DECORATING THE TREE

I spent the morning decorating our Christmas tree.  It’s been a struggle to arrange a suitable time for this job, it’s not like you can slap a tree up in an hour or even two.  Well, at least I can’t.  I need time.  I need ambience.  I need quiet.  I need Christmas music in the background.  It also normally requires a glass or two of wine but it was Saturday morning so that didn’t quite fit.

Mostly, what I need is the house to myself to putter at my own pace.  All day if possible, with no interruptions to prepare meals, no one watching some noisy, guns-a-blazing, car chase, man movie, and no comments from the peanut gallery on how I’m doing it wrong.  This was supposed to happen yesterday but Mother Nature stepped in and did her own decorating for Christmas so he stayed home.

My most favorite part of having a Christmas tree is getting up early and sipping my morning coffee, basking in the multi-colored twinkling lights on the tree.  It’s a quiet, peaceful, thoughtful time that I treasure and as the days were ticking by without a tree to admire in the dark I was beginning to feel cheated.  Even though my window of opportunity today was the few hours it was going to take the movie watcher/peanut gallery critic to clean out the yard and driveway, I knew I had to take it.

The reason I need more than a few hours is because it is so much more than the physical putting on of lights and ornaments.  It is more of a mystical experience, a mix of memories, an annual revisiting of all that has gone before.  Shoot-em-up movies really spoil the mood.

Of course, this tradition is relatively new in my life.  Christmas tree decorating has been through many renditions in my many years. 

My first recollection of decorating the tree involves Mom spending an evening trying to get the bubble lights (remember them?) all working, and on the tree, before we kids were allowed to do our part of ornaments and tinsel.  Think: exasperated adult with probably fifteen other things on the go being yammered at by a pack of over-stimulated, Santa-is-coming-to-town excited kids and you will know the kind of Peace-On-Earth evening of which I speak. 

As unpeaceful this custom is, though, I went on to do the exact same thing when my kids were little.  Is it some kind of rite of passage?  Some test of our character?  Do we need this dose of unreasonable expectations and near insanity to truly appreciate the beauty of singing Silent Night?  I know not the answer to this question, but I have just a few ornaments that remind me of this time and I treasure them and the memories they evoke as I place them on my modern, pre-lit, artificial tree.

Life goes on though, and Christmas has evolved.  There were the years when the kids were so little they didn’t help but were transfixed by the pretty lights and drawn to the packages beneath.  There were a few incredibly sad Christmases where we only made it through under the steam of other people’s engines.  I remember those too.

The busy years.  The whole-house-is-full years.  The empty nest years.  And now, the aren’t-grandkids-the-best years.  My containers of different decorations represent all of these times and tie me to loved ones who are no longer here.  I treat them like talismans – holding them connects me to a different time and place.  In this way I welcome them into my house for Christmas.  It’s a little thing, but it feels good.

A few weeks ago my grand daughter sat me down to teach me everything she has learned so far in Grade One.  My assignment was to repeat the letters of the alphabet after her but I mis-behaved and sang the A-B-C song instead.  After being reprimanded I was told to begin again.  Being a bad Grandma I sang it a second time.  When I was done she stood there, hands on her hips, and said “I am going to have to call your mother!”  I guess that’s the ultimate threat in her world but the more I think about it, the more I wish she would have.  It would be great to talk to Mom again even if it meant getting an “E” on my report card. 

 

 

GIFTING

I have before me the beginnings of what I will try to accomplish in this next month … my all important “To Do” list.  I’ve written it down, managed to stroke two of the items off as done, and added three more.  So far there is no stress building.  I’m fine.  After all, it’s still November.  Just barely.

Although I’ve broken the categories down to individual tasks there are only three main jobs on the list: baking, decorating, and gifts.  Baking will take place closer to the big day so I only have to do it once.  Decorating is a day I love – a quiet afternoon, a glass of wine, and just me, Christmas music, and my memories.  #3, the gotta-get-the-gifts category is not so magical.  There is too much pressure – to find the right thing for everyone, to shop local, to keep within a budget, to keep it even.  Some years it’s not too bad and others it’s torture.  It is easily my least favourite part of the holidays.

There is magic in giving, though.  Serendipity stepped in a few weeks ago and treated me to the most wonderful experience.  I’m still basking in its warmth.

A few months ago I happened to be at the right place at the right time – the dog wanted out at the exact moment when the sunrise was spectacular.  I took a picture and much to my surprise it actually showed the light, the mist, the silhouette of the tree and rocks in my garden, even the sunflower petals glowed golden in the light.  I posted it on Facebook and got a lot of “ooos” and “ahhhs”.

Fast forward to when I was on my trip with a group of people from Ontario.  Inevitably I would be asked where I was from and when I said Saskatchewan you could see the pity fill their eyes.  Little do they know about the Land of the Living Skies.  Their pity was (mostly) feigned but one of them – the gal at whose invitation I was on the trip – knew better.  She has been to our prairie place, sat on our deck, and relaxed in Saskatchewan ambience.  Immediately she would speak up with “Show them the picture, Jocelyn!”  It truly is a beautiful picture of a beautiful place and I think she loves it even more than I do.

Another bit of fast forward and I am at home again scrolling through my phone for gift inspiration when an ad pops up for taking digital photos and putting them on canvas.  In a heartbeat I knew what I needed to do. 

This lady isn’t on my Christmas gift list, but that didn’t matter – this isn’t a Christmas gift.  It’s a ‘just because it’s the perfect thing’ gift.  The Internet made it easy, it wasn’t expensive, and I knew she would love it; bing, bang, boom and it was done.  I went to bed that night light-hearted in anticipation of her happiness and smiled every time I thought of it for the next eight days until I got a text from her asking if I knew anything about a mystery parcel she had just received.  This is what they are talking about when they say “It is better to give than receive.”  She is happy with her gift and I am delighted that I hit that one out of the park.  I neither want or need anything in return.

I wish I could manage the same magic with all of the actual expected gifts on my list.  I wish there was the perfect thing for everyone, but that is unreasonable and impractical.  And, even if it were possible, the word ‘perfect’ would lose its power if it became a daily occurrence.  I will just do my best to avoid the over-commercialism of the season and hope my butter tarts will make up for any short fall.

Besides, there are other ways to get that happy buzz from giving.  There is the Salvation Army, women’s shelters, aid for Ukraine, sponsoring kids through World Vision, helping the damaged and dispossessed the world over.  Or, you can look closer to home – the neighbour who lost his job, another whose house burned down, someone dealing with debilitating health problems, time or money donations to the food bank.  The opportunities to be Santa’s helper are endless.

My wish for everyone this holiday season is that you come away from which ever gift giving you choose feeling as joyful as I did while denying I knew anything at all about that random picture showing up on a doorstep in Ontario.

Now, back to my list … I just thought of a couple more things that need to be on it.

 

UNWANTED RENEWAL

We seem to be going through a period of renewal around here.  It isn’t planned.  It is not welcome.  And it doesn’t appear to be letting up either.  The only people happy about it are the folks at the appliance store.

It started off innocently enough.  I think the first thing to quit was the kitchen clock.  In an age of everything digital we still have a big, old wall clock – numbers from 1 to 12 and the full complement of hour, minute, and second hands.  I know this is old fashioned, but it’s also comforting to know what time it is even when the power goes out.  Sometime earlier this year it started slacking on the job.  Some days it kept time, some days it couldn’t be bothered.  Changing its battery had no effect.  With nothing to lose I also took it apart and cleaned it as good as I could.  No dice: it was declared dead.

Not to worry: there was still the one in the office.  I could just switch it out.  But no, apparently they belonged to the same union and were both lobbying for early retirement.  I told them I could get replacement workers.  They said go ahead and try.

While contemplating my options I went to pour myself a cup of coffee.  From a pot that wasn’t that old and had worked just fine at breakfast time.  Nope.  Dead too. 

This was days before I was abandoning my farmer for two weeks to lolly-gag around the Adriatic Sea on a yacht.  It didn’t matter if this was another appliance job action, or not.  Coffee is not an optional part of his diet (or mine either, but I was pretty sure the yacht would have coffee).  Coffee is actual sustenance.  It is required to fire brain cells into action.  I went to town immediately and bought a new coffee maker.

And then I came home and washed one last load of laundry as I packed my suitcase only to discover a small puddle on the laundry room floor when it was time to move the clothes to the dryer. 

“No problem” I told myself.  “It’s only a small puddle.”  It’s not like Mr. Farmer was likely to do a whole bunch of laundry while I was away.  I would just deal with it when I got back.  That logic lasted an hour or two until I had to go to the basement for something for supper.  Whereas there had been a mere puddle upstairs, there was a lake in the room below.  How the water that had cascaded through the dryer vent hole and the drain tube hole hadn’t managed to short out the deep freezes and the water system pumps I don’t know, but I’m grateful.  Obviously, this very unwelcome development could have been even worse.

It was a wet harvest day so we took some togetherness time and dismantled the washing machine, found a toonie-sized hole in the pump, and pronounced that machine dead too.  He left for swathing, I did a quick tour of Circle M’s website and ordered a new one for delivery the week I would get back.  As I drove away I wondered if that was the end of things falling apart.  What would I come home to?

I don’t know if the toilet counts.

It had been giving us trouble for maybe six months or so, but it was while I was gone that it was out-with-the-old-and-in-with-new.  I came home to empty toilet packaging and a derelict washing machine on a trolley out on my deck.  Everyone knows that there is an acknowledged period of mourning for all redneck furniture and appliances, where said items ‘lie in state’ on a deck or front lawn until they are finally taken away.  I was glad to see that this process had already begun without me.

But, this disease of disfunction isn’t done with us yet.  Now my cooktop isn’t working.  It’s not the end of the world – it’s only the center ring of the large element, but wouldn’t you know it?  It’s my favorite element!  I use that one every single meal I cook.  The outer ring still works but the heat is not distributed evenly.  My favorite frying pan doesn’t fit on the smaller elements.  My husband doesn’t think it’s a big deal, but he’s wrong about that.

I’m contemplating what my next move it and meanwhile I finally ordered a couple new clocks.  At least I will be able to see what time supper won’t be ready at.

 

THE OLDER MAN MYSTIQUE

I’ve been in on a few really good conversations lately.

You know the kind: good friends revealing memories and observations, telling their stories, sharing with warmth and laughter the wisdom gained over the years.  Time well spent.

Curiously these conversations weren’t inspired by happy circumstances, but by a couple of recent funeral announcements.  You never know where good conversations are going to come from.

You see, my friends and I are of an age where members of our generation are showing up in funeral announcements on a more regular basis.  We’re not old – well, not that old – but we’re not the robust, invincible, unscarred people of our youth either, and both of these obituaries belonged to guys we had gone to school with.  It got us to reminiscing about those long ago and faraway days when we walked the same hallways our children (and even grandchildren) have walked in this 21^st Century.

How this is even possible is another conversation for another day.

Both of the deceased had spent their entire adult lives elsewhere making our only memories of them 50 years old. The magic of speaking their names conjured up stories of those times, the friendships we were a part of, school experiences we shared with them, and expanded on to include others we hadn’t thought about in decades. These guys had the luxury of never aging in our experience.  Their hairlines had never receded.  They had not developed middle-aged bellies.  Their skin was firm, their smiles dazzling, their voices thrilling.  They were still the ‘hunks’ they had been in the early ‘70s.

Which, of course, lead the conversation in another direction … what is it that puts a guy in the category of ‘hunk’ anyway?

Thankfully as we had matured and actually went looking for life mates our criteria for desirable traits had also evolved, but back then – in junior high – it was all about being an athlete, being cute, and most importantly … being at least one grade higher in school.  We agreed that a guy in your own class could overcome this age standard but he had to be a super athlete and super cute to pull that off.  From what little I observe of adolescent life these days nothing has changed.  We didn’t make this up in 1972, it seems to be hard-wired into the psyche of teen-aged girls. 

Teen-aged boys are oblivious.  This doesn’t seem to have changed either.

Proof of this was in one of my friend’s stories.  She had recently been talking to a guy who she and several of her class mates had thought was pretty special back in the day.  She had even mentioned this fun fact to him during their conversation to which he had told her she must have the wrong guy.  That no girl from school had ever thought of him that way.  That she must be thinking of his brother.  Even this far into life he didn’t understand the concept of the Older Man Mystique.

My friend and I are five years apart; she is the younger one.  The guy in question was my age, we started school together and knew very well by junior high that there was nothing outstanding about anyone in our class.  No mystery.  No undisclosed talents.  No surprises. 

And yet he had my friend and her classmates intrigued, although in 2023 she can’t remember any specific reason why.  Too soon old, too late smart, he was oblivious to his own perceived charm at the time. He was correct about his brother though; that guy was hot … although in 2023 I, as well, can’t exactly remember why.

Maybe it was because he had a driver’s license.

 

BACK IN MY GROOVE

Remember a month ago when I was all about my newest (and best ever) excuse for procrastination?  Remember how I declared that all jobs around here would have to wait “until I got back from Europe”?  That statement was such a lovely mixture of glorious anticipation-of-new-experiences and a healthy dose of suspension-of-household-drudgery.  A trip like that has to be the best reason to avoid work I’ve ever come up with, but I have to warn you – it was only temporary.  I came home and the work was still there.

Life picked right up where I left off.  In the intervening two weeks since touchdown on Canadian soil I have survived three days of jet lag augmented with a head cold, partaken of two different Thanksgiving suppers, anxiously awaited the arrival of my brand-new washing machine and then did three weeks of laundry, dug and stored my potatoes and carrots, and cleaned up my flower beds for the winter.

During my absence the newest version of Covid had made its debut so I took advantage of the ‘Flu and Covid clinic and spent two more days feeling like Superman does when someone slips a dose of Kryptonite into his back pocket. 

And the very first day that I had the energy and some warmth and sunshine I tackled window cleaning.  The song ‘The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades’ blasts through my virtual replay each time I walk into the house.  It’s really cool for us humans that we can actually see out again too.  It’s not so great for birds who are having a hard time adapting to see-through windows and keep flying into them at Mach 3.  Maybe my next excuse for not cleaning windows will be a Save the Birds defense.  I’m always looking for new material.

Throughout all these chores I’ve been spending time thinking about my European experience, showing people the pictures, talking about what we did, the things we learned, the people I met.

Basically, what an adventure like this does is expand one’s understanding of the world.  Listening to our local guides tell the stories of their history with pride and humor offers insight into culture, architecture, and outlook.  When they go on to answer questions about modern day life, I automatically compare what they accept as normal against what I, a middle class Canadian, considers normal in my world.  I don’t do it in a judgemental way, but more to put myself in their shoes and try to see the world through their eyes.  Their entire economy is structured on tourism.  The vast majority of jobs are to serve travellers from other lands.  I can’t see that this wouldn’t get old by the end of the season. 

I am also struck with how diverse, and yet the same, people are.  How different, and yet the same, our days are.  All of us are wrapped up in our own daily tasks, caring for our families, and paying our bills – these are the same the world over.  But climate, history, and global positioning dictate things like diet, culture, and wealth – these are the things that give us contrast.  Since I’ve returned from this holiday I’ve been spending a moment or two sipping my morning coffee and imagining all the different ways this treat is enjoyed as the sun comes up around the globe.  It makes me smile to remember the lovely meals we enjoyed in outdoor cafes along promenades overlooking Mediterranean harbours; I may never get to do that again, but knowing that such a marvelous thing happens every day is wonderful.

Another happy take-away from this trip was how easy and worry free it was.  The trick is to book with a travel group who will take care of all the details for you.  Actually, if you get a good one (and we did) the whole trip was like having the babysitter of your dreams.  Whether you trip in the airport and possibly break your kneecap, or your brand-new suitcase cracks open like an egg on day 2 of 12, things are magically taken care of.  My new motto is “Never leave home without an Agnes!”

The other benefit of travelling with a group is the group experience.  It’s unlikely our paths will cross again but for almost two weeks we shared experiences, conversations, backgrounds … and the odd glass of wine … with lots of laughter.  There was John and Big John, Mike and Janet, Susan and Marsha who looked like a Susan, Anne, Nancy, Astrid, Maryanne, Deb and Dianne, Dan and Dee, and of course Where’s Doug, plus all the others who I can come up with a face but not a name for right now.  Special mention to Linda – it was her invitation that opened this door for me.

As much as I loved the time away though, it is true … there is no place like home even if it means three weeks of laundry and washing windows.  I’m all caught up and it just feels good to bask in the sunshine and wish my husband would believe me when I tell him I’ve completely forgotten how to cook.

SUNSHINE AND HISTORY

I’ll set the scene a little here: I’m sitting under a sun canopy on the top deck of a yacht under sail to yet another of the many islands in the Adriatic Sea.  The tour excursion guide has told us repeatedly how many islands there are but my poor aging brain only has so much storage capacity so I’m letting some of the details slip.  We are a group of 34and I haven’t even got half the names straight yet, let alone who the married couples are.  So far I haven’t missed the boat or been late for dinner so I’ve the important things covered.

Our first two days in Croatia were rainy but we are back to hot and sunny now.  Regardless, we went on the walking tours to learn about the history of the place.  The details of names and dates are lost on me but the gist of it is that this region has been taken over/conquered/annexed multiple times over the last 2000 years and each period shows a different type of architecture, and depending on how much was destroyed when the next batch took over, there can be three different styles of buildings on the same street.  (And by ‘street’ I mean tiny cobblestoned passages between buildings.). The way my brain picks up information I tend to store bits of trivia, hence I know now that if you see the symbol of lions with wings it means that the Venetians have been there.  I’m certain that will come up in conversation some day ….

The first couple of days was all land tours.  We have traveled by bus to different places.  We have hiked up and down canyons along a little chain of uniquely blue lakes and countless waterfalls, and we’ve seen several places that were used as sets for Game of Thrones.  The main industry here is tourism but they also grow olives and grapes for wine.  I think today will be our third oil and wine tasting session.  If I keep this up I should be pretty good at it by the time I get home.

Everyone has their own point of context though.  The young people come to destinations like this to party.  The older ones come for warmth and to see the world.  While I am in that bracket, I am also a farmer.  As the bus, and now the boat, travel past the countryside a little voice inside my head keeps asking “why on earth would anyone want to conquer this land?”  There is nothing here but rock.  Oh okay, there’s that wine and olive oil thing, but really? There has got to be easier places to grow them.

Regardless, they came and they conquered.

Repeatedly.

This morning as the party crowd and the adventurous swim off the back of the yacht I’m sitting on the upper deck and pondering the skyline.  When I travel west on #1 between Swift Current and Medicine Hat I am always struck that the land is so open and vast and vacant.  What went through the minds of the first European explorers and settlers when confronted with such endlessness?  Weren’t they afraid of the unknown?

And now I gaze out over the Adriatic Sea from my perch on the top deck of a modern yacht and try to put myself in the shoes of the ancient mariners in their tiny wooden boats.  How fearless they must have been. How did they know where to go?  How did they stay safe from storms and dangerous shores? 

Maybe they didn’t conquer for any other reason than they had found solid ground and weren’t going to give it up again.

 

AS SOON AS I GET BACK FROM EUROPE

The windows need washing.  They are all dirty but the bathroom window is atrocious – robins built a nest just above it and left a full bird family’s excrement over the summer.  Numerous species of flies have tried to match this gross calling card on other windows too.  As disgusting as they all are though, I’m not going to wash them yet. I will do the job when I get back from Europe.

Isn’t that a cool thing to say when you announce your plans to procrastinate?  Just out and say “I’ll do it as soon as I get back from Europe!”

Firstly, it sounds so blasé and worldly, all at the same time.  It’s out-of-the-ordinary and has a lovely fairy-tale ring to it. 

I know; I live a boring life and am easily charmed.

Secondly, I am a world class procrastinator.  If procrastination were an Olympic sport, I would have a room full of gold medals.  Mind you, they would all still be in boxes because I would never get around to displaying them - that’s just how good I am. 

What greater way to say “That’ll never get done” than to put it off “till I get back from Europe”?

The thing is I am also a truth teller.  As bizarre as it sounds, I am about to go to Europe, and not a word of a lie here, I do not intend to wash my windows until I get back.  I only have four days left before departure.  I don’t have time for windows right now.

What I do have in front of me is a list of more immediate concerns … like my hair and nails.  Obviously, I am a procrastinator with a vanity problem.

On a more serious note, I plan to prepare two weeks worth of meals to keep my husband from starvation while I am gone.  It’s not that he can’t cook for himself but at this time of the year he works long hours.  Microwaving a prepared meal is way easier than starting from scratch.  It also keeps the man-cooking mess to a minimum.  I’m all for that; I already have all those windows to do when I get home, remember?

The other biggy on my ‘To Do’ list is packing.  I’ve been kind of working on that all summer, trying to picture what a person wears while touring medieval churches and wandering down cobblestone streets.  Do I have the right clothing for sipping coffee at a quaint little sidewalk café? The itinerary mentions a day at a national park – I will need good walking shoes. There will be beaches to explore and we are warned to bring water shoes.  Part of the trip is sailing between islands on the Adriatic Sea with our final evening a fancy Captain’s Dinner – I better bring something nice for that.  Or, maybe I can buy something ‘European exotic’ instead?  Now there’s a thought.

So far all I have is an open suitcase on the guest bed with my passport, a European power converter plug, and an envelope of Croatian Euros in it, plus a whole bunch of clothing laid across the bed in my ‘possibility pile’.  I will get there.  I do still have four days.

I seem to have come to a transition in the last day or two.  Up until last night, whenever I woke at 4:00 am to ponder middle-of-the-night problems it was the regular stuff that wouldn’t let me go back to sleep.  Last night I got to thinking about the details of this trip.  The flights I would be on, the time zones I would be in, the people I would be meeting.  This has been in the works since Easter but now it’s getting real.  I’m about to explore a foreign land, soak up history, try local cuisine, travel on a yacht, plus a hundred other adventures with a bunch of other people who are interested in, and looking forward to, the same things.  It just doesn’t get any better than that.

I’ve got to clean up my garden and defrost the deep freezes too.  I’ll do that as soon as I get back from Europe.

I just like saying it.

 

TIME IN A BOTTLE

One of my most very favourite songs is Jim Croce’s Time in a Bottle:

    If I could save time in a bottle The first thing that I’d like to do

    Is to save every day ‘til eternity passes away Just to spend them with you.

Whether these words evoke memories of people who are living or gone, the sentiment is the same.  The moments we shared with them are in the past, out of reach, water that has travelled on in the river of life.  It will never pass this way again.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to uncork a bottle, take a deep breath of memory, and find yourself holding your two-year-old’s hand, or paying closer attention to your grandmother’s stories, or standing still while your mother does a fitting for a dress she is sewing for you, or sharing laughter over an inside joke with your husband knowing you are the only two on the planet who know what is so funny.

    If I could make days last forever If words could make wishes come true

    I’d save every day like a treasure, and then Again, I would spend them with you.

We’ve all been there.  The longing to spend just a little longer with someone or something we love.  The wanting to linger in a moment – the innocence and trust of childhood friendships, the delicious rush of falling in love, the breath-taking mixture of naiveté and over confidence when we stepped out into the world to make our own way, the mind-bending awe of holding our newborn children in our arms.  All of these things are precious beyond words; how lovely it would be to travel in time to experience them once more.

This past week, as summer finally let go her fierce strangle-hold of unrelenting heat and smoke from distant fires, I have felt the year slip quietly in to autumn mode.  The sun is kinder on my skin.  The garden is giving up its bounty.  The leaves are turning color.  The air is tinged with the scent of completeness and satisfaction.  Crickets sing us to sleep at night.

This is, by far, my favorite time of the year.  If I had a bottle to save time in it would be decorated in fall colors and smell like ripe apples.  These are the days where time already seems to be suspended, breathless, hushed.

Of course, there is work to do.  The point of sowing a crop is to reap it.  Whether it is cucumbers or canola, potatoes or wheat, there are long hours of harvest and storage ahead.  There will be meals on the run, long days and short nights, aching backs and skinned knuckles, but along with these things are also the feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment.  Of doing worthwhile work in a world that needs the foods that you grow.

    If I had a box made for wishes And dreams that had never come true

    The box would be empty Except for the memory of how they were answered by you.

If I had a box made for wishes, and dreams that had never come true, I guess my box would be empty too. 

To be living in this place, and in this time, is exquisite.  Our lives are own personal bottles.  Savor them.

 

ARRRGGGH!

It all started with a missed phone call.  There are not too many times that I don’t have my phone with me but occasionally I head out to the garden without it.  No problem, that’s what voicemail is for.  That is, if you can access your voicemail.  That’s always handy.

Like I said, this doesn’t happen very often so I don’t have to retrieve voicemail very often either.  When I do though, it is with the same access pin number that I have used from the beginning of voicemail time.  A simple, easily remembered 4-digit code that has never changed.  This time, though, the recording said I got it wrong … all three times I tried it.  They only give you three tries and then they make you take a time out.  I muttered some colorful words and went on with my life.

You can’t ignore voicemail though.  Every so often, at random times of the day, your phone goes spastic with very annoying startling sounds to remind you to check your messages.  So I tried again … with my personal pass code, my three-strikes-and-you’re-out code, only to be told I had failed once more.  I have no idea what forces were at play in the universe to alter my code; was it my phone? was it some glitch at Sasktel’s end? had I been hacked by aliens? No matter what the reason, I was unable to get my message. 

Did you know that after you have tried and failed twelve times you are then blocked from your own account?  That the only way to rectify the situation is to call Sasktel?  This isn’t annoying at all.  I decided that the portion of my life that I would spend on hold wasn’t worth whatever the message was.  Who needs voicemail anyway?  Who cared whether I got my messages or not?  Not me, that was for sure.

But my phone did.  It cared.  And at random times of the day it would go into it’s spastic little alarm sounds and I would shut it down and say some more bad words.  This went on for maybe a week before I finally gave in and dialed up Sasktel tech support.  We went through the identification process and the which-number-are-you-calling-about part before I got to talk to a real live human being who immediately informed me that I was not allowed to change the pass code on my own account because I was not the owner of the account.  I would need my husband’s permission to access my voicemail.  This didn’t upset me at all.  The nice gentleman at Sasktel detected this.

As it happened my husband was out on a tractor and wouldn’t be able to help us fix the problem so the fellow on the phone said he would send me a link to go in and fix it online.  I don’t know if he actually thought that it would work or not, I’m pretty sure he just wanted to get off the phone while I was still managing to control more bad words.  I thanked him and said goodbye.  I used the link he sent me, followed the steps they set out, but when it got to the part to actually change the pass code I had to tell them which phone number I wished to change and I was shut down again.  I was only the co-owner of the account, I still needed permission.  I wonder where my blood pressure was at after that one, I should have checked.

Another day or two passed.  In order for this to be remedied I had to remember to call during business hours when the all-powerful owner of the account was available to give his blessing.  Meanwhile I tried to go in on my phone and shut off the voicemail alarm, but if there is a way to do this I couldn’t find it.  I contemplated calling Sasktel to cancel even having voicemail but was afraid that if they would let me do that (without permission) with my luck the offending voicemail (and alarms) would remain on my phone to haunt me forever.  Time went on, my muttering bad words escalated.

Finally I could take it no more.  One of those #*%@#! alarms went off at 12:30 am and woke me up to toss and turn until 4:30ish, working myself into a state of fury at whomever it was that made up this stupid rule. 

You have to understand: The only thing Glen has to do with this account is he uses his phone.  I do – and always have – done every single other thing.  I pay the bills, I am the only user of email, I set up the mySASK portal, and I have made every single trouble shooting call over 40 some years.  About 3:15 am it even dawned on me that in all reality the account was mine.  When we got married and moved to the farm, I had transferred it to his name because back in the olden days there was one phone per household and it was registered under the head of the household’s name.  Who could have foreseen in 1983 where telecommunications would be by now?  Now every single person in a house has at least one phone and privacy laws have gone overboard stupid.  I can literally change the password on the online account so that the owner can’t access it, but I can’t change a code on my own voicemail account without his permission.  If we had a swear jar around here it would be full by now.

The very next morning, shortly after breakfast and while the farmer was still in the house, I dialled up Sasktel one more time.  I proved who I was, Glen proved who he was and gave his blessing to allow me to fix what I still think was a problem created by Sasktel in the first place.  I have chosen a new easy to remember code but I really hope I never hear that voicemail alarm ever again.  If you want to leave me a message, just send me a text.  Please.

 

 

LETTING GO

Moving forward, by definition, means leaving something else behind.

We’ve all be there.  When you think about it, life is nothing but a series of hellos and goodbyes.

Sometimes the circumstances are of our own choice and sometimes they are beyond our control, but undeniably, moving forward always means change.  It takes us out of our comfort zones.  It makes us learn new stuff.  We are forced to face new challenges and grow to meet new realities.

It’s scary.  But it is also exciting.

These past few weeks I’ve been trying to think of ways to help my grandchildren – and their parents – prepare for a move.  A literal move from one home and lifestyle to another one: from an acreage with wide open spaces to town life, from a smaller house in a huge yard with many gardens to a bigger house on a smaller lot, from small town school classrooms to much bigger schools. Every day that they get closer to the big day the worries about “Are we doing the right thing?” get bigger.  I’ve been in similar situations; it is very scary.

It's not that this move hasn’t been thought through.  I would guess it has been in the works for at least three years and the reasons for it are valid.  Its economically positive and opens employment and educational opportunities up for both mom and kids.  It’s still scary. 

Last summer it was another set of grandkids who were in the same position.  Their lifestyle is prone to moves because of their dad’s job but this was the first time they were old enough to be affected by the upheaval in their personal lives.  They were leaving behind the only home they could remember and all their school friends.  They were switching from tiny classes in a French emersion school to larger classes taught in English, and as it worked out their stay-at-home Mom would be going back to work fulltime too.  Life would never be the same.  They spent most of last August with us while all the moving commotion went on; their worries floated just below their usual sunny dispositions.  It was a long month … but it did turn out just fine.  The most important part was that they were making the change together, as a family.  They could adapt and grow together, and they have.

The packing up part of this move is almost done.  The house is a jumble of boxes and empty walls and no one knows where anything is anymore, a situation that won’t change for months.  Everyone’s nerves are frayed and emotions bubble up at the slightest provocation.  It’s D-Day minus 2 now and the kids are coming here so mom can finish cleaning.  Hopefully holidaying at grandma and grandpas will give everyone a break.

Undeniably there are harder things to say goodbye to.  Places and things can be replaced, losing a person is much worse, but they all take adjustment.  You just have muddle through somehow.  What’s that expression – fake it till you make it?  Do any of these worn-out cliches sound helpful?

In gymnastics, when the athlete’s routine involves traveling along a series of hanging rings, he or she uses their momentum from swinging forward on one ring to reach for the next.  If the move is to be successful there is a crucial moment when they have to let go of one they have a safe grip on in order to reach for another.  That’s where we’re at.  This is that moment.

My guess is that a year from now they will look back and not remember these tough days of letting go, but the meeting of new friends and being able to join more activities because there are so many more options close by … which will begin to build the momentum they need to reach for the next ring in their lives. 

Life is nothing but a series of hellos and goodbyes, and it’s not all bad.  

 

THE SUMMER OF ’23 – SO FAR

Back in the olden days when summer holidays were the period of time between one grade and the next at school, I was the kind of kid who worried about having nothing to write about in the inevitable “what I did on my summer holidays” assignment in September.  Other kids went on trips or had cabins at the lake or got to go to the city or something.  All we ever did was ride bikes over to our uncle’s place and shell peas for mom or go pick wild strawberries and put pennies on the railroad tracks for the train to squish flat.  Yes, I am that old – back in the olden days there were trains.

It's a pity that I’m not headed back to school this September.  It’s not even all the way through July and I have enough for an essay.

I hardly know where to start.  Maybe when our truck was pronounced dead in the middle of seeding?  And the debate that followed as to what to do about the situation.  Buy? Or try to fix?  And if the answer was buy, new or used?  And how to go about this vehicle shopping when he was still out on a tractor.  The job was delegated to our son-in-law who found us a good deal in Selkirk, Manitoba so summer ’23 started off with a trip to see the Manitoba grandkids and driving home in a truck whose A/C didn’t work, but that’s another story and it’s fixed now so no worries.

Next up was the July long weekend with three grandkids on an extended sleep-over and another family here for a two-night stay.  We crammed in a wiener roast and a s’more fest, the kids blew through maybe 100 water balloons and the lawn around the trampoline got well watered with hose and sprinkler activity before their parents picked them up and took them camping.  I had a few days to catch my breath before I spent a few days at the lake too.

By that time I had company coming from B.C.  Imagine, people who are crazy enough to think Penticton to Redvers is an easy drive.  And two days’ visit here.  And two days back.  I get tired just thinking about it.

It was a great visit though.  Those mountain folk had to have some prairie farmland lessons on what canola looks like and when it’s ready for harvest (ie: not in the flower stage) and what the different crops look like at 60 miles mph.  But that’s okay, I probably couldn’t tell peaches from apples at that speed either.  There was even lessons on how to drive a hay conditioner that will give bragging rights for years to come – especially when I sent them a picture of the farmer who gave the lessons stuck up to his axels before they were even out of Saskatchewan.  They are unconvinced that there is any wildlife besides gophers and grasshoppers.  One raccoon roadkill is the one and only critter they saw until they were back in B.C.  That’s got to be some kind of record.

I came through with the requested pie, cinnamon buns and raspberry muffins for them and they gifted me with a case of assorted Okanogan wines.  Win/Win.

To round out their adventure we took them out for the pure prairie ambiance one enjoys at a bar and steak pit.  Thank you, Maryfield Hotel – you never disappoint.

It is back to some kind of normal now.  I’ve picked raspberries and peas, weeded garden and mowed lawn, and made beet pickles – my hands are an intriguing mix of purple skin and black nails at the moment and my kitchen smells very ‘pickley’.

It’s ironic that the very things that I thought were too boring to write about when I was a kid – garden, company, staying home – are now enriching experiences that I’m happy to write about.

Attitude and perspective – that’s what makes us old folks wise.  

Now I just need someone to grade my paper and give me an ‘A’.

 

 

LONG DISTANCE FRIENDS

They’re actually coming. 

We’ve been talking about this visit for so long it seemed like it was likely to stay in the ‘someday’ category, but I have a message right in front of me that says “We’re coming!”  There are even some convincing details like dates and times and places.  I do believe that a week from today I will have company from B.C.  One of them I’ve even met before … in Beijing Airport … in the middle of the only typhoon I hope to encounter in my life.  She and her grandson were the only other human beings in that turmoil who spoke English.  It was the worst of times: it was the best of times.

I was on my way home from visiting my newest grandson.  My son-in-law had dropped me off at the airport, both of us certain I could handle check in on my own.  There was a light rain at the time.  Had anyone bothered to check the weather that morning there were probably storm warnings, but of course they would have been on Chinese TV and offered in the local language.  We were oblivious.

I was plenty early for my flight so once I was checked in and found my way to the right departure lounge, I had lots of time to relax.  My soon-to-be friend had just flown in from Katmandu (doesn’t that sound exotic?) and was on her way home to Canada too.  She was busy with a young boy; their easy demeanor and body language told me that they were family, but their appearances made them stand out.  She was a middle-aged Caucasian Canadian and he was, as I would later learn, Tibetan.  As we sat and waited my story-telling brain went into overdrive trying to come up with a scenario that would put them together.  People watching is one of my favorite things to do.

We boarded the 747 insulated from the noise and commotion of the storm building around us.  There was no hint of how the night was going until I sat down and looked out my window.  It was raining.  Hard.  I spent the first part of a very long wait wishing that we would just take off and be on our way.  As time ticked by and the tarmac disappeared under water I changed my mind about that. I don’t like hydro-planing in a car, I could not imagine that in a plane during take off, it would be a good idea either.

Finally, the captain came on and told us that this was a monsoon and no one was going anywhere.  He reassured us that we would be taken care of and we were to take our carry-on with us but that checked luggage would stay on the plane and we would leave in the morning.  These were the last clear English words we heard for at least 24 hours.

We found ourselves back in the terminal filled with thousands of other disrupted travellers.  I had a plan – I happened to be flying first class that time (back when my husband was making oilfield dollars) and I was just going to camp out in the First Class lounge.  No way was I going to leave and risk missing my flight the next day.  When I ran into the grandmother and little boy again, I told her my plan.  She liked it – we bonded.

But nothing was to be that simple.  Beijing Airport was CLOSING for the night.  Can you imagine?  Everyone had to go somewhere else.  In a monsoon.

We were herded here and told they now expected us to claim our luggage first.  We were herded there and told we had to go somewhere else to claim our bags.  Another announcer told us there was no food or anything to drink.  But, they would send buses for us.  And take us to hotels where we could phone our families.  All of this delivered by people who spoke more English that I spoke Chinese … but not by much.

Marilyn (my new friend) and her grandson (Kai) and I became inseparable.  Even if we didn’t know what was going on, at least we could comprehend what each other was saying.  We did our best to follow instructions and spent hours waiting for our luggage while we exchanged life stories.  Kai played Angry Birds on my iPad until the battery went dead.

Finally we were herded toward buses in the pouring rain and set off into the unknown, made all the more confusing because a number of the buses ahead of us turned around mid-road and headed back.  Our driver was either braver or a dare devil but we made it through.  (Interesting side note here: did you know that when torrential downpours have nowhere else to go the water will blow manhole covers off and the resulting ‘fountain’ can shoot higher than a bus?)

Eventually we arrived at our promised hotel: soggy, hungry, tired, and stressed.

We lined up to book into rooms.  We each could have had our own but somehow it just seemed smarter/safer/more comforting to stay together.  Besides, it was going to take both of us to figure out how to make these international calls we needed to make.  Somewhere I have pictures of us eating what little was left of a Chinese food buffet at midnight, happy to be there together.

Obviously we made it home and added each other to our Facebook friends lists.  At some point Marilyn’s daughter (Kai’s mother) Sandra, friended me too to thank me for taking care of them on that dark and stormy night in Beijing (I recall it being more of a mutual benefit proposition) and our friendship has blossomed too.  There have been many invitations to come visit – in both directions – and it seems like it’s really going to happen next week.

They are driving, not flying.  The Canadian Prairies aren’t known for their monsoons but it’s probably a good thing anyway.

 

WHAT SHALL WE DO TODAY …

A normal summer day around here starts at 5:00 am.  There was a time in my life when I considered this to be still the middle of the night – I mean, who in their right mind would get up at such a ridiculous hour?  My mother would smile and tell me that “it was the most wonderful time of the day.”  As a mother of seven children, she knew where to find peace and tranquility.  We had a small dairy farm; she got up early every morning and went to bring the cows in for milking.  I was in my teens and thought of this as drudgery, she was much wiser and recognised it as a gift.

There are no cows to go fetch in my life but I do enjoy sitting on the deck, sipping my coffee and watching the cattle grazing across the road.  There are mourning doves coo-cooing in the evergreens, hummingbirds buzzing past me on their way to the feeder, robins and brown thrashers picking worms out the lawn for their breakfasts, and red-winged blackbirds singing their morning song from the cat tails across the road.  Reassurance that all is well with the world.

A day that starts as early as 5:00 has a lot of potential but in the heat we’ve been experiencing lately a girl needs a plan to survive the day. 

The first order on my daily agenda is to get up and close all the windows.  This is called ‘shutting the cool in’ and is even more important than #2 – hitting ‘go’ on the coffee machine.  Then there is breakfast and getting the man out the door with his lunch on whatever mission he has for the day thus leaving me free to sit on the deck, bird watch, and plan my day.

Remember the cartoon series Pinky and the Brain from the mid 1990s?  Remember how Pinky would ask the Brain every episode “What are we going to do tonight, Brain?” to which Brain inevitably replied “We are going to take over the world.”  Well, except for the names and a few other changes, that is what goes through my mind at 6:00 every morning.  How best to tackle my day?  What can I get done?  What can I postpone? Is it an outside job kind of day?  When did I last fertilize my deck planters? Do I need to go to town for anything? 

And the one question that is there Every. Single. Day.  What do I make for supper?

I’m pretty sure that taking over the world would be easier than a new meal plan 24/7/365 forever and ever, amen.

All of these quandaries depend on the weather.  Every single one of them.  How hot is it going to be?  And when is the heat going to hit?  On a good day it’s 10:00 before it’s too hot to weed, on a bad day weeding is stroked off the ‘to do’ list before my coffee is cold.  What I choose to wear depends on the temperature and there are days when I change 3 or 4 times to keep up with weather fluctuations and activity levels.  Likewise, the supper menu choices rely on whether I want to turn my oven on, or not.  There’s been a lot of BBQ and salads lately, with a couple of crock pot meals cooked out on the deck table for variety.

I also have to wrestle with practicality.  There can be a whole bunch of things to do that I really don’t care for and some that are among my favorites.  My windows are in extreme need of cleaning but I hate that job.  On the other hand I could do a load or two of laundry – I’m not crazy about the folding and putting away part of that job but the washing is easy and I LOVE hanging it out on the line, and how it smells when it comes back in.  Laundry wins over windows almost every time. 

Likewise the cleaning-the-fridge-out vs. tending flower beds battle.  Mowing the lawn is the biggest temptation of all; I love the smell of fresh cut grass and how easy my zero-turn mower makes the job.  Luckily the price of gas holds me back. 

This morning common sense and weeding the vegetable garden won out.  Two hours of reasonable temperatures and a nice breeze to discourage biting insects and the job was done.  It’s not even noon and I am back on the deck wondering ‘what next?’  And also ‘what’s for supper’?

The thing is, a person has to be careful not to overthink things.  That’s what the Brain used to do.  His plans to take over the world were so detailed and convoluted that they never worked.  Pinky came much closer to success by bumbling along with good fortune almost falling in his lap at times.  I identify with that kind of approach.  I’m going to fix myself some lunch (while ignoring that the fridge still needs to be cleaned out), watch the noon news, and go with whatever the afternoon turns up.

Like maybe a nap.  Narf!

 

graduations ….

It’s that time of the year again – graduation time.  Time to celebrate our young people as they prepare to write their final exams and head out into the big wide world.  Ready or not, their high school days are behind them, and we all wonder how did that happen so fast?

How did they go from the little faces sporting toothless grins in their kindergarten pictures to being these young women and men in formal gowns and tuxedos?  When people asked them at kindergarten grad what they were going to be the answers came easy: nurses, farmers, teachers, firemen, astronauts, race car drivers – the possibilities were endless.  Now that the real decisions are immanent confidence is harder to come by.  A few have made definite choices, some are wisely keeping their options open, and the rest recognise they are best to let the first part of furthering their education be finding a job while attending the School of Real Life.

‘Graduation’ is a word we have come to think of as just this: the end of a section of schooling.  Be it kindergarten, elementary, middle school or high school we call them all graduations and celebrate them as the completion of something, but if you think about it this meaning is distorted.   Another meaning for the word graduation – and even more suitable – is ‘a mark or set of marks to show steps or stages of measurement’.

Although we all acknowledge that graduation is the end of high school, I’ve never heard a valedictorian say “We’re done!” and stop there.   They speak of the friendships they have made, the bonding they have done, the experiences they have shared, but the main topic of the speech focusses on the future.  They may be all choosing different paths but they are all going the same direction – forward.

Think of the ruler you used in elementary school.  We old people remember that ours were a foot long and showed increments of inches but when we bought them for our kids they were marked off in centimeters.  It doesn’t matter what the spaces between the lines are called, though, it just matters that each line signifies a progression.  A move forward.  A graduation.

In the same way, this weekend’s graduation is a measurement that has been met.  The graduates stand on this significant mark on their measuring stick in their fine clothing and we congratulate them and wish them well.  While they savour this moment, we all know that their journey has only just begun – there will be so many more graduations to claim.  They are only at the beginning of their ruler.

Interestingly, this very same weekend there is a 60^th year class reunion going on. 

These are people who are closer to the other end of their rulers.  They have progressed through so many milestones: higher education, marriage, careers (possibly several), raising families, welcoming in-laws and then grandchildren, things that today’s graduates can barely fathom.  These older rulers also show scratches and other wounds: divorces, deaths, disabilities and other disappointments life deals out over that much time – again, things that today’s grads can barely fathom.  These are the grads of the early ‘60s.  They had their moment in the fancy-dresses-and-three-piece-suits spotlight complete with lofty speeches and grandiose dreams, but now they also have the wisdom one gains over a lifetime of regular living.

And that wisdom is what made it easy to say “yes” to an invitation to this party.  The days of competitiveness over marks in school or possessions afterwards are in the past.  The worries over social standing or getting ahead no longer hold any power.  Simple things like spending time with lifelong friends is pure gold.

No one knows how many graduations – either of the party type or the increment kind - we have on our personal rulers, life is kind of scary that way.

Maybe the most meaningful wish a person can offer is that your ruler is marked off in many many increments, and that each of them has a graduation story by the time you reach the end.

 

 

OUR BARD

In one of those unexplainable quirks of fate I told the story of my Gordon Lightfoot/Sundown memory in my last blog entry just hours before he passed away.  It’s one of my favourite memories for so many reasons and it had seemed like the perfect time to tell it.  I’m glad it happened in that order – the spontaneity of my thoughts seems to offer a truer tribute than if I had written it after I had heard he died.

As it was, it was a friend of mine who messaged me about his passing late that night and we spent some time in conversation about Gordon’s contribution to the Canadian identity.  I think it was his song The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald that showed me that Canadians were made of special stuff. That we have our own brand of ‘cool’.

That on the world stage we are unique. 

That we value things differently. 

That this is something to be proud of.

In the year 1976, when The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald spent 21 weeks on the billboard charts and peaked at #2, it was up against not only the hot new craze of disco boogie but also bands like Fleetwood Mac, ABBA, the Eagles, Paul Simon, and Queen.  The formula for a hit was a love song no more than three minutes long and here was this Canadian singer with his rich baritone voice singing of a real-life tragedy in a historically correct ballad more than double that length, and people couldn’t get enough of it.

At the sound of those first chords we all know what comes next … “The legend lives on, from the Chippewa on down, to the big lake they call Gitche Gumee …”

And by ‘we’ I mean people all over this planet.

In one of the many tributes I’ve read this past week someone used the word ‘bard’ and I instantly recognized this was the perfect title for Gordon.  Not the present day way that ‘bard’ is used in the English language which reduces its meaning to just an every day poet, but the original designation of traditional reciter of epic stories and oral history; a national poet, a minstrel.

Back in the days of castles and knights when the written language was only for nobles and priests, historical records were kept and told by bards in poetry accompanied by music.  A kingdom’s identity – their battles and victories, their sufferings and celebrations were carried from generation to generation in song and verse.  Gordon Lightfoot personifies the true meaning of ‘bard’.

His words, his music, his voice – they tell our tales.   

Facebook has been full of people paying homage to the man and his music.  The stories from his close friends and fellow artists offer a peak into the world of stardom and the passion they have for their art.  While they speak in admiration of Gordon’s talent, the warmth of friendship that comes through make their tributes special and genuine.

It’s the other tributes that resonate most with me though.  The ones from people who had never met him. The people like me who only know him through his music.  His everyday people.  They, too, say that losing Gordon feels like losing a close friend, a feeling that I share.  He is a piece of who I am – especially as a Canadian, but also deeper than that.  His music features prominently in the soundtrack of my life; its down-to-earth-ness echoes in my soul.

In this way he lives on.  We may have laid the creator of his music to rest but the songs ring on.  The words are written in indelible ink in our hearts and on our psyches.

“The legend lives on, from the Chippewa on down, to the big lake they call Gitche Gumee ….”

 MUSIC IS MAGIC

A couple weekends ago my favorite channel on SiriusXM featured a show with all the hits that made it to #1 during the ‘70s decade.  They repeated the show three different times and one more time the next Wednesday.  I listened to it every time.  It was the best.

I’m pretty sure that my kids, and now my grandkids, or anyone else trapped in my car with me for that matter, inwardly groan at my choice of music but I love the way it makes me feel.  It’s my version of a mood-altering drug.  It’s also my own, personal time machine.

Ever since that weekend I’ve been trying to think of the words to describe how listening to music – especially music from this era – enhances my life even these many years down the road.  It’s hard to express a feeling in language so I went wandering in Google-land for help.  I emerged from that scouting trip an hour or so later having learned in the first five minutes that music improves our moods and our memories (that’s just what I said), and then I backed this information up with listening to some of my favorite mood enhancers for further proof.

People who know me have heard me say that I am 26 years old.  In my head, I am 26.  I don’t know why that’s the magic number, but, on the inside, I’ve never got past that mark.  My mirror keeps reminding me that my outside is not nearly so resilient.

Although I know this “age” of 26 is a silly thing to hold on to, I also know it feels real to me.  And it never feels more real than when there is music playing in the background.  It can be any kind of music but mostly it’s the music of my youth.  It’s like those familiar notes wrap me in happiness for a few minutes, and then releases me again as they fade away.  It leaves me feeling gifted with an eloquent, enduring connection to a much younger me.  It’s not that it ‘takes me back’ so much but that it transcends me to the time and place I first heard it.  There’s a difference.

One of the songs I looked up while on my little adventure in Google-land was Gordon Lightfoot singing Sundown.  I love where it takes me.

If you head straight south of Moose Jaw toward a little town called Willow Bunch the highway you take is #36.  I haven’t been on that road in more years than I care to count but the first time I travelled it was the day we moved there.  There is a spot where you can park at the top of a hill with the road spilling away in front of you in what looks like miles and miles of ribbon candy … undulations of prairie hills and hollows from here to eternity.  You feel like the world has been laid at your feet.

We stopped there to take in that view.  Gordon Lightfoot was singing Sundown on the radio.  We were expecting our first child.  The sun was warm on our shoulders.  The grass was just beginning to green up.  We were full of questions about the coming months.  What would the new job be like?  What new friends would we meet?  The road seemed to be inviting us onward.  

That moment is distilled to perfection in my mind and the sound of Gordon’s voice transports me to that hilltop every time I hear him sing those words.

That’s only one of my magic memories though.  There’s singing Bobby Goldsboro”s Honey with my high school BFF.  Or singing Three Dog Night’s Just An Old-fashioned Love Song with my sister.  Or Jim Croce’s If I Could Save Time In A Bottle.  Or John Denver’s Annie’s Song.  Or Roberta Flack’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.  Or every single thing Neil Diamond ever recorded.

The list goes on and on.

Hearing this music suffuses the magic elixir of perpetual youth (or in my case, the age 26) into the very air that I breathe.  I am unaware of grey hair and creaky joints.  I am surprised by the lady who looks back at me from my mirror (who is she, and how did she get in there anyway?)  How can I have so many candles on my birthday cake and yet intuit as a much younger self?

Maybe It’s like I said earlier – it’s hard to put ‘feelings’ into words.  Maybe I have to just leave it as ‘feelings’.  Maybe I don’t feel old because every time I hear one of these favourites I get a fresh dose of youth.

Maybe I don’t feel old because I still know how it feels to be young.

 

RECOGNIZE   HONOR    CELEBRATE

Last week a bunch of us (and by ‘us’ I mean local volunteers) met for a quick noon hour meeting to touch base and share information about what each of our individual groups were planning for the year ahead.  On a practical level the benefits of this are obvious – we can coordinate our efforts and grow the event status for the town (ie: if the Chamber of Commerce knows when things like ball tournaments are on they can add things like sidewalk sales the same day). It just makes sense to pool our energy in promoting our community as a whole.  There is a side effect to these meetings, though, and that is the feeling of camaraderie when people of diverse interests, but common goals, get together.  It’s not all business; it’s good to visit with our peers as well.

One of the many topics that surfaced in this meeting was volunteer appreciation. 

Volunteers are the life blood of everything we try to do.  They are invaluable to our community, and yet while their work is vitally important, the people themselves end up standing in the shadows of what they have accomplished.  It’s not that they are offering their time and talents for glory or fame, but so many times they don’t even hear their names mentioned when the work is done.

As Fate would have it, a day or two after this meeting an email arrived announcing that Volunteer Appreciation Day was coming up on April 20^th.  This letter also offered a whole range of ideas of how to thank volunteers.  The part that caught my attention was that they used the same three words that I had been thinking about: recognize, honor, and celebrate.  This is exactly how we need to show our appreciation to people whose work benefits us all.

I hesitate to use the word ‘work’ though.  It gives volunteerism a bad reputation.  It makes it hard to recruit new members.  Nobody wants to take on more ‘work’.

I am reminded of when I was a kid and doing the dishes was a job that my sisters and I had to do.  It was drudgery.  It took forever.  We argued constantly about who did what.  It was a fight every night (sorry Mom).  But when the extended family got together for a big meal and there were countless more dishes to do, it was the adult women who cleared up and did the dishes.  They did this much larger job with cheerfulness, conversation and cooperation in half the time.  They did it with laughter and light hearts.

How could such an enormous job be turned into something that sounded like fun? I don’t know how old I was when it finally dawned on me that the difference was a simple matter of attitude.

When a group of volunteers are working on a project together this same kind of magic happens.  I’ve said this before many times: “Many hands make light work!”. 

Being a volunteer is a vitally important contribution to the community in which we live.  It’s how we build our community, but it’s also what makes our community worth building.  It’s where we weave our lives together, where friendships blossom and grow, where we build a collective resilience to both weather setbacks, and build on our successes.

A volunteer’s work is so valuable we could never afford to pay them, but our town wouldn’t exist without them.  That’s how important they are.

So, tell them ‘Thank You’.

I know to a large extent that means this means mutual ‘thank yous’ back and forth as so many of us are the very volunteers we wish to honor, but it’s still important that we recognize each other. 

And for once people, don’t be so humble.  When someone thanks you for the work you do, accept the praise – you have earned it! 

Go ahead – celebrate your good deeds!  You are the true Hometown Heroes.

 

DON’T LOOK ETHEL!

I don’t know that I would win any awards for my driving skills, but I can say that in the only accident I’ve ever been in I was not the one behind the steering wheel at the time.  I’ve never even hit a deer. One did hit me once, but I don’t think that should count.

What I do know is that I feel better when I am the one in control of the speed/steering/brakes.  I don’t know that I can claim I’m an excellent driver but I totally confess to being a horrible passenger. The perfect illustration of this was a trip I took with my very capable, intelligent, in-charge daughter to the British Isles.

At first it was lovely: we visited with my Aunt in Oxford for the first week and then we took the train north to Glasgow where we rented a car and drove the reminder of the trip to Edinburgh.  I just refreshed my memory with a look at a map of Scotland; the distance we drove is negligible.  Paltry.  Puny.  Compared to the ground we cover here on the prairies it is miniscule.  It aged us both several decades.

The obvious hurdle was that we were in a country where they drive on the wrong side of the road.  This should have been no problem because the girl I was with had spent more than a year in New Zealand and Australia – she knew what she was doing in that department.  The trouble was more that this arrangement puts the passenger sitting where a Canadian driver should be but doesn’t give her a steering wheel to hang on to.

I’m not going to say that I didn’t go into it without a little trepidation.  The whole ‘wrong side of the road/wrong side of the vehicle’ thing is a little mind bending.  It’s not even safe to cross a street unless you look the wrong way (but that was a whole other trip, and nobody died, so it’s all good).  Even as we took out the rental car I wondered why on Earth they would let people from other countries even do that, but off we went anyway, heavily insured. 

A couple things about driving in a medieval city: the streets are narrow, the signs give you 1.7 seconds warning of where to turn, and there is no where to pull over and take a breather. Even so we made it out on the open road where it would have been lovely to stop and experience the Scottish Highlands but again, they don’t do the ‘pull over and go sight-seeing’ thing over there.  We drove on.

I had joked ahead of time that she would do the driving and I would do the praying.  By the time we’d been on the road for a while I commented that maybe there were circumstances where valium was a good idea.  Not long after that my sweet daughter muttered through clenched teeth that this was certainly one of them. 

Desperate times call for desperate measures: I glued my mouth shut and my body to my seat, not saying another word or twitching another muscle as my contribution to safe arrival.  It worked.  We saw the sights (well except for the Loch Ness Monster; nobody ever sees her) and lived to tell about it.  It’s been twenty years and the story is funny again.

What I learned from that experience was that I’m better off not looking at the road if it’s only going to make me all anxious and jittery – my antics only make the driver anxious and jittery too.  I am much better off to focus on something else – you know, for the safety of everyone involved?

Fast forward to last Tuesday, #1 Highway between Portage and Winnipeg.  The sun shining brightly, the sky is blue above us, but there is ground drifting with white-out conditions and the pavement is warm enough for the snow to stick and turn to ice.

I wasn’t the one driving (thank goodness!) so in an effort to distract my dread I picked up my phone to text loved ones a fond farewell, thinking my feigned calmness would relieve some of the tension.  Much to my surprise I was asked to “Put that thing down and help me watch for things!”

That’s how bad it was folks, he wanted me to back-seat drive.

I guess four eyes are better than two.  But also, whether it’s two times zero or four times zero, the answer is still zero.

Long story short – both the driver and the navigator, plus the oblivious dog in the back – made it there and home again safely.  Sometimes you get to cross something off your Bucket List that you hadn’t even put on it.