Ephemera of Love

January is gone and Cookstown is especially quiet. This time of year it seems like the town holds its breath: the busy season is over and spring will have to wait. One heavy snowfall warning follows another, and my family hasn’t left the house in two days. Today, I’m drawing pictures of spider-man and his friends and foes, cutting them out and taping them to pieces of cardboard for my three-year-old to play with. The baby is entertained by a long, warm bath. We listen to CBC radio.

I run out of ideas, so we go for a walk to check the mail. Sidewalks disappear under snowbanks, and moms push strollers and pull sleds up the middle of the road. Salt trucks spray briny sand. In our mailbox is an Expedia flyer and we dream of a beach vacation. We send out a birthday card for my grandmother, made by my son, with extra drawings stuffed in the brown envelope. Across the street from the post office, I notice a new bulletin board on the fence surrounding the empty lot where a building was bulldozed last summer. The board is covered in letter-sized grayscale posters, stapled corners curling. The same one over and over in a neat grid advertising the upcoming Community Dance. This is the only outdoor bulletin board in Cookstown. A town that can talk to itself is a town that can breathe.

We go to the library next, and the kids play with our neighbours in the children’s area. A low table is covered with a colouring page, as it always is, changing with the seasons. Right now it reads “I Love My Library” surrounded by outlines of cartoon animals reading books. Scribbles overlap neat stacks of shaded lines. A cross-section of Cookstown Library visitors: babies, children and adults all contribute. A paper record of community. Half-peeled crayons roll and scatter as my baby makes his mark.

Home again and I unload our new stack of library books along with the mail: magazines, bills, and a small paper calendar from our local MP. Last year the County of Simcoe stopped mailing paper calendars to residents. In December, we bought a 2026 calendar from the pet store. Now we can put a red line through each day as it passes. January is almost all crossed with red. Tomorrow we will turn the page. The red pencil is on the counter beside the drawing of spider-man. I write a love note to my husband and stick it on the fridge.