto his t-shirt, shorts, and
even shoes. A woman walking by saw him and stopped, handing me a napkin. “You’re
going to need this,” she said with a smile. Honestly what I needed to do was
throw Ben into the spouting fountains and let him air dry. He was a happy,
sticky mess.
Eventually
we changed him out of his t-shirt and into a sweatshirt, and wiped down his face
and hands in the bathroom (although it’s called a washroom here). He was
considerably less sticky when he got into the car at the end of the day, and sometimes,
from a four-year-old, that’s all you can ask.
No comments:
Post a Comment