Lessons from the Country

and a fragrant tea cake from days of yore

“We had callers,” is how my grandmother used to put it, meaning not that the phone had been ringing off the hook but that people had dropped in for a visit. They were always unannounced, of course, as was the custom back then, hence the ever-ready kettles, the full canisters of tea, and the plentiful stashes of things like pound cakes, gingersnaps, and thumbprint cookies in every house up and down the road. I never have stuff like that at home in Paris, but here in the Canadian countryside I wouldn’t dare be unprepared for unexpected drop-ins. Because, in fact, there’s nothing unexpected about them — they’re guaranteed!

It interests me that as artificial intelligence bulldozes its way onto the scene, old-time “hobbies,” such as knitting, embroidery, quilting, and rug-hooking seem to be making a comeback, or so I hear, including in urban areas. I’m not sure they ever went out of style in this part of the world. Furthermore, they didn’t used to be hobbies: they were necessary skills if you wanted any hope of a comfortable existence.

Perhaps nowadays these pastimes are just as necessary but for different reasons, namely maintaining sanity, quieting the mind, and, well, just feeling the satisfaction of doing something real for once. It was the soothing aspects that seemed to be what rug-hooking was for my late father, who took up the craft in the last decade or so of his life on the recommendation of a friend. The local museum is currently holding an exhibit of his oeuvre. They’ve called it “Hooked on Stillness”, and I was rather stunned and delighted (and proud!) to see almost all his work together, because I had no idea he’d been so prolific, not to mention artistic. There was nothing paint-by-numbers about my father or his life, and not about his creations either. Each rug was dreamt up in his mind and made entirely by hand, including selecting and cutting each strip of wool himself for hooking. What a joy to see his work at eye level rather than underfoot. Here are just a few: