sunday_morning ovenbird It’s a very specific combination of flavours that’s attached to the memory. As I ate my pancakes this morning the maple syrup and the yolk from my egg ran together into the shape of Sunday mornings thirty years in the past. Dad would make pancakes and eggs and bacon and we would listen to the Max Ferguson show on CBC radio, and sink into the coal choked voices of The Men of the Deeps or be introduced to some new artist emerging from the folk scene. When Max_Ferguson retired from broadcasting we switched to Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe. I suspect it was rare for a family in the late 90s and early 2000s to gather around a radio, but we did. We would sit in the living room with the dregs of our tea and see if Stuart McLean had a new story to tell about Dave and Morley and their children Sam and Stephanie and we would laugh at their antics and note the way that their lives intersected with ours and there was a warmth that emerged from it all that was almost sappy in its sweetness. My closest friend at the time used to say we were a Leave it to Beaver family, which isn’t the truth of it, but it’s what she saw. She came from a home rife with abuse and when she dropped into ours my mom would serve her dinner and ask about her life and let her sleep over two nights in a row. No one got drunk or high or screamed or hit anyone. I guess it’s easy for a home to look like Leave it to Beaver when the bar is that low. When I imagined having children of my own I thought that one day I could reproduce those slow burning Sunday mornings. I imagined putting a record on the turntable and letting the morning drift by in a haze of fuzzy connection. But the world has changed in the intervening years. My kids disappear as soon as they’ve eaten to talk to their friends online or play a video game. They’re so used to living at fiber optic speeds that the idea of listening to Sgt. Pepper’s while idly reading a book is physically painful to them. I’ve filled their lives with music and books and home made muffins, but I can’t force them to gravitate towards those things. I’ve learned that when you become a parent you don’t get to return to the nostalgia of your own childhood. It’s a different generation. They look at me like I’m an ancient relic. My past is not something they aim to repeat. When I talk about the Vinyl Cafe they look at me the way I looked at my grandmother when she told me they used to have milk delivered by horse and buggy. “I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled” or in my case, I’ll wear my skinny jeans until they’re back in style again some time in the next few decades. There are days when what I want, more than anything, is to go home. I find that today is one of those days. 251005 what's it to you? who go blather from