GOOD FRIDAYS

I began this morning - Good Friday 2018 - in a text conversation with my sister.  We were both in preparations for guests for the Easter weekend and were sort of comparing notes on our progress.  She confessed to being in her usual Hot Cross bun panic and wanted to know how much mashed potatoes I used when I made mine. 

She is the family expert in this field; for the life of me I can't think why she would ask me about a recipe she has been amazing her neighbours with for at least two decades, but she did.  And I had to confess that I had cheated.  I don't use the time-honoured, handed-down-through-the-generations, made-with-mashed-potatoes recipe mom used, I throw together my normal, never fail recipe and added grated orange rind, raisins and cinnamon to Easter them up a bit.  She told me that this made mine "fake buns" and the conversation ended there.  Either she got too busy with her day to keep texting, or I've been excommunicated from the family.

I had plenty to do too: I had company coming as well.

As I worked other Good Fridays stirred through my memories - at my age there are quite a few of them.  The most poignant involves another sister.  One who lived close enough that when she sent out her invitation for a Hot Cross bun feast on Good Friday afternoon we could be there to join in the food and fellowship.  She was as famous for her Easter gatherings as the sister in Alberta is for hers, and I miss her dearly on a lot of days, but absolutely on Good Friday.

The tradition of inviting the neighbourhood for fresh Hot Cross buns probably goes back further in the family, but my earliest memories are of Mom snipping crosses into the buns and then filling those marks with icing when they were cooked and cooled.  Mom loved being a hostess and shone in that role - genetics that Fate kind of skimped on for me.  I can, and have, fed housefuls of people but I always feel a bit overwhelmed by it.  Mom always looked like she revelled in it - a profile in courage and hard work in my books.

But all my Good Friday memories weren't about buns.  It was a visit on a Good Friday 46 years ago that was the starting point of my first marriage.  Of course we didn't know the future that afternoon, but for some reason individual memories of that day stand out, crystalized in time.  It was a good Good Friday.

Another one that came to mind wasn't so great.  It was the Easter after my parents' marriage broke up - hard times for us all, especially Dad.  He and my three youngest siblings had come to spend Easter with us and I had served salmon loaf for supper when they arrived (why do I remember that?).  It was a sad, long weekend with all of us not knowing what to say.

A Good Friday many years later also stars my Dad.  He and his new wife were visiting, the day was very warm for early spring.  I was wearing an old T-shirt, had rolled up the bottom of my pant legs and was barefoot as I mopped the kitchen floor; I have always wondered what it was about me that day -  my body language?  life attitude? actual physical appearance?  that moved him to put his arm around my shoulder and say "You look so much like your mother!"  There was no doubt to me that I was being given a wonderful compliment.  He never stopped loving her. 

I remembered the family gatherings too, one blending into another - especially in our early married years when the young couples and their little ones would flock home to bask in the togetherness of grown-up siblings and new cousin connections.  Happy times playing cards at Grandma's kitchen table between her noon feast and her supper spread.  Life was so simple, so sweet, so innocent.

Somehow I find that I'm the Grandma now.  I try to live up to the role; I've stocked up on chocolate, freshened up the guest beds, and planned several meals days in advance so I can visit too.  There is also a chance I have lost standing in my family because I made a batch of  Hot Cross buns which, apparently, are fake. 

But they sure are good.

                                     SPRING CLEANING

As if my raging case of spring fever wasn't bad enough, now my husband has gone and bought me a wood chipper!

I realize that this statement fails to make any sense to many people, but for those of you with gardening and landscaping in their blood - well, you guys understand.  To the majority of the population the words 'wood chipper' only pop up in news reports of murderers trying to dispose of bodies, but to those of us whose idea of fun it to go 'clean out the shelterbelt' it means ... well, I guess it means a way to get rid of the evidence of our crimes as well. 

Every year I get carried away with my dead tree removal, ending the day with huge piles of branches that need to be hauled away - by a man and a truck or a tractor.  I've pointed out many times that a wood chipper would make his life easier too.  And finally years of kind, patient, loving reminders about this have paid off; he came home from an auction sale with what I will graciously accept as my Mother's day present for 2018.

Unfortunately it only makes my urge to get outside even worse.  Now I just can't wait to get out there and start chopping!  As if I haven't been yearning for warm enough days to go walking with the dog.  As if I haven't bought a whole bunch of seeds and a couple of starter trays so I can give things like watermelons and giant pumpkins a jump start into summer.  The packages say I need to wait until 4 to 6 weeks before the last frost - it feels like an eternity.

I long to wander around the yard hunting for signs of life - green blades of grass, swelling buds on the trees, the crocuses and tulips I planted last September, little, pink peony shoots poking out of last year's debris, or those incredibly brave pansies that seem to pop out of snowbanks already in bloom.  I want to hang clothes on the line, capturing the smell of heaven so I can bring it inside.  I want to burn off last year's asparagus foliage to clear the ground for this year's sprouts.  I'll even be happy to see the first flush of stinkweed out on my veggie garden because it's proof that the ground is warming enough to grow stuff.

Heck I'll just be happy to undecorate the outdoor Christmas tree and treasure hunt all the hidden dog bones so my lawnmower doesn't have to. 

Meanwhile I day dream. 

Our yard is bordered by a very old shelterbelt on two sides.  The poor old maples are mostly dead, the cottonwoods have all fallen over, and carraganna are like an invading army.  In amongst this mess are second generation maples, some volunteer poplars, scrub oaks of unknown origin, chokecherry bushes, and the surprise crab apple tree I discovered last spring.  Is it too much to dream that I can end this summer with a shelterbelt of only healthy, wanted trees? 

The thing that has held me back all the other years I wanted to tackle this job has not been the chopping down of the deadwood, but getting rid of it afterward.  Husband motivation - no matter how kindly, patiently, and lovingly I do it - doesn't always get the action that I'm aiming for.  If I can chop and chip all by myself, the sky's the limit.

And, spring fever being as crazy-making as it is, my brain has tumbled forward to all the other things on my wish list: remove the fence posts and bury the electric fence wire so I can mow right across the yard, trench a water line across to the orchard we planted so I can water from the dugout with ease, and rent a man lift or scaffolding so we can paint trim and install facia on the house. 

I'm sure it isn't too much to ask of a man who loves me so much he bought me a wood chipper.  I'll break it to him gently.  If I should disappear - remember, he has a wood chipper.

                                                   NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF

This year - 2018 - has started off very differently than usual.  We are normally the stay-at-home kind of people but out of the ten weeks since New Years Day this year, we have only been home for three of them. 

This would not be outside the box for a lot of our friends and neighbours; Arizona, Texas, and Florida tempt them all south to avoid Old Man Winter here in Canada.  They hide out down there for as long as their health insurance and income tax laws will let them, but that's not our style.  It's not like we don't go find some sunshine for a break from the ice and snow, but for us that's a stay at an all inclusive resort on a beach somewhere - ten days, tops.

I think it boils down to us not being sitting-in-the-sun kind of people.  We can do it for a little while but it just doesn't come naturally.  We need something to do.

So, even though we've been gone 70% of the year so far and two thirds of that was spent in a tropical country and close to endless beaches, it wasn't the destination, it was the company once we got there.  Even the two weeks we spent in Alberta were all to do with the people, not the place.  Our time away has been all about family; all about grandchildren.

While it would be nice to see them more often, I'm not going to pretend that having four of the little darlings living in Australia is all hardship.  We're not fans of the flights there and back, and to make the cost and jetlag worth it the trip requires at least five weeks, but once you get past these things it's all good.

This time we were there on their Christmas/summer holidays so we missed all the sports they are usually involved in, but still the house was busy with lots of friends coming and going, a part time job for the eldest, and trips to the beach to work on their surfing skills.  To keep Grandpa from going crazy there was a home reno project to work on, and we spent a week on an exploration/camping trip.  The day before we headed home the kids lined up for a back-to-school picture: the eldest was beginning her high school years, the twins were headed for their first days at junior high in a new school, and while the little brother wasn't changing schools, that morning was the first time in his life he had ever had to go alone.

Theirs is a busy household with siblings either getting along fine, or not.  You know: normal.  They can be strumming guitars, beating bongo drums and singing one minute (they are quite good at it), but it's not all kum-ba-ya - teenage angst and the corresponding hormones being what they are.  It was great to get to know them better - their strengths and weaknesses, their interests and ambitions.  Until you are there in person you don't realize what a one dimensional picture FaceTime gives you.  My mission was to take as many candid shots of them as possible to replace the years-old photos of them I have hanging on my wall.  These next portraits are going to show who they really are.

We had just enough time to recover from the jetlag from Down Under and then we were off to babysit a couple little guys in Alberta.  Their parents were off to soak up some Mexican sun so Grandma and Grandpa were there to hold down the fort for a week.  Whereas the teenagers' energy might be likened to the movement of a soccer ball - powerful and strategic - these little guys are more like ping pong balls - bouncing off the walls, the noise they make constant, but not really unpleasant.  Luckily their bedtime was an early one - Grandma's and Grandpa's was never far behind.

They are full of wisdom too.  Conversations with them are always enlightening even though they tend to be about dinosaurs and transformers ... and dinosaurs that transform.  It keeps a person on their toes.

During dinner on the night their parents were flying home there were two conversations going on at the table.  The little boys were listing things to be afraid of ... monsters and dinosaurs.  And the adults' stream of thought that had begun with the boys' parents being on an airplane had somehow progressed to who were the appointed guardians for these guys, and all their cousins. 

I can't imagine why this concern had surfaced ...

Meanwhile the little people's danger list went on ... lions, sharks, bears (apparently only the black ones because they always hungry), and snakes.

I gave Grandpa a run down of the arrangements for each family as best as I could remember them.  There are plans made but I know we are "back up" even when we're not 'plan A'.  Together we sat and pondered this midst the regular dinner din.

Just then, out of the blue, the youngest turned to me and asked "And what are you afraid of Grandma?"

There was no way I was going to tell him the first thing popped into my head so I lied and said Grandmas weren't scared of anything.

And then offered up a prayer that all my children lived to a ripe old age.