portraits of a pandemic winter

It is a Saturday morning in February. The flakes are coming down in steady streams of white and the only sign of life outside are little figurines of dog walkers making their way through this snowstorm.

My husband is lying supine on our couch, engrossed in some seminary book, and I thought this would be a good time to post some pictures of the pandemic winter we’ve been having. A photojournalism of sorts.

Blueberry pancakes and coffee have been one marker of our weekend mornings over the past few months. I never really made pancakes being single (unless you count my 1 banana-2 egg gluten-free pancakes) so this has been one change since being married, as my husband is a big fan of both blueberry pancakes and coffee.

Apparently, it was his favourite food as a kid and so we try to make weekends extra special by making some sort of special breakfast. Most Saturdays, we actually have been frequenting the two bakeries in our neighborhood, L’amour du pain and La bête à pain (literally translated as “The love of bread” and “The bread beast” respectively), for fresh croissants and lattés.

It’s turned into a Saturday routine – getting up early and making it outside for the short, brisk walk to the bakeries, only to return with steaming coffees and flaky pastries. Due to the pandemic and the constant construction around our area, however, we have often been stuck outside the bakery at 7:30 in the morning, unaware they had changed their opening time to 8:00.

So, many of my pandemic winter bakery memories have been of standing outside the store, hands shoved deep into my pocket, nose pressed up against the glass straining to see the golden pastries laid out on the display shelf.

Activity-wise, hair cutting has been keeping Peter busy. The picture above was taken at the beginning of the winter, right after we invested in a Wahl’s hair cutting kit. We had come to know the couple we ran Alpha with that semester very well, and so they were Peter’s first guinea pigs.

Right after that, we decided to try cutting each other’s hair but ended up cutting way more than we had wanted. At least it was mutual and hair grows back 😛

I’ve been practicing more on Peter and last week, was quite proud of the haircut I gave him. Tonight, he has been summoned to another couple’s house for a haircut (they’re trading us dinner), and we joke that he should open up a side business to market his hair cutting and knife sharpening services.

Ah, board games – a big part of our pandemic winter! The one we’re playing here is Terraforming Mars, a good sit-down 3 hour game, and probably still my favourite out of all the ones we’ve tried this winter (including 7 Wonders, Castles of Burgundy, Smallworld…although Viticulture may be a strong competitor, we’ll see ;))

January was an especially slow month for us – Quebec still in lockdown, the weather deathly cold (below -20C every day), no cafes or restaurants open – that all we could do was hole up and play a board game.

For all the flak that Canada gets for its winters, I have to say, it is also very beautiful.

This picture was taken during a walk on the Alpha weekend retreat we did back in November somewhere in northern Quebec. The snow dusted pine leaves, misty background of bare twigs and tree shadows cast over an ice lake made for a very idyllic winter scene.

Now with a car, we are grateful that we get to explore more areas around Montreal and the weekend retreat was definitely one of the highlights (it was also the first snow of the season!) We are still trying to get our hands on some cross-country skiis…

This picture was taken out of our apartment window on an ordinary pandemic winter day. We have grown accustomed to the crane positioned on the light rail transit system in construction (see top left) that never seems to move. It is from this window that we watch life go by on the canal (dog walkers, perseverant winter joggers…)

I love this picture because I think it very aptly captures what ordinary life is. Probably 7:30 or 8:00a.m. after breakfast, we still have our “waking” lights on and Peter is brushing his teeth while staring out the apartment windows.

It is quiet in the house. The day is just beginning.

I should have taken a better picture of the arugula when they were still alive but figured that this was more “real life”. We tried our best (or should I say Peter did – I hardly did anything to contribute :P) to keep them alive and to his credit, Peter did plant and grow them from seed.

But our apartment just doesn’t get enough sun to grow plants (even our aloe vera is dying!) We have hopes of having a garden one day, but perhaps we have to wait until the summer to try…

We drove to Waterloo to visit my parents in the middle of the winter. This is the view from outside our home when it was slightly snowing. My mom got a Christmas urn (pictured to the left of the door) for the first time and the parents put up lights around the house, which definitely increased its hygge factor!

Some highlights were Peking duck for Christmas Eve dinner, doing our family’s first gift exchange Christmas morning and giving my dad binoculars, painting in our basement and outlet mall shopping (depicted below).

I took this picture really quickly and it was only later when I looked back on it that I broke out laughing. The sign “Stay safe, please keep 2m apart” and Peter with his mask, looking confused, beside the “still need help” screen – I couldn’t have planned it better.

And isn’t this how we’ve been feeling this pandemic winter – confused, unsure of where to go and still needing help?

I end with this portrait of my husband, who has graciously put up with all my photo-taking, given that he is often the only human subject I have around to take photos of (thank you! ;))

Other than taking photos, playing board games, watching episodes of The Crown, taking winter walks, eating blueberry pancakes and living many mundane, ordinary moments of work and rest, I have also been reading “Prayer in the Night” by Tish Harrison Warren that has been teaching me a lot about weakness, vulnerability and lack.

In a world that asks us to be strong, successful, free and famous, I need to hear this message over again:

Philosopher D.C. Schindler called contemporary life a “flight from reality” – the attempt to buffer the self, through technology, ease and distraction, from the sorrows and dilemmas of our lives. We are tempted by nearly every current of culture to form our lives so that there is no time for grief, but only the dim hum of consumption, dulling our agony – but with it, our joy, wonder, and longing…we must learn to slow down and let emptiness remain unfilled…[we need to be] form[ed]…into a people who can hold the depths of our sorrow with utter honesty even as we hold to the promises of God.

Tish Harrison Warren, Prayer in the Night

These are my thoughts as this pandemic winter is slowly drawing to an end. I remember, and hold these memories close.