Portrait

This is going to be a portrait of my friend Heather, a knitter, spinner, and dyer of fibre, who invited me into her home yesterday with a mutual friend for a quiet evening of knitting.

This work of mine, the writing, is dedicated to Heather's son Alex. Being the youngest of Heather's boys, he is the one that most brings to mind my own son, who, though shorter, younger, and more reclusive in company than Alex, appears to have a similar taste in how he wears his hair. (Previously I have struggled with my attitude to my son's hair, but seeing Alex in his element last night reminds me that über-short hair on a young man allows the observer to concentrate on his facial features, especially the eyes -- and when those eyes are expressive, or sympathetic, or even just interested in what you have to say, that is a very good thing.)

Portraiture, in writing or photography, is about choosing details. With photography the artist works with light and darkness to evoke an image. There are photographers who excel at creating portraits of people in their own space. I want to do the same with words. To show you Heather as she really is, not as you have seen her before on this blog in her role as the life of the party, shaking things up and adding a little spice to the mix, but at home, in repose, with her dogs at her feet and her sons by her side, all of them eyeing her and obeying her commands with that combination of respect and indifference that is the province of dogs and sons everywhere.

This Heather puts her feet up on the couch while her hands attack a basket of dyed roving, braiding eight ounces at a time into a presentable collection of product intended for sale at the Knitter's Fair. She strokes the fibre and talks to me about colour, a shared love. I say that I am beguiled by the jewelled green-blue that shows up in patches on the current batch of roving.

"That's teal," she says, and at first I think she means to correct a deficit in my recall of the language of colour. But no. The old Heather rears up for a moment and declares, "I'm not being a bitch! I meant that's the colour on the label of the dye. Haha. It's actually called 'teal'."

And then she remembers that we are there as her guests, and she has made ice cream pie for us: a nanaimo bar crust and a layer of ice cream topped with a bit of hard chocolate shell sprinkled with miniature chocolate candies filled with caramel or peanut butter. She serves it with pride, while making sure we know that she has followed no official recipe, just made it up as she went along. It strikes me that this dessert is perfect as a signature creation of a woman who is sweet throughout, but whose tough outer crust belies the vulnerability within.

When the ice cream threatens to melt she sends one of her sons to put the dessert back in the freezer.

The evening went on, but I am out of time for writing. Alex, and Heather, this quick post written at a very early hour is my gift to you for the wonderful evening I enjoyed in your company yesterday, along with Chris, Kallie and Jessie the dogs (whose names I have probably misspelled) and Michelle.