Generational Comforts from Accidental Beginnings

I was three, certainly not four when they first came. Tall, straight men with buzz cut styles and square stubble on the middle of their top lips. And they had guns but didn’t bring them into the house. They were loud and lively, and my father smelled of yeasty homebrew after they were gone. They were Americans.

I was four, certainly not five when they came again. They brought a bombardier, and boxes and boxes of stuff the likes of which we had never seen before. Not even at Christmas had these wonders ever entered our realm. Even the black and white television when it was first turned on didn’t compare. The biggest box could hold a fridge if we had known of such a thing at the time. There were clothes, bicycles, footsies, and boardgames. Payday, Monopoly, Life, and a yellow box with a word on it none of us could pronounce.

I was five, certainly not six when I first heard the rattle. The American’s were back. They brought their children. And dolls. We named them after their American children. Tammy and Sherry were cherished for years. As our bellies hit the floor, feet dancing in the air, we dressed and undressed those dolls. In the background, Bonnie and Lloyd were teaching my parents the game in the yellow box. It was Yahtzee.

I was six, certainly not seven when I watched my parents play Yahtzee as we gathered around the trouble game, the older ones played Life, a storm raged outside and there were no Americans. The plastic cup was loud and sometimes one of them would let me shake their turn and spill out the die across the kitchen table. Perhaps one would fall and clatter across the floor and pause the game in the scramble to find it. All the score sheets were gone so they used scribblers or paper bags to keep track.

I was seven, certainly not eight when I played Yahtzee for the first time. Dad wanted somebody to play and Mom was making bread. There was a storm outside. I had learned by watching and keeping score for Dad or Mom on times. I loved the game. I was hooked.

I was nineteen, certainly not twenty when my then boyfriend, now husband, learned to play. There would be a table full of us in stiff competition. The shaking can had been worn out ten times over. The cardboard baking powder tin made less noise. Tally sheets, scribblers, loose leaves were worn out, numbers scratched into the table top through the brown paper bags. The Yahtzee die shaking was a constant and the shout of Yahtzee for five of a kind turned everyone’s head.

I was forty, certainly not forty-one when I played my last game of Yahtzee with my father. He was keen to win and would play from morning to night. By then my children had interest and played with him, too. We knew the game had been passed on when we bought a game for our house in St. Brides and the can made a racket without either of my parents there. Nor the Americans.

I was fifty-five, certainly not fifty-six when I taught my grandson how to play Yahtzee. He’d come from upstairs after school. Sometimes his Poppy would play with us and sometimes his Mommy. The familiar rattle of the die before they were upset on the table and the one that would sometimes take off and end up under the chesterfield held a generational comfort.

I was fifty-eight, certainly not fifty-nine when I played my last game of Yahtzee with my mother. It was at the long-term care facility and she could neither shake the can nor keep the score but she wanted to play anyway. We had endless games as we passed away the days at Pleasantview Towers telling stories about my father and the Americans. I have her game tucked in beside my own at the house.

I was sixty, certainly not sixty-one when I opened a gift this past Christmas from my daughter. It was a new-fangled Yahtzee game that is just waiting to be opened on a stormy day and stories told about my father, my mother, and the Americans.

Yahtzee!

Sammy's Wonderous Adventure

Sammy was the shy sort. Perhaps not shy, but not interesting. Certainly not like the others. His whole life had been spent in the box or on the lowest bough of the tree. Not the inside tree either where tales from the other bells regaled of sparkling-coloured lights, shiny tinsels, toys and presents, big and small, all ensconced in wrappings even fancier than the lights. Exclaiming of children’s laughter brought gasps and oohs and awes as the inside bells told tales that made the long winter stored in the boxes so exciting.

Then the outside bells, the ones on the tree on the hillside, would talk about the twinkling stars on the indigo and inky canvas above, the brilliant Christmas moons, and the cape of white draped across the trees and fences and the diamonds on the ground when the sun shone bright.  They described the children racing down the hillside on their latest slide or skating on the pond, each story told from a different perspective depending where the bell hung on the tree.

When it came to Sammy’s turn, he had nothing to say. He spent his time on the lowest bough, covered in the fluffy snow and not even privy to the wind though, admittedly, sometimes the shaking did reach the lowest perch. His only view was through the eyes of those on the higher branches. He reveled in the tales from those above him and, on a rare occasion, wished that he could get to experience what they did. But for all his years on the outdoor tree, he took the lowest bough.

Excitement built in the trunk when the noises from the attic grew loud. It was always the same. Scraping and hauling and pushing clamours grew louder and louder until the lid was lifted on the trunk and the momentary blinding light signaled it was time.

Their cardboard beds were carried to the tree and as the tree grew, some of the inside bells even joined them. Those ones were welcomed heartily and got to see both sides of Christmas. How fortunate they were. For Sammy nothing had changed. He’d make his yearly debut as the last one to go on and with a little pat from the mitted hand the tree was ready.  

Whispers of the wonders of the night sky reached him through the limbs though he could only see darkness or green and white. Daytime adventures rang out through the fields and tickled his ears. Sammy enjoyed this time outside the box. It was what he was made for.

As snow piled higher, Sammy’s view turned white then black and then a gray that distinguished night from day. The tree shook more than usual, and the muffled sounds and whispers grew quieter until they were gone. At first Sammy paid no heed to the quiet. It had happened before when the winter storms had been a little more forceful. They’d hung outside for longer and regaled of swinging round limbs and clinking together when they finally got back to the time packed away in the trunk. Sammy knew nothing of the swinging and clinking as he’d always been buried in the snow.

Sammy’s worries grew when the snow began to melt, and the whispers were no longer there. He shouted in case the other bells couldn’t hear him but didn’t get a response. Rain began to drip from the limbs overhead as rain pelted the tree. A few drops ran down his string, but he was mostly dry and protected. The snow melted and he was freed. It was when he noticed plants peeking through the ground and the quiet above him was long that he realized he’d been forgotten.

He wasn’t the first this had happened to. He had heard of breezy and sunny days, but they were rare. One little bell had told of the birds that had nested in the tree and how she watched the babies fly off in the summer.  But that was so long ago, he barely remembered. They had missed her in the cardboard in the trunk, but she fit right in when she was collected after Christmas the next year. Sammy wouldn’t see the birds because he was too low. He wouldn’t have those stories to tell.

He had been reminiscing when he felt the soft touch up on. A baby fawn had taken refuge under the tree. She brushed her new fur against him as she settled beneath the bows. He watched her doze in the sun before she rose and knocked into him again. She sent him swinging on the branch. He hadn’t felt that exhilarating rush of air before. Sammy was gleeful as the fawn returned every day to visit the resting place and keep him company.

Before too long the bees began to visit. They tickled his outsides and insides as they looked for flowers. Sometimes they were tired and took a break at the very top of him or took shelter from the wind within his hollowed interior. He was happy to give them a safe place to rest before they buzzed happily away. Flowers grew, the wild hay danced in the breeze, and the young ones frolicked in the field while their parents kept a watchful eye. Foxes came to sniff at him with their cold noses making him laugh. It was an exhausting time.

Sammy grew tired when the first cold winds played around the base of the tree. The hay had been cut, the animals were gone, and leaves of various colours swirled by before moving on. His eyes grew heavy.

He heard his name called in chorus when he realized the other bells were back. It must be Christmas again, he thought. He shouted to them and welcomed them back to the tree and told them how glad he was to know they were there and how he’d missed them. He listened to their whispers over the next few weeks before they returned to the cardboard beds in the trunk.

“We want Sammy to go first,” the bells all said. “We want to hear about his adventures.”

Sammy regaled of the fawn, the foxes, and the bees and all that he had seen from beneath the lowest bough. The oohs and awes of the others warmed his heart as he was asked several times to tell them again what he’d seen.

One of the bells from the inside tree proclaimed that Sammy had outshone them all and they allowed they’d all like to be on the lowest bough where the best things happened.

Sammy smiled at his luck at being able to bring all these new experiences to the others before they returned to the tree once again and Sammy took his rightful place on the lowest bough.

Checklist Advice From the Very Best

My dearest Santa, I’m a long-time believer but first-time writer to you. This is not the conventional letter. You see, I am writing to get some advice about lists. With all the goings on and the busyness of life yesterday I wrote down five things to do this morning that I’ve been putting off and forgetting, whether convenient or not until after business hours, or it’s too late to start, etc.

He’s making a list and checking it twice was on the radio yesterday as an anthem to you and your prowess at keeping all the kids across the world straight so I thought list was the appropriate way to go, check them off, and put them behind me. My piddly remove trailer from NL Services, remove trailer from insurance, call doctors office (for the third time) to get the portal set up, package the Starlink and return via Fedex, and order some books, didn’t seem that daunting. My list was added to the pink sticky note and laid on my laptop for bright and early this morning.

I got a head start on it, first by going into NL Services Online and it was a 24/7 operation. But the details weren’t correct from the trailer buyer, and I had to look up the postal code for her address. That was just a tiny glitch. Figured it out and got an email from NL Services Online that the trailer was removed. Now for the morning, I only had four things. How hard could it be, Santa?

The insurance company had an app as well but I wasn’t falling for that twenty minute q&a session with Janet the chatbot a second time. She lured me down a rabbit hole only to tell me that I had to call. So, Janet basically lied when she said all services could be done online. However, a nice lady from NL did answer promptly when I called and took care of the matter in short order. This time I wasn’t getting caught with Janet again, but she was prompt in saying to call. I guess Janet learned a lesson from our last encounter. That is not checked off yet though because of the next item I tackled on the list. Santa, how do you do it when things go wrong?

I called the doctors office and lo and behold the email that I had called about for two weeks finally arrived. Third time lucky, I guess. It was easy. Just click the link and enroll. So, I did. I got a host of questions, the second one was automatically populated with the correct email address but I got an error saying it was already registered. Which I can safely say it was not because if I don’t do the registering, it doesn’t get registered, just saying. I called the office back and the lady told me just to click on the help button and get it resolved. For ten minutes I looked for the help button, clicked every place on the site and not a helper to be seen. I found a toll-free number which I called and there was another Janet who lured me through a dozen menu options and finally disposed of me with a hang up without resolution. I started again and clicked some more and found a random page which allowed me to enter information and it is in the Janetverse somewhere waiting for somebody to take pity on me. Tell me Santa, if they don’t get back to me, do you put Janet on the Naughty list?

My frustration level was rising now so I printed off the Starlink return label for the courier from the third reminder email and readied the box. I had to schedule a pick-up. Well now Santa, if I had to call the North Pole and asked you to pick it up and drop it off in California, I think I’d be better off. I’m not insensitive to the plight of the carriers but Starlink don’t really show mercy when they give you ten days to return the bad equipment or be charged. (Another few people for your naughty list I do believe). But I digress.

I went online to schedule a pick up. IMPOSSIBLE, yes all capitalized for a reason. After twenty minutes of the site telling me I had to pay like $600 on a pre-shipped label and fill out a custom’s form I gave up when Janet said she couldn’t help me and that I really should speak to an agent. Thanks Janet, at least give me a number or connect me. No, nothing like that so Janet should be bolded on your naughty list. I found a 1800 number through some sleuthing and connected with another Janet who finally allowed me to speak to an agent. That poor fellow was patient and kind but couldn’t help. He talked to me for about fifteen minutes, collected all the details, twice, but then he tried to schedule a pickup. It was in vain, only to tell me to call back the next day and see if he could get me on a list. Oh Starlink, do you understand these troubles. Please show mercy.

Then I looked online again for places to drop it off. I was pointed to a pit at Kent’s in CBS. Then I said to myself, I wonder does Kent take the packages. I called and a nice lady said sure, drop it off here and don’t worry about it. She is going on the nice list, eh Santa. Let’s just put everyone there on the nice list, please.

Forty-five minutes later, I’m at item number three. That was easy. Took about two minutes. Sylvia was pleasant and took my book order. She definitely gets on the nice list. Don’t forget her Santa.

Item number four was also easy, took about ten minutes and the insurance company guy, Jeff, he should make the nice list as well. I got a few discounts when he reviewed my file since he had me on the line. Nice list please. Only a suggestion though Santa since you are the authority.

I guess, Santa, I worked my way through the problems, tested my patience to the highest limits, and have all but one item fully checked (and scratched and crossed out and gouged) since I’m waiting on Naughty-list-Janet to get back to me with the medical portal details. It’s out of my hands now but I managed to get through it on my own. That was only five things. Santa, how do you do it with the millions you get? Hero worship here.

If I’m not too old for a Christmas wish and since I never really bothered you before, please bring Janet a book to properly educate her in checklist etiquette. That will make me and many others very happy.

Merry Christmas Santa. Keep on doing what you do. You are a bright light in the darkening world and I, for one, appreciate you. Thanks for letting me vent.

First Encounters

I was ten years old, and spring had come to North Harbour. Mud tracked in on white tile floors, runny noses, and the first dregs of heat from the sun were tell-tale signs. Lambs were dropping from the twenty-two ewes in pairs and triplets and my father spent a lot of time in the stable.

This was different than other springs in that the lambs were more plentiful. We’d lost neither sheep to a dog over the winter. Dad was allowing we’d have a good fall when the meat man came, and money was exchanged for the youngest in the flock.

Long-term plans meant the pantry would be filled and we could get an extra blouse or shirt for school in September. A good spring lambing season made things easier in the fall.

Every day we’d get off the school bus and run in the lane to a chorus of bleats from the meadow as the tiny lambs found their legs and gamboled in murmuration as if conducted by some invisible sheep orchestrator.

There were still three or four left to lamb when Dad came in and mentioned one of the sheep was having a hard time. Through the window he pointed as the sheep spasmed in labour on the side of the hill. She tried to get up when Mom and Dad went to her, but the poor thing wasn’t able to stand.

As children do, we lost interest to the supper table and forgot about the sheep until much later when Mom returned. Since it was still fairly cold at night for the littlest, and two sheep had yet to birth, Dad put all the animals in the stable and the one that struggled had finally given birth to three.

The next morning, he came in with a lamb draped over his hand and asked Mom to make a bottle of milk. She had bottles for just such things since it was commonplace to help a struggling lamb along until it was big enough to be put back with the others. Sometimes the ewe needed help and sometimes she wouldn’t accept the lamb. The latter, Dad dreaded because what it cost in milk to keep them wouldn’t be made up in the fall. He’d make several attempts to ply the ewe with her lamb.

Mom dreaded these “legacies” as she called them for a different reason. The bottle-fed ones hung around the door long after they’d been weaned. She’d often come from Nanny’s in the dark and when she’d near the step, the sheep would scramble to life on the other side of the fence and start to baa, that would frighten the others and there’d be a big racket. She’d get a start and batter them away, but they’d be back bawling for milk at sunrise.

So, this morning, Mom was making porridge and she gave me the lamb to feed. She dipped her finger in the molasses and spread it on the rubber nipple and laid the warm bottle in my hand.

I was excited to take on this new activity. It, among other things, made me feel more mature than my ten years. The little thing shivered, and its heart thumped softly beneath my fingers. I was smitten.

Once it got the taste of the sweet molasses, it slowly drew on the milk. The little lamb’s mouth foamed as it suckled once it got the hang of it. I decided to name it Lambchops after a puppet I’d seen on television.

Dad put a carboard box behind the stove and covered the bottom with an old towel. Once the lamb had fed, I laid Lambchops into the box where it could stay warm. The fire was low, just enough to take a chill off the house so Dad figured it was the best place for my first pet.

After school I sat on the daybed and fed the tiny lamb a few more times. Dad said he didn’t hold out much hope for its survival, but we’d do everything we could to make it possible.

By the weekend, the lamb became stronger. Lambchops was three days old and could almost stand without falling over. Dad tried to put the lamb under its mother, but she had two thriving others and refused to feed Lambchops. She pucked it away and Dad decided we’d feed it for a few more days and then try again.

I was delighted. Sunday was sunny so I took Lambchops to the meadow and sat on a piece of cardboard as the lamb fed and slept. I stroked its side and petted the tiny body as the other lambs played around me. Lambchops wasn’t as big as any of them now and all the ewes had lambed. Still, though a runt, she’d have a chance and catch up to them in no time.

The Carnation Milk was getting a good cutting from the pantry as I kept Lambchops fed. My time before and after the school bus came and went was dedicated to Lambchops.

By this time the back gap was opened and the sheep, no longer corralled, wandered off and fed on grass around the community. I stayed longer in the meadow with Lambchops. She was standing now and making attempts to gambol as she figured out she had legs. Dad moved the box to the stable, added some hay for comfort, and she stayed with the others at night. I went out to feed her as the rest of the flock took off for the day.

Lambchops was about two weeks old when I came home from school to find she’d gone. Dad said she’d found her mother and the ewe had finally accepted her.

I was happy for Lambchops but saddened just the same. A part of me wanted to care for Lambchops forever. Though I knew it was selfish, I was disappointed at Lambchops independence.

When the sheep returned that evening, I looked for her but she wasn’t with the flock. Dad checked the stable and around the back gap but the lamb was not to be found. I stayed on the top of the hill and listened for the sound of the little lamb bawling but there was none. I searched the woods on Soaker’s Path just beyond the gate. I was usually a bit frightened to go beyond the gap alone, so I didn’t do it. But my desire to find my little charge was more important and fear knew that so didn’t bubble to the surface.

Dad believed Lambchops had made it so far with the sheep but hadn’t been able to keep up. He said the ewe might have left her behind then as she kept up with the flock.

I was flabbergasted by this notion and simply couldn’t believe it. I thought the lamb had wandered away from the rest, probably fell asleep and didn’t wake when the draw to home took over and the sheep returned. I pictured Lambchops wandering in the drizzle of the late evening frantically searching for me or her mother. I believed it was in that order and that I had a responsibility to find her.

I took a flashlight and scoured the ridge outside the fence calling to Lambchops and listening for her. I imagined her coming to the top of the path and seeing me and running to me. She’d never go with her mother again but stay under my protection.

But alas, Mom called me home for the night and Lambchops was scared and alone in my thoughts and my dreams that night. The next day I met Dad by the stable to see if a miracle had happened and Lambchops was there. But he shook his head.

I went to school with a heavy heart, thinking of Lambchops and hoping she’d be there when I got home. Lambchops hadn’t returned. I went on a wider search, looking for the sheep hangout and didn’t find Lambchops.

By the third day I became frantic to find her. She’d be hungry and cold, and I just wanted to feed her and lay her behind the stove and protect the essence of her.

After supper Dad mentioned that somebody had found the lamb dead in the woods. Well to say I was devastated would put it mildly. I flung myself on the couch, my face buried into the pillow, and I screeched unconsolably for hours. I went to bed with a headache and drank a glass of water so I could have more tears for Lambchops. I didn’t think I’d cried enough.

The next day I wanted to find the lamb’s mother that had lured Lambchops away, but all the sheep looked alike to me. I wanted to shout at her and call her a bad ewe for what she’d done to Lambchops. I was sad and heartbroken for my poor little lamb.

I was two or three weeks trying to get over her loss, the maddening anger I felt toward Lambchops’ mother, and the devastation of being without the love of the lamb stayed with me until I woke up one day and was no longer sad.

This was my first encounter with loss and grief. It changed the child I was, and I fed lambs the next year but didn’t want the attachment that I’d came to have to Lambchops for fear of losing them and being that hurt again. Or maybe I just grew out of the notions my younger self had.

Spring, when the shoots of new grass poke through the yellowed and muddied tangle blanketing the meadows, I sometimes think of Lambchops and my lesson on grief. I smile at the silliness of how it all played out and my childish beliefs but at the time it was very real for my wounded and compassionate ten-year-old heart.

 

 

The Kite

Once upon a time ago I was a kite. I was stored with the other kites, content and happy to be the shape of the wind and to wait for my time. And when it was my time, somebody was there to help me take off. One, two, three attempts, or as many as needed, they’d run through the meadow with me, and the hands would let me go off on my own when I was ready. But I wasn’t really on my own.

I climbed the sky and faltered but the string on the spool of the hand that held me played me on the breeze so I could get high enough to be my full kite self. I soared and danced on a breeze laughing and happy to just be a kite. My string guided me. It pulled me in when things got rough, or conditions weren’t right. It gave me more lead when I wanted to explore, but all the while I knew it was there to ground me.

Once upon another time ago I graduated to a string on a spool. When my time was done, I was remade and repurposed. I had a big responsibility which I earned and understood through the wings of the kite I’d once been. Now I held something precious, a beautiful, coloured kite that fluttered and glided and tugged and strained while I gave it the reins it needed to be the best kite it could become.

People would look up and remark on our outline against the sky. Some said I should let the kite go off on its own to be a better kite without me. It could go higher than I ever dared to let it go and beyond the length I could become. But that wasn’t my job. I had to stay fastened, or the kite wouldn’t be a kite, now would it. Oh yes, it would be for a little while when the breeze was just right, but when the wind blew hard or not at all, the kite would have no way to get back, to wait, to play on the wind and just be a kite.

It would somersault and cartwheel for a bit and think it was still a magnificent kite until it could no longer sustain the unattachment. In the frenzy of unattachment, it would whip and fold onto itself. The kite would fall and crash and scrunch and tumble along the streets. Its parts would break off or snap and tangle, it’s fabric would tear, and fray and it would become refuse. People would walk past it, probably the same ones who had wanted you to let go, and some may comment on its colour or remark that it used to be a beautiful kite. But alas none would do for the kite what I’d once done.

I, too then, would no longer be a string. I would lay in the soil having failed at my kite holding job and perhaps feel sorry for myself because I could no longer see nor hold the kite. I would fade and ravel and fret for what once was. I would look for another, perhaps smaller kite, but my hopes of tying to another would be slim the longer I remained rotting and useless on the ground.

Then I would doubt myself as a string like the kite surely doubted itself as it lay broken and forgotten in an alley behind a dumpster and out of sight of everyone.

Once upon a later time we could be found by the kind-hearted who believed we still have purpose. They put us in blue bins and bring us to a facility where we are re-engineered. The kite is remade, and I am cleaned, refreshed, and respooled. I will never be a kite like I once was but if I’m lucky, I’ll measure my length as a kite string and hold on tight enough that the kite can be itself, but not too hard that it will want to let go or tear free.

Alas, as I think on my time as the string, I discover it is me no longer. I am now the spool. I have to teach the kite and the string the lessons I once learned about holding on just right and about the abandon of being a kite. Though I let them both go, I know I’ll be there to reel them in and stay with them when the conditions aren’t right to be neither kite, nor string, nor spool. They mightn’t like not being able to fly and soar all the time or laced to the kite and the grounding, but I remind them that there are worse things than having boundaries. Part of being the spool is to pass on that they should enjoy their time as a kite and a string while that time is upon them and do all the kitey and stringy things they can instead. If they waste their time on wanting to be free of the string or the spool it is time they can’t get back, they will have missed the best breezes looking for freedom that can’t be given to a kite nor a string. It’s a glorious thing to be a kite when you’re a kite. It’s a glorious thing to be a string when you’re a string. It’s a glorious thing to be a spool when you’re a spool.

But the kite can’t be a kite without the support of the string and the spool. They are a package deal in this wild and windy and sometimes unforgiving world where being recycled is not always available when the lending hand can’t find what’s become of you when you went so far you couldn’t get back to being anything repurposed, remade, or respooled and you pine for the time when you were a kite eagerly climbing the air.

 

 

Something about twenty-four, but who’s counting?

I remember the first day I went to grade one as vividly as if it were today. I got on a bus surrounded by the only people I knew in the whole of my world, my family. I was the 7^th one on the bus from the Linehan household so I knew six people within the confines of that yellow metal new-to-me experience. That was the day my world expanded beyond the boundaries of the Linehan fences. To make matters more complicated, I was ten days late because of a sore throat that had taken me out like so many before it and so many to come.

That first time going to school was a terrifying rebirth in ways that none would particularly understand today because of play dates, day care, pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, MacDonalds, Hockey, Soccer, Music, camps, birthday parties, etc. that allow kids to connect. Conveniences like washing machines and dryers, crock pots, air fryers, electric ranges that will cook any time you want, freezer meals, vacuums, electronic sweepers, all the things that take away the menial tasks that were once more labourious and essential to living. They were a lot bigger than menial in that they took up all the time of, really, mostly the women and mothers and there was very little time left for themselves. All these kids activities we weren’t exposed to, so my world remained inside the fence posts with the one who made all those things look easy. And that was the same for mostly every other household that we would come to know.

Now me and the five other grade one students of 1970 on Albert MacDonald’s bus from North Harbour to Our Lady of Mount Carmel school are or have turned sixty in 2024. We and the other twenty odd in our class have spread out across the world. Some we have lost, some have returned to their roots in our little bay, and some have no intention of coming back, even for a visit. Regardless, they shaped that vulnerable part of my life from that wide-eyed and frightening day on the bus until grade eleven graduation.

Not all these experiences within those eleven years were fun I might add. Like being in the crosshairs of Rayme D when he had the dodgeball, and you were the only thing between him and a win. Not fun. Well, if he got you. But if you got him, that was a different story. New friendships popped up that remain today while others are just pictures in a yearbook because I haven’t seen them since the last bell in 1981. Overall, that was a time of growth. Moving on after that was quite traumatizing, as well. Not only because of what happened to me that last summer before grade eleven but also because it was going out into the world on a new school bus with nobody familiar around to keep me company. Social media wasn’t a thing, so our only social was within the walls of the school or the endpoints of North Harbour. The September after graduation, our worlds expanded. Knowing you’d survive it because you’d done it before was cold comfort. Again, I was ten days late starting and friendships had been made of which I was never part of. Being in the crosshairs of teachers maligning me because I was a girl trying to do a “man’s” job at Civil Engineering was also terrifying. It was a thing and the was hasn't quite lived up to its name because it's still a thing.

Then I got married and moved to a new community and the world expanded again. That time I had a partner who could introduce me to this new world. Family happens as family does and the next thing the world turned upside down and I was off to school again, college this time uncaring that I was alone going through the same doors that had not been kind to me the time before. It was different, not at all intimidating. I was older and my own care was for the family I got to see on weekends.  

After that it was off to work with the federal government, new world but a few people that I'd gone through college with accompanied me on that bus into the newest expansion.

I’ve spent a little less than half my life as a federal public servant. Now I can’t believe I have twenty-four work weeks until I leave that world behind. I made a decision in January that I’d retire this year. People who don’t know what it is actually like to work as a federal public servant will say, “oh, you had it knocked,” meaning that I cruised through those twenty-seven years without much to do, with no stress, feet up, paid well, etc. That’s not the truth. To them that knows, I was driving the bus on so many things, out in front of change, pioneering, and working hard to improve things that made sense and unafraid to speak up when things didn’t. I can truly say I loved my job and even the times that the dodgeball was aimed at me was exhilarating.

My kids thought and still think I was/am a spy, but I digress.

Like all choices I make, I move on. I don’t waste time on a second guess, nor do I remake decisions. I’m excited for this new bus into the ever after of retirement. Perhaps I’ll spend some time at the wheel and perhaps I’ll do a hop on hop off version into my expansion. I have lots to look forward to and I’m not done yet. I’ll write more. I’ll adventure more. I’ll write more about those adventures. Maybe I'll start something new.

What I am most proud off is that I’ve made the most extraordinary friendships at school, at college, at work, and through writing, and those connections will continue long past my final day at work, October 15, 2024. I could never imagine all these people when I got on that bus in grade one.

As I reflect more on my twenty-four remaining weeks at work (I know the math doesn’t add up but that’s where the spy thing comes in 😉), in this year of 2024, it might seem appropriate to drink a “24” for the 24 remaining weeks, but I do have to work tomorrow and I’m allergic to beer.

Whether I have 24 minutes, hours, months, years, ahead of me, I know this is not an end but a new beginning. A chance to pick my expanding. Nothing I can change behind me. So, look out world, I’m being unleashed at a bus stop full of lessons learned and not an ounce of anxiety or fear as I look for destinations.

If you’re lucky enough to have me as your driver when you get on, your lucky enough. Kidding, not kidding. That’s up to you. Expanding happens all the time. Embrace it. Possibilities, come here till I get a look at you.

Update, we bought a house in St. Bride's so my 24 weeks turned into 18 months ~ maybe I should change that to 24 - (NAH) I'll do a 25 in 25 just to be sure. So, I did sort of change my mind, but I'll keep it at not really. The house changed my mind but the adventure will be worth it, I'm sure of that. 

A Game of Queens

For the last few weeks, the urge has been strong upon me to play a game of cards called Queens. Now it is no good having the urge by yourself if you have nobody to play it with because it is not a single player game. So, the gnawing sense of needing to play has been tumbling around in the white noise of the day, creeping into silent gaps, and waving for attention. I know the underlying cause, there is a picture of my father on my computer table. He is in the usual stance, shoulders pulled back, arms by his side, and making a funny face. That’s the way he posed for every single picture that he was in by himself if he knew the snap was coming.

If he was corralled to be in one of our wedding or the children’s christening photos, there was still the chance that the developed face would not be “resting face” Dad, but the distorted frame that you got. When he died on February 10^th, 2001, the funeral director couldn’t quite get that proper “resting face” though he was really resting then, because even in death, Dad had the last chance to make a face (just a little one, but I saw it and smiled).

He is gone 23 years today as I write this. There are no tears and not because I don’t miss him or because it’s been 23 years and you can’t possibly grieve somebody for that long, but because he wouldn’t want it. And by the way, only people who don’t experience grief put a limit on it. Do your own grief thing.

The want to have a game of queens is that grief playing in the background sending subtle reminders that somebody is missing, there’s a hole, and that I miss somebody because of it. Back in the day, we wouldn’t get our coats off on any day but would meet Dad walking toward the table with the two decks of cards and the biggest grin. We'd have to have an all-day game with a break for a mug up on the first day of a visit. He wore out some decks of cards and was the most cheerful when he was winning.

He could have had so many reasons not to be cheery because there wasn’t a lot of sunshine for him to brag about. His mother died when he was just a baby, 18 months old, and his dad died when he was a young boy. He lost many of his brothers in their youth and all his siblings moved away. He was a young orphan during the Great Depression which couldn't have been easy. He was working when he was twelve. He spent most of WW2 in the Forestry Unit in Scotland. He learned to read and write on his own and was dubbed to have a grade 8 education even though he hadn’t stepped inside a schoolhouse. He married at 36 and reared a big family with very little. He moved his house from John's Pond to North Harbour all on his own and board by board and then built it back up based on the numbers he’d traced on them as he took them down. Then, not too many years later the house burnt, and five of his ten children were gone. How much more we know nothing about because he never spoke of nor dwelled on hard times.

My father had a reverence for the past. He liked to talk about this old fellow or that old fellow and who he was related to and how. He’d be so proud to know of all the connections we’ve made to relatives in far away lands that are his great nieces and nephews through DNA and my writing. When my oldest daughter was around eighteen months old, he asked me to bring her in one November day. She was born on his birthday, and he wanted to see how big he was when his mother died. He still had memories of her.

As a young girl, I spent lots of time “in the country” with him at rabbits or trouting or picking berries. Bakeapples, especially, required a long hike of more than an hour to get to the right marshes. He had lots of patience with young legs and carried us across rivers on his back no matter how many of us went. And there was always a mug up or two somewhere during the days. He’d light a fire and boil a can of water for tea or bring a thermos or two. The pause in the day was important to him. When all of us got more interested in throwing berries at each other than picking, he’d round us up (not mad or impatient) and we’d head for home.

He also didn’t miss a day going to the church. No matter the weather, he’d rig up to step over our fence and make his way to the church for a few prayers. Even when he broke his ankle, he still went until later in life when his body didn’t allow him to go any longer. He continued to pray at home.

He was resilient because he had to be, a man of faith because he wanted to be, kind because he knew the value of it, happy because he also knew the value of that, and so many more great things that he passed on. Though a man of solitude, he was the epitome of a father by all accounts when we were growing up. I have lots of great memories of all the love that was shown in so many untraditional ways.

We’ve all got stories of how we came quietly into being. My father’s wasn’t remarkable by no means, but like many things, extraordinary happens when nobody is looking. Now I have to round up a crew to have a game of queens.