Getting Ready for Bingo

a hike and a sandwich

Part of the crew at Freya & Thor

My sister is spreading French’s yellow mustard on Aucoin’s sliced white bread from the Co-op down the road. She lays thin slices of spicy salami over the bread, slaps the bread together and cuts the sandwiches into triangles. She says this has been her hiking sandwich ever since I told her about my friend making them while riding shotgun in my car. We were en route to a ski camp in Quebec, there were lots of boys in the back, and yellow mustard seemed less risky, spoiling wise, than mayonnaise. Safe and tasty.

We’re packing up for a hike up Blueberry Mountain, Cape Breton. Three sisters, a husband, three kids and a yellow lab. We meander along the Margaree River in our packed car, passing one lane bridges, cows grazing in the fields and the river sparkling in the morning sun. We stop for a coffee on the edge of Chéticamp at Freya & Thor, a folk art gallery and café. There are flags flapping and dogs wagging and Gillian Welch is playing over the speakers. I love this place. 

As we sip our iced coffee, my sister, who has visited this area many times, suggests I go inside the gallery and see if anything ‘pops out’ at me. I love a challenge, so I cruise inside the white room lined with wooden folk art sitting on tiny white shelves. There are brightly painted wooden birds and seagulls and puffins with whirligig wings. A lady in a house dress with shopping bags in her hands. Lobsters, buoys and great white sharks. Nova Scotian life, captured through the lens of folk artists. I scan the room looking for a clue, and then, I see it.

For context: several years ago I was sitting at my aunt Sandra’s kitchen table, dipping ginger snaps into a mug of hot tea. My sister and our mother were there too, catching up after our mom’s two and a half hour drive from home. She had news to share - she and my dad had a new vanity installed in their en suite. “I took a picture of it before I left,” she gushed while passing me her phone. In the picture was a sink and faucet nestled into a new marble top, and above that, a matching mirror with my mother reflected in the glass. She was topless. I spit out my tea. “What?!” she cried, “What’s so funny?” I passed her phone around, tears streaming down my face. My mom had wanted us to see how beautifully the new vanity matched the mirror, but in the rush of dressing, had forgotten that mirrors reflect. 

Back in Cape Breton, sitting on a small white shelf in a room full of folk art is a wooden lady standing in front of her bedroom vanity, topless. The piece is titled “Getting ready for Bingo.” The woman working in the gallery explains that the artist, Murray Gallant, had died recently. This is their last topless lady getting ready for bingo. It was a top seller, one that Gallant had made by request again and again. Of course I buy it.

At the end of our hike we sit down on a rocky beach and eat mustard and spicy salami sandwiches. The yellow lab drinks from the stream rushing into the ocean, we take swigs from our water bottles and talk about when to give this lovely topless lady to our mother. Christmas? Her next birthday? Or now, just because? 

We love to laugh. Let’s go with now.