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!