Stuck in Limbo

Last year I happened to be home to watch one of Oprah’s final episodes where she had Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher on the show.  When Carrie spoke about her particular form of mental depression I was struck by her illustration of hardening cement in her brain.  I am currently stuck in my story writing but I have to say that it is not cement so much as a mouse in the proverbial wheel that is giving me trouble!  I have woken up so many memories that I don’t know where to start and where to stop.  Then I have to find the next piece to make the story run smoothly.  It had all been going so well and now I am in that no-man’s land of jumble.

            Isn’t that the story of a person’s life though?  When we are children we just exist in the same way grass and trees are there.  We wake up in the morning, do what we are told, eat breakfast, brush our teeth, go to school, do our homework.  As we get a little older we have vague thoughts of “what we will be when we grow up”.  Then suddenly we are grown up and willy nilly we are thrown out into the world and somehow have to make sense of it.  Somehow we find our balance and start earning a living.  The next thing you know you become a “heellot”; you start owning things, a car, a house, appliances.  Now you have worries because you need to hold on to these things.  So you can’t lose your job; maybe you need to get a better job.  The cycle has begun.  Welcome to adulthood.

            If we are really lucky in life we may have a handle on our cycle by our mid to late forties.  The house is paid for, we have a good job, we can start to take vacations now and then.  Whoops, now we have the boomerang kids coming back into the house.  Oh dear, Mom and Pop need taking care of and so they move in.  Second mortgage?  Traps of life.

 Luckily most of us can handle what gets thrown at us but every once in a while don’t you just want to say “give me a break”.  I know I sometimes look back on my childhood and wonder why I was in such a hurry to grow up.  Today I see parents hurrying their kids along to maturity by handing them a cellphone when they are 3 years old (some people should be shot).  I remember being somewhat appalled when 3 year olds got a Barbie doll.  A Barbie doll, have you noticed, is a woman.  I’m not worried about the physical look of Barbie, I am concerned about the storylines a 3 year old would have to create to sustain the Barbie doll world.  Somehow that seems to be quite different from having a baby doll at 3 years old.  I suppose because I didn’t get a Barbie until I was 10 I was having a more evolved storyline for the character compared to playing “house” with baby dolls and play china.  In any event the idea of a 3 year old having a Barbie was disconcerting to me.  But I feel absolutely astonished that parents are giving their youngsters electronic equipment.  I must be getting old when I can’t wrap my brain around that kind of “play”.

            So my brain is turning on its little cogs and I wonder if anything I write is relevant?  I personally love nostalgia but one shouldn’t come across as maudlin either.  And lately I seem to be going into a maudlin state and that will never do.  Perhaps this nice storm we are having today will pull me out of the dumps and back into the nervous lizzies.

My mother the Storyteller

Mom called me from Ontario yesterday to ensure that her house was still standing.  What was I going to do if it wasn’t?  Did she think I would tell her the truth if it had flown to Saskatchewan?  Fortunately all is intact and she can cheerful enjoy her travel time. 

            My mother has never been much of a traveller, even when she was a child she preferred to stay home with her parents.  The only place she felt somewhat comfortable was with her Moster (aunt) Olivia.  My mother often told stories of the “lyst hus” (summer cottage) that her aunt and uncle had at Bangsbostrand.  Here in North America the closest resemblance would be a gazebo though in reality my aunt’s was more of a shack at the back of the yard.  Here her aunt would sit in the summer time and sew or knit then later she would bring out the coffee or tea on a tray with the famous Danish pastry or cookies for afternoon tea.  Listening to my mother tell the story made me think of fairy land just like her stories about her own back yard made me think of the Garden of Eden.  The way she told the story about how she would pluck a fresh pear or apple from the tree, take a bite and have the juices run down her arm would be so visual I almost had to wipe my own arm off!

            My father was counted the master conversationalist in our family, he made the most mundane things funny and interesting but my mother could hold us enthral when she would slowly tell us, in minute detail, her dreams.  She was terrific at describing every detail so that I would be convinced I had had the same dream.  I remember one dream in particular was so macabre they ought to make a movie about it.  She dreamed that she was in a terrifying house with evil spirits in every corner.   Then suddenly she came in to a room where there was a pile of grey wool.  Ever so slow the wool started to move, then it began a slow and evil kind of dance, then it was bouncing and jiving around until it formed the shape of a man, then it became two, and then three men.  But all of them were grinning and leering like lunatics and still tied together by the wool. 

            “And then what happened?”  I asked

            “I woke up.”

            And that was the scariest part of the story because now I was left to imagine the worst!

Hurricane Force Winds

Yesterday our part of the world suffered it’s third day of 133 km an hour winds and all I can say is that I hope this is not the kind of winter we can expect for the next 5 months!  Mid week I was still downtown for most of the winds and only saw the devastation second hand but yesterday I experienced rattling house, vibrating garage walls and toppled trees first hand.  I became so nervous and restless I felt like one of those sensitive dogs that howl when they are near the home of a dying person.  I recalled the description of the devastating winds that blew over Colorado in that marvellous James Michener book “Centennial” where he wrote with foreboding of the agony of one woman’s desperation to have the winds stop that she finally shot all her children and then herself.  At least in our modern age we can connect with radio and television to discover what is going on in the rest of the world; we can hear sounds other than the wind screeching over the roof and shaking the rafters, eavestroughs and windows.

Nature is a powerful force, really the most powerful force on earth.  What good is money when you have water flooding in your basement for days and weeks on end; what good is money when you have no electricity and the meat rots in your freezer?  Sure you can call a plumber and an electrician but the agony in the short term is mind searing and nerve rattling.  And these are just the minor devastations that we go through.  We are so fortunate in this country not to have earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes or tsunamis killing thousands of people.  Food is only a shopping centre away for us; but we should thank our lucky stars that we are living in a safe country where things are fixable.  These were some of the things going through my head yesterday as I paced back and forth wondering whether the branches or eavestrough was going to crash through my new windows.

            Last night I had a talk with my best friend and we were both feeling kind of low, probably due to this dismal weather we had experienced all day, and in the end we agreed that we should still be grateful that we have our jobs and a steady income.  Oftentimes the things that help us out the most are the things we take for granted the most.  There are a lot of people without jobs these days, I feel very lucky to be one of the ones with a good job.  I have a lot of great friends who are supportive, generous, fun loving and kind.  Life is so unpredictable; it’s not Thanksgiving but I give thanks to all I have.  Life could be a whole lot worse.

2011 Company Christmas Party!

I broke my rule the other night and went to our company Christmas party.  This year was different because I was going as a group.  Not a couple, but as a group.  Did it make a difference?  Of course, now I was able to mingle with people and have a little chat but I could always excuse myself by saying “I must go find my date” and not be lying!  Then I would wander off and mingle some more, arching my neck here and there, a la Alice Adams.  I amused myself!

 When a company holds a Christmas party which includes spouses there really ought to be something done to make the spouse feel more invited and part of things.  I think the party facilitator that can come up with a great icebreaker where the spouse participates could make a fortune!  I feel so sorry for the spouses being dragged along, pretending to listen to the conversations and not looking like “when can we leave” is written bold on his or her forehead.  Few people have a real talent for chit chat, I noticed that yesterday and for the first time in my 58 years I did not feel like the odd man out!  What an interesting experience for me.  That really was a Aha! moment for me.

The party was nice, my group company was the best but I am not sure it is something that I will feel compelled to do every year; perhaps every 5 years.  I have to admit that I was rather disappointed by the food and the venue.  I had heard so many rave reviews about the food but I was extremely let down.  I have been to other parties with much better food, more of it, more exotic and better tasting.  The lamb was delicious and the crème Brule was good.  The venue was simply dark and boring.  I did not find it at all appealing, an ice block does not make for festiveness and as for the cool art, I didn’t see any! 

 As a fan of Martha Stewart before she even had a fan club I realize that my standards are extremely high in the area of entertaining.  Seriously I don’t think anyone can ever reach the pinnacle of my expectations and so I will never be able to enjoy a large gathering such as a company Christmas party.  I much prefer intimate parties with close friends where we can enjoy a home cooked meal over interesting conversation and later play some amusing games that will encourage laughter.  This morning I have pulled out my “Entertaining” by Martha Stewart and I will be studying it so that I can throw a stunning party of my own.  Now that’s a party I will attend!

I Love My Mother

Today my mother travels down to Ontario to visit my sister and her family.  It has been 10 years since she made the trip and she is very nervous about getting on the plane alone.  When she was visiting me on Sunday she looked up at me and I could see that she was almost begging me to rescue her from the trip!  I felt terrible that I couldn’t go down with her but not only have I used up all my vacation time I had also made a commitment to attend our company Christmas party that I was loath to break.

            So I had a nice long chat with my mother on the phone last night and she was in a surprisingly chipper mood.  I asked her why the big change.

            “I had an amazing day today.”

            “Really, what happened?”

            “I went to the doctor . . . “ and she was off to the races.  She told a big long story about attending at the doctor’s office.  It wasn’t her regular doctor, it was the substitute.  All her tests had come back “very good” so she was happy about that.  Then she asked the doctor about her arthritis shot.  He said he could give her one.  She was in heaven as she had been suffering for months with the arthritis thinking that she couldn’t get another one for a year. 

            Now comes the painful part.  She started to tell me about the blue pill, then it was a grey pill, then it was the ineffective pill with nothing in them, then it was back to the blue pill.  We are talking about her sleeping pills.  She has been complaining for almost a year now that she has been unable to sleep because they have discontinued her old pills (which she’s been taking for over 20 years since she started menopause) and she is convinced that the pills she has been receiving are only placebos.  She has been rolling around in bed all these months, barely getting any sleep.  The doctor said that he could prescribe something stronger but she should only take a half pill.   So she went next door to the pharmacist.  As she talked with the pharmacist (she has become quite a chatty person in the pharmacy apparently – what happened to my quiet little mother?) and lo and behold, the pharmacist recommended something different.  So back she went to the doctor to get another prescription (after the pharmacist had talked with the doctor on the phone).  She gets back to the pharmacist and suddenly she is in a chat with another one of the ladies in the drugstore who tells her

            “You know, they are now making the old pills again.”

            “Really” she turns to the pharmacist “could I get those instead?”

            He says she can but she will need to get another prescription so off she goes to the doctor again.

            At this point in the story she tells me that my brother John has been waiting in the truck all this time for her and he has been watching her go back and forth between the doctor’s office and the pharmacy.   Naturally he is wondering what on earth is going on.  When she finally gets into the truck she tells him

            “I am as happy as a lark.”  I thought I was going to kill myself laughing.  Just hearing my mother get all excited because she “got a shot in the arm” and got her sleeping pills back was hilarious.  She had forgotten all her anxiety about the trip in the excitement of realizing that she was going to be able to sleep in a strange bed. 

            My mother, I’ve just got to love her!

Personal Life Journeys

Do you ever wonder why people seem to get a curve ball in their life just when things seem to be going great for them?  Is it Karma, is it a case of “what goes around comes around?”  Or is that simply the ebb and flow of life, where everyone gets a little bit of good and a little bit of bad along with a whole lot of the mediocre?  I don’t have the answer but I have observed in my own life and in those around me that we seem to get a whole mixed bag of life.

            At the time when you are going over a rough spot, you probably feel as though it is the worst thing possible that could happen to you.  When something nasty happens to me I like to remind myself of something a friend told me a few years back.  She asked me “is it going to make a difference five years down the road?  Did someone die?  If you can answer no to either of those questions, don’t worry so much about it!”  Words to live by.  Otherwise we simply end up putting way too much drama into our lives that doesn’t need to be there.

            I will admit that I am overly sensitive to bad behaviours; I have a really hard accepting it when people act out in wrong ways.  I have that INFJ personality that believes in fairness and justness and when the world doesn’t jive to my music I get a bit perturbed.  At the same time, I do recognize that this is my personality and I will tell myself “this is out of your control, let it go” but telling myself that and actually doing it can be hard.

            In case you are wondering what has gone wrong in my life lately, the answer is nothing.  I am just watching how other people around me are behaving these days due to circumstances that actually was in their control.  Not well.  Blaming others is not the answer people.  Examine your own behaviour and take ownership (sorry to use so many clichés) of your behaviour and your decisions.  Blaming others for what is wrong in your life is really not the answer.  Let’s face it, will you get anything out of that kind of blame?  No, no, no.  All you will get is bitterness and aggravation.   A person is so much better off taking a look at what really went wrong, even if you don’t want to entirely admit it was your fault, you really should look at it from that angle and learn from it.

            I am not perfect, but I do try to learn from mistakes. Even if I don’t necessarily think I made a mistake I will still listen and take a page out of that book.  Maybe I didn’t do wrong, but I can still learn.  And perhaps I did do wrong, then for sure I won’t be doing that act next time.  The best thing I can do for myself and others can do for themselves, is to LISTEN.  I had an experience yesterday where the person I was talking to clearly did not hear a word I said.  The moment it sounded as though I were blaming him for a certain thing, he tuned out and began formulating all the reasons why I was in the wrong.  What can you possible say to a person like that?  Nothing, it’s a waste of breath.  A person like that will shoot himself in the foot time and time again. 

            Seriously people, I am 58 not 12; when I say something believe I am serious and that I am not picking a fight with you, I am telling you how I feel.  Walking away in anger and then sending an erroneous email does not make you right.  It just makes you look stupid.  And I give up!

            Have a nice day!

Parcels from Denmark

From the beginning we had 2 parcels from my Farmor every year, one at Christmas time and one in late May (in time for Jeanette’s and my birthdays).  Even my parents looked forward to these packages from home.  My grandmother would put in bags of Danish licorice, magazines and comics were stuffed in corners of the other lumpier packages.  What I especially remember about the parcels was that while they were wrapped in Christmas paper they were then simply tied with ribbon.  No tape.  Perfect for snooping.

            My mother was really excellent at hiding the packages and for a long time we didn’t even know when they were arriving.  Since we were in school when the mailman came we didn’t realize that the packages had come.  But after a few years we were remembering that it was close to Christmas and we would start looking under beds, in closets and kitchen cupboards but in the early days my mother was too clever for us, she could always find a good hiding spot.  I suspect for a while she was hiding the parcels behind the furnace because we were all terrified to go behind it but she must have realized that was a dangerous place and started putting it somewhere else.

            I remember the first time we found the parcel, we were all excited but then we wondered “now what”?  We looked, handled, squeezed and shook.  We were afraid to peek through the wrappings to actually see what was in the package.  Yep, after all that looking, we were afraid to spoil the surprise!  So after all the excitement we put the parcel back and still got to wonder.  We were just happy to know there was something from our grandmother.

            Sometimes my grandmother sent my father a Danish almanac called “Hvem, Hvad, Hvor” (Who, What, Where).  It was hard bound with orange and black bands on the cover.  He would read it cover to cover and it was always on his bedside table.

            On Saturday mornings we children would visit my parents in their bedroom, all of us sitting on my mother’s bed while her head would still be under the blankets.  Dad would be sitting up in bed, having his breakfast and then smoking his cigarette.  We would tell about our week, at least it would start out that way but then my dad would tell us stories.  Sometimes they would be spooky stories from his childhood, or he would tell us some of his funny adventures under the war, or he would tell us something funny that happened at his work.  Eventually we would be shooed back out and go on with our day.  However, I recall one time when I was about 8 I stayed behind after the rest of the kids had gone out I was looking in the Hvem, Hvad, Hvor and I came across a few pictures of Hitler.  I asked my dad who he was and I will never forget what he said.

            “The most gruesome man that ever lived.”

            Those words struck me with terror and I was dazed at the idea that a demon could have his picture taken! 

Things Are Getting Better

The Europeans who came to Canada after World War II came because they wanted to give their children a better life away from the continual threat of war.  My father’s comment to his mother when she came to visit us in 1962 was “Canada is a good land but it’s a hard land”.  I think I have mentioned before that my father chose Canada because he felt that it was the safest place in the world.  He knew that Canada did not have the draft and while he only had one son at the time he had seen the devastation of war and wanted no part of it for his children.

I’ve written some of the sad parts of the story but most of the time it was really good.  For one thing my parents were able to buy a house within 2 years of arriving, something that would never have happened in Denmark.  Just like Erma Bombeck in her great book “The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank” the first house in Grimsby had some trials, including the whole septic field fiasco.  I actually Google mapped our house on Cline Road but I couldn’t tell 100% which of the 2 homes it was since they were changed a fair bit.  For one thing there was a garage which we didn’t have at the time.  Ours was a little split level of red brick and what I remember most about the outside was that there was a deep ditch separating our back yard from the vineyard on the other side.  Naturally we kids were prepared to ransack the vineyard as soon as the grapes were ready for plucking but we were deterred by the sudden explosion of shotgun!  We scrambled back over the ditch and stood there gapping, wondering where the shooter was.  We couldn’t see the sneaky guy so we decided not to attempt it again.  (It was many years later before we were told that there had been an automated system that kept the birds away!)

My parents had several good Danish friends.  On the weekends we frequently would have these friends over or we would be going to their homes.  When we lived in Hamilton my father also had some good friends in a couple of lady colleagues, Helen and Margaret.  We girls really loved them since they often would bring a treat for us.  It was Margaret’s brother who lent us his summer cottage in Fruitland while our house in Grimsby was being built.  We lived there for several months and we kids had the time of our lives.  The house was right on Lake Ontario so we would fall to sleep with the surf in our ears.  There was a piano in the dining room that Jeanette and I would rattle away on and outside there was a horse drawn sleigh.  Naturally there was no horse but we could imagine that very well and would bounce around on the sleigh yelling Giddy Yap and crack our imaginary whip over our heads.  In the bedroom there was a lady’s dressing table where Jeanette and I would sit and play movie star or Princess.

And soon we had more brothers.  Peter was born in 1959 and Erik in 1961 – today is Erik’s 50^th Birthday in fact.  Things were getting better for my parents.

Lille Søster Jill

Our little sister Jill was born on Christmas Eve 1957.  The first three children had been born at home in Denmark.  This first Canadian child was born in a hospital.  We three spent Christmas Eve with Kaj or Signe and their children while we waited for the best Christmas present ever.

All three of us little girls would get dressed in pink tulle dresses, Jill still in her baby buggy, and we would go for Sunday walks around Toronto.  Jeanette and I adored our little sister and would often play with her, trying to teach her to talk and walk.   One afternoon when Jill was about eleven months old, Jeanette and I were playing with Jill who was in her playpen.  Mom had given Jeanette and I some pears for a snack and she warned us not to give anything to Jill because we both had colds.  Well, I did sneak a bite to Jill.  Shortly afterwards Jill became very sick and the cold turned into pneumonia. 

My mother became so alarmed with this cold that she had the doctor come to see Jill but he said ‘nothing to worry about, just a cold’.  The very next morning Mom went to get Jill out of her crib only to find her blue, cold and dead.  Mom went into shock.  Dad went into shock.  They had no one to comfort them.  The hospital administrator was brutal.  He showed my parents what it would cost to bury Jill and my father said they couldn’t afford that.  Then the administrator said, “if you don’t do it we will throw her in the oven”.  Just like that.  My father said “then that is what you will have to do.”

Grief stricken and alone my parents became overly protective of the rest of their children.  They also never, ever spoke to us about Jill.  I have spoken with other friends who had also lost a little one and they experienced the same silence.  In those days people basically had to “suck it up” and just go on with their lives.  There was no such thing as grief counseling; a person simply had to be stoic about loss of life.

So what do I remember about Jill dying?  I remember my mother putting me to bed, tucking me in and seeing a tear rolling down her cheek.  I don’t remember understanding that Jill was dead, just that my mother was sad.  I was five years old, but by the time I was eight I do remember thinking back on that time and beginning to understand that I could have been the cause of her death because I had given her a bite of my pear.  That guilty fear stayed with me for many years until it finally faded away some time in my twenties.  My mother ever after had a very difficult time during the Christmas holidays although we never understood why.  I was almost 30 years old before my father told me that Jill had been born on Christmas Eve!  Then things started to fall back into place for me.

My parents’ first year in Canada was such a roller coaster of experiences, most of them quite terrible, that it is a real wonder that they did not turn around and go home.  But that is the fiber of immigrants who survive, they have a stubborn determination to succeed that has helped to grow a continent from a barren wilderness into a civilization. 

First (Official) Anniversay

As I told you yesterday since beginning a series of anecdotes about our arrival in Canada I have had such wonderful feedback from my friends that I am encouraged to continue in this vein for a while but today I simply had to recognize my first anniversary as a blogger.  Bucket List, Hodge Podge, Canada, Critters, Country Rambling are some of the labels I have used over the course of this year of blogging.  I have had a great deal of enjoyment writing whatever came into my head.  I know the experiment may have been painful sometimes for my readers (apparently I talk too much about my dieting woes) but I beg you to cut me a little slack!  Can you imagine having to wake up at 4 a.m. five days a week to prepare for work?  This has been my routine for nearly 12 years now and a year ago I made the adjustment to blog rather than spend the first 30 minutes having my coffee and toast in bed while I read.  That has been my routine for 40 years!  It’s my way of slowly waking up and getting mentally ready for my day.

 When I was 13 years old I began writing my first “book”, inspired by Louisa May Alcott’s “Eight Cousins”.  I think I may even have that first effort lying around in one of my boxes.  I always loved Composition as a subject in school and I especially loved it when we could write about something outside a set program.  I remember in Grade 8 I wrote a fanciful tale about the love relationship of an orange peel with an apple peel.  I recall laughing while I wrote it and I really didn’t care what anyone else thought about the story since I had so much fun with the composing of it.  As my friends will tell you, every once in a while the sense of mischief gets into me and I will say or do something really absurd just for the heck of it.  After a while you will get the sense of it that I am pulling your leg while I am blogging, I just can’t help myself!  The other day 2 of our Venezuelan colleagues were standing in the hallway chatting away in Spanish and I passed them with the remark “Hey guys quit speaking Norwegian.”  They cracked up (okay, you had to be there!)

The most popular blog was the finale of Dancing with the Stars where I named Jennifer Grey and Bristol Palin “this is strictly off the cuff – tension mounts as we sit through the final hour of DWTS – who will win?”  Once in a while you may have noticed that I would do a celebrity story which was really a test to see if the name dropping would bring up the viewing.  Not the case.  I think the combination of Jennifer Grey and Bristol Palin, and the mix of DWTS and The Tea party all caused the “hits”.  You can see on the side panel other popular posts include Tarzan of the Apes, Windsor Park Collegiate and Ecuador. 

I guess what I want to say today is that I am grateful that there is a free venue where I can share my writing with the public even though it is a really tiny slice of the universe.  When I get a simple `like` on Facebook I am happy, comments are even better, when I get a critical comment I am inspired to do better.  So thank you to Blogspot, thank you to my followers, thank you to my friends and family who are encouraging me.  I hope the next year will be better and that I will give you lots of cozy thoughts and lots of laughs. 

My cup runneth over!

Timetables

I have been writing my childhood memories and the dates do not seem to jive with my memory.  All I can say is “thank goodness my mother is still alive to straighten me out”!  As a graduated historian I am a stickler for dates and accuracy but some memories go way back and must be real.  How does a person reconcile all of that?

Oh yes, that is what becomes a “true-life novel”.  I first heard that expression being used for the book “Half Broke Horses” by Jeannette Walls, author of “The Glass House”.  Ms. Walls developed her grandmother’s story as a partial novel by using memories of hers and those who knew the grandmother.  The book is really wonderful and the reader doesn’t care about accuracy since the story still rings true.  A writer has to get over her peculiar quirks on always wanting to be right.  A right writer, is that an oxymoron?

            In this last year I have really found myself falling back into good writing habits.  A lot of the credit must go to my writing coach, Karen Rowe (of Front Rowe Seat), but I also reflect back on Stephen King’s book “On Writing” where he says that one is not a writer unless one is writing every day.  It really is true that the more I have been writing the more like a writer I feel.  I got a lovely compliment from my sister last night when she said that since my second Writers’ Retreat my blog has become more interesting and my writing has improved considerably.  Again, I have to thank my coach for giving me Permission to be Sanne! 

            You see, I had been hesitant about writing too many anecdotes because I thought they would bore people and to my surprise those were the bits in my writing that Karen liked the best!  And lo and behold, these are the blogs that I am getting my best reviews and comments from.  Who knew? 

            So please bear with me for a few days while I search my mother’s memory (oh to have Dumbledore’s memory wand) before beginning on some more “accurate” memories. 

            Stay tuned tomorrow . . . it is my one year anniversary in writing (consistently) on this blog!

Spaghetti, the Friendly Food

Coming from Denmark into Toronto was coming into a melting pot of the world.  Nationalities from all over the world had immigrated to Canada after the war and Toronto was often the second stop for them (most landed in Halifax of course).  Canada offered a lot of opportunity to European immigrants.  Europe, even 12 years after the end of World War II, was still a devastated continent with a lot of poverty.  There were a lot of families who immigrated to Canada as “displaced persons” and the acronym DP was used disparagingly on any person with an accent.  Canadians of British descent were particularly arrogant and unwelcoming to foreigners in the 1950’s.  However for some unknown reason we either did not meet with this type of behaviour or we were simply oblivious to it.  We had landed in a neighbourhood inhabited mostly by Italians so perhaps that is why we were not confronted with this awareness right off the bat.  Instead we were learning a lot about other cultures.  For one thing, there was a lot of garlic around, something my mother had never cooked with.  To this day my mother’s cooking spices are salt, pepper and occasionally curry.  She finally learned to make garlic toast after 20 years in Canada. 

Interestingly enough, despite living in this Italian neighbourhood my mother did not learn anything at all about spaghetti.  Perhaps 5 years later we girls began seeing commercials for Chef Boyardee spaghetti products and began to plague Mom to buy it.  We thought it looked cool to twirl food around on a fork!  (I know, crazy reason to want to try a new food, eh?)  Finally she bought some spaghetti, however she had failed to understand that there was a special type of spaghetti sauce to go with it.  Instead, knowing it had to be red, we kids put ketchup on our spaghetti.  It is the only food I ever put ketchup on as otherwise I loathed the stuff.  We ate it that way for at least 10 years before Mom finally discovered Ragu sauce!

It’s funny the things we remember.  I don’t remember ever learning English, I don’t remember feeling like a foreigner, but I remember eating my first plate of spaghetti.  I was eleven!

I have a lot of milestones in November – today is the day, 25 years ago, that I took ownership of this home.  People are constantly asking me why I don’t sell and move into the city.  I counter by asking them why would I do that when I am living in my dream home?

            When my father first suggested that I come and view this house I was resistant because he described it off the bat as “it’s a log cabin” which turned me off.  As much as I loved the book Little House in the Big Woods I did not want to live like Laura Ingalls.  We drove up to the house and I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was a bungalow style log cabin, not one of those chalet types.  We entered by the front door because we didn’t know country etiquette required one to call at the back door.  The house was owned by an elderly couple who had obviously collected a lot of material things during their lifetime and much of it seemed to be crammed into the living room.  I therefore didn’t have a very good impression of the space.  Then we walked into the kitchen and I fell in love.

            The kitchen takes up two thirds of the back half of the house, runs the back length with an open dining space, has vast counters on either side of the kitchen space and then runs along the back into an open mud room, laundry area, and second kitchen space.  Then we walked back to an isolated but huge family room with a fantastic brick fireplace, one of the show pieces of the house.  Then we went out to walk around the property and again, I fell in love.  The house was set on 5 acres of land with mature trees and windbreak shrubs to make the place pleasant, cosy and even idyllic.  Oh yes, I wanted this place.

            I next had the good fortune to get my mortgage from a credit union.  In case you didn’t know, at least at the time I got my mortgage, the credit union only did 20 year mortgages so my home was paid for much sooner than with a conventional 25 year mortgage.  Getting a tighter mortgage meant that the principal was getting paid down much quicker.  My understanding is that in the first 5 years of a 25 year mortgage almost nothing is paid off on the principal.  So if you can afford it, get a reduced mortgage!

            Being mortgage free is the most fantastic feeling in the world.  Once the mortgage was gone even though I still had to work I felt secure that I would be able to keep my home even if the worst would happen to me.  Today I will celebrate my home ownership with a specialty coffee and a toast to my Dad for bringing me here!  Thanks Dad!

November 15 Beaujolais Week

Today my aunt turns 88.  My Faster Jonna’s birthday always heralded the beginning of the Christmas season; the first of the decorations would come out as she celebrated her birthday with family and friends.  I learned how to advertise my own birthday from her!  We are each other’s biggest fans.

            Some decades ago my mother and I happened to be in Denmark in the middle of November so the happy chance led us to celebrate my aunt’s birthday at the same time as the Beaujolais Nouveau arrived.  Until this very moment I always believed Beaujolais Nouveau was the 15^th of November.  No, it is actually the third Thursday of November so this year it will be on the 17^th.

            Who doesn’t love to celebrate?  There is something exciting in the air when a party is coming on and for me, the more fanfare, the better.  This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending a Debutante celebration in the Philippine style.  When a Philippino daughter turns 18 she has a huge celebration and it is really something to behold.  We entered the room to the splendour of a Winter Masquerade Theme, the tables and chairs were all covered in white; elegant white and blue masks decorated as centerpieces on all the tables, with shiny mirrors and little pebbles strewn for effect.  There was a white backdrop on the stage, large face masks of white and blue and silver hanging decoratively with a fantastic castle display made of 3 cakes with little arches and fairy rooms to astonish the eye as the focal point.

            There was a grand march with the family entering the room, elegantly gowned and suited, wearing fancy eye masks until the debutante entered the room in a lovely tulle ballgown of shades of blue, aqua and green and carrying a really fancy, feathered eye mask on a wand.  Later in the evening Aimee, the debutante danced several dances along with her friends with as much elegance as the Dancing with the Stars celebrities.  It was very well done but this little lady deserved such a fine celebration as she is a wonderful daughter, a fine scholar and a great friend, as 18 of her peers came up to tell their story of friendship with admiration and love.  It was very touching.

            I know it’s hard to wake up every morning with a little celebration in our hearts but just recalling the party from Saturday night has lifted my spirits this morning.  I hope you have a good memory that you can call to mind to cheer you up while you are sitting in painful traffic this morning.  It beats cursing at the thoughtless ones who have caused the accidents by rushing along icy roads.           

            Slow down, smell the icicles and laugh.

            And HAPPY BIRTHDAY FASTER JONNA!

Memory Bank

Yesterday afternoon they had back-to-back Bonanza and Gunsmoke running on one of the stations.  Bonanza played on Sunday nights at 8:00 p.m. back in the day and usually we were having our baths when it started and then we were tucked into bed.  But we usually got to see the first part of the program when the boys and Pa rode up the field to the famous theme song.  Bonanza got a bit boring for me after a while because the beautiful girl that Adam, or Joe, or Hoss or even Ben was involved with always died.  Years later when Jessica Fletcher got on the bus my dad commented that if he saw her get on the bus he would get off because you knew a murder was going to happen!  But the success of these shows must indicate that people like things to be predictable and steady.

            I watched the episode yesterday, it was about Samuel Clemens writing for the newspaper in Silver City.  Interestingly enough I had just watched an episode of Rifleman the previous day which also had a story about Mark Twain. Both episodes ran in 1959 and it shows that things simply don’t change in Hollywood.  When one studio produces a comic book movie, at least 2 others will also come up with one.  With all the imaginations in the world you’d think there would be more originality in fantasyland.

            But I also noticed how the Cartwrights were quick on the draw which surprised me because I remember Ben as a peacable man.  I suppose the episodes from the 1960’s mellowed down because the 60’s heralded an era of peace and brotherly love.  I’ve noticed the programs of today seem to be having a very republican flavour to them.  Last week Harry’s Law made me want to turn off Kathy Bates forever as it had such a rant on about bleeding heart liberals that I was seriously shocked.  And last night The Good Wife was leaning heavily towards capital punishment and I thought “shame on you Alicia, you are supposed to be about justice and balance; not bring emotion into the equation”.  That’s the law.

            Back at the advent of television the producers didn’t realize the power of media to the extent that they do today.  So it behoves us to be aware as we tune in to our programs that manipulation is always there to pounce on us.  Know what your own values are so that you won’t take up that six iron when your neighbour’s dog barks in the middle of the night.  After all, we are civilized.  Right?

Doldrums

I am having a murky kind of morning, where I wake up at 6, groan, rollover and half sleep until 7:30.  Then I do the dismal (that would be weight myself), groan some more and regret the dinner I ate last night.  Okay, it was a milestone party and it’s only one day.  Schlep into the kitchen to make an appetizing breakfast of water and lemon, groan some more.  Open up the computer, groan some more.  Facebook, no I don’t want to go there.

            Yep, murky.  I am in the doldrums.  It’s the middle of November, the vista outside looks brown, brown, brown.  Am I longing for snow?  No but this browness is taking me down.  The lemon drink is taking me down.  The boringness of my life is taking me down.

            Oh the drama, the despair.  It’s the doldrums.

            Do you ever have days like this where you wonder “what is the point of my existence”?  I’m not exactly depressed, that is a whole different ballgame, but I just don’t know where to turn for my energy this morning.  If I don’t have energy I don’t have imagination either so how can I get on with my Sunday morning ritual of write, write, write?  How can I turn it up a notch, or seven in this case?  I am seriously avoiding thinking about all the “owed” phone calls which I must make before I become a grovelling, snivelling excuser of a person.  I am grateful this morning for my diminishing peripheral vision as I am somewhat able to avoid the spawning of paper that surrounds my desk top, floor bottom and shelving in between.  I would like to set up a video camera in my office to see how paper procreates during the wee hours of the night.

            How does a person entertain without food?  I was raised by the most hospitable woman on the planet and “no food” is not in the curriculum.

            Enough with the lament!  How do I solve my doldrum problem?  I think I must force myself out into the cold and take a good brisk walk and get some oxygen in my body.  Then I will make like a dog and roll in the dead leaves.