Voices, actually.
As some of you know, I have always regretted the fact that I cannot speak Icelandic. I tried to learn it for several years, attending a class run by the Icelandic Canadian Club of Toronto. I didn’t do enough homework; Icelandic requires quite a lot. My vocabulary increased and I added some rote phrases, but I still can’t speak the language—well, just a little. I received a few useful insights from my grandmother. My mother didn’t want me to learn Icelandic because she wanted to gossip with her friends and family without a little pitcher sopping it all up. But Amma didn’t mind answering my questions. I wish I had asked her more.
Every summer of my childhood I lived in a cottage two doors away from my grandparents’ big house in Gimli, Manitoba. I spent a lot of time in the big house, visiting my Amma. She taught me to play Gin Rummy and we had regular games, the only one I ever played with before I married Bill Wylie (a card shark). I “helped” with a few chores that I loved. I picked the leaf lettuce for salad and washed it in the delicious, cold, running water of the artesian well at the bottom of the yard. And I rinsed out the coffee bag in the impetuous force of the water, sending the grounds down the pipe, eventually reaching the lake four streets and a sandy beach away. II’ll have to write about Icelandic coffee some time or other. It’s filtered, made in a bag. The wells, too. Not now.
The first Icelandic words I ever heard that I committed (involuntarily) to memory were spoken by my grandfather, every day, and every night: “myllan hefur ekki pumpa í dag”