Little Match Girl

January is a difficult month at the best of times. Most of us are fatter and poorer then we were in December and have little to show for the excesses of the season except a few trinkets and the memory of family feuds. I think my friend Rebecca had the right idea by hibernating with her husband over Christmas and making pasta from scratch. Rebecca is often sensible and I miss hear dreadfully. We have been friends forever and were neighbors for a time, creating a warm community by the ocean in the midst of a city of strangers. I would go over to her cozy apartment every Saturday and she would educate me about Afrobeat. We would make homemade mozzarella or drink tea and consume an entire loaf of Cobb’s fruit and nut bread, toasted just so. For her birthday I prepared scallops in a cream sauce, enriched with egg yolks and crème fraiche…I have always believed that butterfat equals love, and Rebecca agrees.

I knew Rebecca and I would become fast friends the day I met her in the music library at the University of Manitoba. She was wearing velvet pants and a peasant blouse and was doing her theory homework on vellum with a vibrant purple calligraphy pen. Her long blonde hair cascaded in defiant, unruly tendrils. I felt as if a light had been turned on.

Rebecca and I were the misfits of music school: we were queer and had voices that just didn’t blend. People often told us to sing more quietly, to tow the line, but we couldn’t and we would often cry together in an empty practice room after our voice lessons, overwhelmed by the frustration of wanting to express the infinite through song and not really knowing how…..some day we will be able to sing as loudly as we want and nobody will tell us to blend. This I promise you…

We often cry together still, out of love, out of longing…because we miss each other. Yesterday, Rebecca and I talked on the phone for the first time in almost 2 months and I told her all about my Berlin adventures - how I ran out of coal over New Years and thought it might be a good idea to burn the discarded Christmas trees I found on the side of the road to keep warm. She said I was like the little match girl, that I needed a knight in shining armor to rescue me. I told her there are no knights in shining armor and that maybe I should have just remembered to order the coal already….

For there are no knights to rescue us, no silver bullets, no miracle cures. There are, however, laughter and tears, and the desire to express the infinite through song with a voice that is your own. There is friendship. There are scallops in a rich creamy sauce…

and there is the light, turning on.

This I promise you.