Hi everyone;
I don't know why the mood is striking now, but I am sitting in Starbucks recovering from two weeks at home with the kids, the holidays and more and the thought struck me that I should be writing down a few things....
Like when I started this blog originally, Facebook doesn't seem to be the place to share this much, so for those of you who are still subscribed in some way, or just the blogiverse in general, I am adding a potential overshare warning here since it's been quite some time since I typed out a blog post...
The first thing I guess I should do is apologize ... like many others before me, my blog just up and stopped one day with little rhyme, reason or warning... it wasn't that any major catastrophe happened, it actually crept up slowly - going from posting multiple times a day, down to once a day, then slowing to a few times a week... and finally one day I didn't open the laptop to write anything - and it stayed closed for a week... then two ... and life took over and I only felt small twinges of regret at missed opportunities and lost friendships when my blogging friends posted new and wonderful things about where their blogs were going...
May and June were incredibly busy months - Wayne was gone for several weeks to China - first with his MBA students and then with a group of undergrads he met up with and toured around all over - that left me single-parenting until we headed for our annual pilgrimage to Canada... but now that I write, I think my love of blogging died before that... when one of my heroes, my grandmother passed away in January of last year.
She was the one who always told me I should be a writer... and when she wasn't there to read and encourage me anymore, some of the light went out of blogging... sure, I kept going for a while, but it was mostly book reviews and shared content - it was as if my personal voice was silenced...
I threw my energy into organizing a tea party in her honor, and hugging my family more... and writing slipped further and further into the background...
Other things have filled some of the void- I started selling Pampered Chef, and Wayne and I are trying to find more date nights (and date lunches), the kids are busier than ever too... but I'll save some of that for future posts...
because slowly, surely, as the anniversary of her death approaches I am finding that my fingers are itching to share and whether anyone else is out there reading, I know that she'll find a way to see every word.
H.
Showing posts with label nana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nana. Show all posts
Wordless Wednesday - Visiting the Great Grandparents
And now that I've shown you mine, show me yours:
A Woman Who Inspires Me (Back to Blogging with SITS - day 4 )
I have to say that there are hundreds of women who inspire me daily... almost every blog I read gives me a chance to pause and consider things about my life and how I could be a better person... or what I could try... but it all goes back to the person who inspired me to start writing... and I write about her often - my grandmother.
Somehow, over the years she morphed from Nana to Grandma, but she has always been Dorothy or Dot... She was one of 19 children, 9 who lived to adulthood and she's lived her entire life in various towns and cities in Ontario, Canada... She raised four children of her own and now counts 12 grandchildren, 7 grandchildren in law, and 5 great grandchildren in her legacy.
I had the privilege last winter of being the second editor to her memoirs, a collection of short stories about her life that she originally published for her children about ten years ago, and wanted to update and share with her siblings and grandchildren. Technology has come a long way in 10 years, and my cousin and Aunt are putting the finishing touches on this second edition by helping her scan through the thousands of photos that help tell her story...
I'm going to borrow some of her own words to give you a small snippet of who my grandmother is today, and then link up a few of my own favorite posts from my Sunday Family Stories:
She opens her book with a preface that sums up some of the things that inspire me most:
Grandma took me back to the farm on Easter weekend. Needless to say, I was not allowed to go to Toronto to stay again until I left home for good at the age of fifteen.
My feet being faster than my head, instead of climbing down the ladder, I slid down the side of the hay mow, right onto the handle of a stable broom. I propelled myself face down onto the floor and tried desperately to remain conscious.
If you are playing along, please feel free to enter your posts in the linky below:
Somehow, over the years she morphed from Nana to Grandma, but she has always been Dorothy or Dot... She was one of 19 children, 9 who lived to adulthood and she's lived her entire life in various towns and cities in Ontario, Canada... She raised four children of her own and now counts 12 grandchildren, 7 grandchildren in law, and 5 great grandchildren in her legacy.
I had the privilege last winter of being the second editor to her memoirs, a collection of short stories about her life that she originally published for her children about ten years ago, and wanted to update and share with her siblings and grandchildren. Technology has come a long way in 10 years, and my cousin and Aunt are putting the finishing touches on this second edition by helping her scan through the thousands of photos that help tell her story...
I'm going to borrow some of her own words to give you a small snippet of who my grandmother is today, and then link up a few of my own favorite posts from my Sunday Family Stories:
She opens her book with a preface that sums up some of the things that inspire me most:
It has been said that ‘if you want to leave footprints in the sands of time, you had better wear work boots”. People say I am so lucky to leave a beautiful family, but I tell them, the harder I worked, the luckier I became! I hope by reading some of my ups and downs, the reader will understand what went into the making of my personality and how and why your life will be so different from mine.
My grandmother came into this world against the odds and continued to thrive despite odds to the contrary...
Dorothy Anne Theresa Oliver was born on September 5th, 1929 at the Grace Salvation Army Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, weighing less than five pounds.
When my birth was imminent, my mother was frying onions at a dining booth at the Canadian National Exhibition. The ‘big top’ called ‘OLIVER’S DINER’ belonged to my paternal grandparents. (I still love the pungent aroma of onions sizzling in a frying pan.)
I was the fourth child and first daughter of Stanly and Greta Oliver. My mother couldn’t believe the good fortune of bringing forth a girl after three boys. Also, in stark comparison to my brothers who had all been blond, I was dark skinned with a full head of black hair.
My parents named me Dorothy, which means ‘a gift of God’. (I found the poem entitled “Dorothy- a Gift of God” shortly after my mother passed away and shall always treasure it.) My second name, Anne was for both grandmothers, while Teresa was for one of Mother’s cousins who had been very good to her. In those days it was an honour, and expression to name a child after someone. Teresa and her husband Will Brown were childless.
Her family lived north east of Toronto in various places around Lindsay, Ontario and Bobcaygeon, Ontario. Infant mortality was still high in the twenties and she was a little fighter who battled through her first emergency surgery when she was six months old. My great-grandmother, another wonderfully inspiring woman whom I only had the privilege to know a short time, was almost continually pregnant (hence 19 pregnancies, many of which resulted in miscarriages or still-births). Times were tough when my grandmother was young - she grew up during the depression and moved around with her family quite a bit, following the work available...
In order to go to kindergarten, she was sent to live with her paternal grandmother in Toronto, a very pious and religious woman. In her memoirs, she recalls this memory:
Starting School
Kindergarten was not available in our one-roomed rural schoolhouse, so it seemed a good idea for me to start school in the city. At the tender age of five, I was sent to live in Toronto with my paternal grandmother and my father’s sister Aunt Gladys. Grandma Oliver was a devout Christian so she and I spent many hours at our local United Church. The first two months went well, although I missed my family and the farm.
Before I knew it, Halloween had arrived and I was invited to attend a masquerade party in the upstairs flat of a neighbor child. Oh how I wanted to go! But alas, I didn’t have a mask. I pleaded with Grandma, but she was adamant. I went to my room to drown my sorrows, crying into my pillow.
A little time later, Grandma entered my room with a compromise. Being very frugal, she wouldn’t give me the money for a false face, let alone a costume. She instead gave me permission to return two empty one quart milk bottles for a refund of five cents each at the Sunshine Dairy. I was then to cross busy Queen Street to the Woolworth’s Five and Dime store to purchase the mask. This would teach me the value of money.
I arrived at the dairy in lightening speed, and found myself at the end of a very long line-up for the cashier. Those bottles were getting heavier by the minute! At one point during my long wait, I thought I might reconsider and spend the money on the delicious looking apple blossom cookies that stared back at me from the glass case and just forget about the party. That decision was taken out of my hands when I finally reached the cashier. I set the bottles on the counter. Then the awful news was delivered that the bottles were not property of this dairy and they would not cash them in.
My world had collapsed and I began to cry! The Five and Dime would be closed in five minutes, so there was not time to return home for the ten cents. With my eyes blinded by tears, I crossed Queen Street against the red light. I was struck by a large transport truck and was rushed, without identification to St. Joseph’s Hospital. I was suffering from a broken leg, and a concussion. I was also unconscious and without my two front teeth.
My grandmother finally came to the hospital to identify me, but she never notified my parents. When Mother came to Toronto to take me home to the farm for Christmas, she was horrified to find me hospitalized. I remained there for a few more weeks.
More hardships lay ahead - in 1940, when World War II was ramping up, her mother gave birth to twin boys prematurely -
Naturally, I was very disappointed at not having a sister, but they were so tiny and needed so much care. Not expecting twins, especially not so soon, there were only thirteen diapers to use between them both. No disposable diapers in those days, nor did we have running water or electricity. I hemmed pieces of soft flannelette sheets to provide enough diapers for both boys.
Claude was the healthiest one, while Claire was so tiny that his head would fit in a tea cup. They were born in June, just as school was finishing for the summer. I had just passed grade six.
It was my job to feed Claire every two hours. No ‘Breck’ feeders back then, so he was fed with an eye dropper. I missed many days at school in order to help my mother.
My grandmother would continue to attend school somewhat sporadically and because of frequent moves didn't get established in any one place... when a bout of appendicitis left her too weak to walk to high school after completing tenth grade, she stayed home for a semester to continue to help her mother, who had more young children at home. Instead of returning to high school, she enrolled in Baker Business School and learned secretarial skills to complete her formal education.
She left home at fifteen years of age and moved to Toronto, taking a job as a clerk at an insurance company, making $75 a week. After two years of working there, and becoming permanent staff, my grandmother took a two week vacation and headed home to visit her family.
It was August of 1948, and she arrived during threshing time. After helping at a neighbour's house, her father was worried about their own hay, so she went out to help with their own crop.
We got the first wagon load up the gangway and onto the barn floor. Hay was usually taken from the wagon into the mow by way of the large fork suspended from the roof and operated by pulleys and ropes. Somehow it was jammed and wouldn’t come down. Dad remained on the barn floor while I climbed the ladder to the right hand mow and tried to trip it with a rope. I guess I wasn’t strong enough so I decided to try the left hand mow.
She was rushed to hospital and the doctor performed a new surgery that had been written up in the New England Journal of Medicine. Despite the odds, blood loss and potential complications, she was eventually able to recover slowly with the help of a new wonder drug - penicillin and a lot of rest.
She would eventually go on to move back to Toronto, marry, have those four children that I told you about at the beginning of this tale, help her husband build their own Glass and Mirror business and become a beloved matriarch to a growing brood of grandchildren and great grandchildren.
I have stolen snippets from her memoirs that don't begin to flesh out the life she lead as a child and young woman, but just the things she overcame in these incidents and all the other stories she has to tell, make her someone who continues to inspire me. She is now living in a retirement facility with my grandfather who is battling Alzheimer's disease and patiently answers the same questions twenty times a day. She is active in her community - having started a bridge club, playing scrabble and walking daily. She is also constantly working to improve life at their facility, going toe to toe with management on issues such as ensuring there is hot water in the on-site salon, food quality and service in the dining room and more...
I have shared several 'Sunday Family Stories' about my grandmother in the past - my own recollections about things that have shaped my own life and I invite you to read them if you are so inclined:
This post was written as part of the Back to Blogging challenge with SITS, sponsored by Standards of Excellence, Westar Kitchen and Bath, and Florida Builder Appliances.
If you are playing along, please feel free to enter your posts in the linky below:
Sunday Family Stories - Happy Birthday Nana!
Some of you may recall that a story about my grandmother was the impetus for starting Sunday Family Stories... and I had every intention of getting this story written long before 4:30 in the afternoon of her birthday, but life took over and I found myself sleeping through significant parts of today after not sleeping much at all last night...
My grandmother can star in many stories of my childhood - we lived not to far from her house and I was lucky to be able to visit her weekly for some 'me' time to escape from my siblings... she had a fabulous house for exploring - her bedroom was filled with costume jewelry treasures and a huge mirrored closet full of fun and exciting clothes... the guest rooms held shelves of books collected from all over, cupboards full of interesting items.
Her living room was great fun - with a glass grape lamp hanging from a swag chain over a comfy chair, a huge floral sofa flanked by two end tables - that usually both held candy dishes full of yummy treats (my favorite was bridge mix - chocolate covered peanuts, raisins and other stuff) and inside them were photo albums... pictures from my parents wedding, the weddings of her other children, pictures from when my mom and sibs were growing up and of course the requisite albums of all her grandchildren... When I was younger, I didn't fully understand the value of all those pictures, preferring instead to climb up on the couch to peer at myself in the large mirror that hung over the soft and make faces at myself... But as I got older, they held more and more fascination for me and we could sit for hours in the big red chair, with the grape lamp overhead and go through who everyone was in the pictures...Then there was the kitchen, a huge eat in space - all decked out with cool accessories that we didn't have - like a bread drawer, a huge lazy susan cupboard and a real broom closet. There was the cupboard filled with china tea cups and the one filled with pots and pans that nana didn't mind us pulling out to bang on with wooden spoons... the spoon collection that took up almost an entire wall, and a plate rail that held even more fascination ... my favorite thing was a jar that was labeled 'pickled bums' that had been a gag gift from her sister (I think)
Even more fun though, was the basement... where more treasures awaited - these treasures were toys from when my mom, aunts and uncle grew up in the house... there was the huge baby doll (who I swear was bigger than my sister until she was 4 - and probably weighed more than her til she was 6) who had seen better days, having lost her toes in some bizarre accident and was losing her hair... who sat in the full size carriage, waiting to be carried upstairs and outside for a walk down the street. There were the barbie dolls with classic 1960's features and the matchbox cars from another era... puzzles, games and more! There was also a bar with my grandfather's liquor collection, a fascinating clock with numbers made of dice, a shelf that held cards, poker chips and all manner of interesting things for gaming, and the ultimate thing for kids... a 'kid size' refrigerator that stocked soda pop... cause you know that mom and dad didn't keep pop in the house, so going to grandma's house meant having an icy cold sprite or wink!
As much as the house was a treasure, it was the outside of the house that sometimes fascinated me the most...
in the front yard there was a huge silver maple tree that seemed to go on forever to the sky, and lily-of-the-valley in the rock garden... the backyard had all sorts of treasures, including a huge lilac bush, honeysuckle bush for attracting hummingbirds, bleeding hearts, lady slippers and lilies and lots of grass to run!
But more important than the house itself was the warm welcome that I got every time I went there... from the time I was a little one to when I was a tween and teenager who was fighting constantly with my mother and who would trudge over to my grandmother's house for tea when I couldn't make my mom see my point... I remember one evening - not why I was mad, just that I was, that I left the house at 9 that night, went to the payphone to tell my grandmother I was on my way and arrived to hot tea and a plate of cookies to drown my sorrow and then a comfy night's sleep in the lavender guest bed before I had to face the reality of whatever it was the next morning...
I loved growing up so close to my grandmother and being able to share so many memories with her... if you haven't read my other stories, I invite you to check out:
I'm a Tea Granny and the other stories that I have written about our relationship.
I wish I could be with you today as you celebrate your birthday, but I look forward to our next game of scrabble when we can be together...
Love,
Heather
Her living room was great fun - with a glass grape lamp hanging from a swag chain over a comfy chair, a huge floral sofa flanked by two end tables - that usually both held candy dishes full of yummy treats (my favorite was bridge mix - chocolate covered peanuts, raisins and other stuff) and inside them were photo albums... pictures from my parents wedding, the weddings of her other children, pictures from when my mom and sibs were growing up and of course the requisite albums of all her grandchildren... When I was younger, I didn't fully understand the value of all those pictures, preferring instead to climb up on the couch to peer at myself in the large mirror that hung over the soft and make faces at myself... But as I got older, they held more and more fascination for me and we could sit for hours in the big red chair, with the grape lamp overhead and go through who everyone was in the pictures...Then there was the kitchen, a huge eat in space - all decked out with cool accessories that we didn't have - like a bread drawer, a huge lazy susan cupboard and a real broom closet. There was the cupboard filled with china tea cups and the one filled with pots and pans that nana didn't mind us pulling out to bang on with wooden spoons... the spoon collection that took up almost an entire wall, and a plate rail that held even more fascination ... my favorite thing was a jar that was labeled 'pickled bums' that had been a gag gift from her sister (I think)
As much as the house was a treasure, it was the outside of the house that sometimes fascinated me the most...
in the front yard there was a huge silver maple tree that seemed to go on forever to the sky, and lily-of-the-valley in the rock garden... the backyard had all sorts of treasures, including a huge lilac bush, honeysuckle bush for attracting hummingbirds, bleeding hearts, lady slippers and lilies and lots of grass to run!
But more important than the house itself was the warm welcome that I got every time I went there... from the time I was a little one to when I was a tween and teenager who was fighting constantly with my mother and who would trudge over to my grandmother's house for tea when I couldn't make my mom see my point... I remember one evening - not why I was mad, just that I was, that I left the house at 9 that night, went to the payphone to tell my grandmother I was on my way and arrived to hot tea and a plate of cookies to drown my sorrow and then a comfy night's sleep in the lavender guest bed before I had to face the reality of whatever it was the next morning...
I loved growing up so close to my grandmother and being able to share so many memories with her... if you haven't read my other stories, I invite you to check out:
I'm a Tea Granny and the other stories that I have written about our relationship.
I wish I could be with you today as you celebrate your birthday, but I look forward to our next game of scrabble when we can be together...
Love,
Heather
Sunday Family Stories - My first airplane ride (reunion wrap-up)
If you've been following along for the past few weeks, you know that when I was six years old, my grandparents, mother and siblings all piled into my grandparents motor home for a trip across three provinces and over 3000 kilometres to visit my grandfather's birthplace of Lac Vert, Saskatchewan. If you haven't - well, before reading this week's installment, you might want to get some background by reading part 1 and part 2
After having spent the better part of two weeks in close confines, not to mention the stress of traveling such a long distance, my siblings and I were starting to become unbearable brats... no amount of prodding, gentle persuasion or even threats were keeping us from acting like little terrors.
I remember specifically sitting with my grandmother at the kitchen table of the motor home while she tried to share a news clipping about the family reunion and how special it had been, not only for our family, but also for the town of Lac Vert. On any normal day, getting that one on one attention from Nana and reading the paper would have been important and special to me...especially since my name was printed in the paper as having attended... but my temper was so short and I was so out of sorts and tired that I did the unthinkable - I screamed, threw a fit and cried and said hateful things that I'm sure I apologized for later in life, but in the heat of the reaction, I was just a brat...
Things came to a head after that outburst, and the adults in the family realized that maybe another week to ten days cooped up together wouldn't be a fabulous idea after all... so while I calmed down and had a good cry on my grandparents big bed in the back of the motor home, a plot was hatched.
We'd drive to Saskatoon, the nearest city, and my grandparents would part ways with the rest of our clan... heading off for some well deserved 'adult' time, while my mom, sister, brother and I would embark on a new adventure together - an airplane ride!
We stopped in at a store on our way to the airport and we each got to choose a small toy and a book for the trip - my sister and I chose little dolls that came with accessories and a carrying case that strapped to your wrist and if memory serves, my brother picked a truck... These toys were safely stowed in Mom's carry on until we reached altitude and promised to behave for the rest of the trip, knowing that our new treasures would disappear if we fought (too much)
My sister and I sat together in the front of the plane, while my mother and brother sat a row behind us... I remember that neither Catherine, nor I got a window seat, because we had taken whatever seats my mom could book, so some poor business man was our window seat companion.
I had the aisle seat and remember people watching and talking to the flight attendants as they walked back and forth up the narrow aisles - I was lucky that for part of the trip my sister napped... so I couldn't fight with her too much :)
I also remember craning to look out the windows at the fluffy clouds and blue sky as the pilot crossed over Manitoba and brought us back into Ontario. I marveled that a trip that had taken us more than a week by land was over in about 3 short hours...
I'm sure we saved my grandparents sanity, and probably my mother's when the decision was made to head back quickly rather than staying with them and it capped off an adventure of a lifetime for this 6 year old and made memories that have lasted a lifetime!
What was your first experience or memory with airplanes? Do you have memories of family reunions or family summer trips? Please feel free to share them in the comments - or if you've written a post about it, leave a link for us to read about it!
After having spent the better part of two weeks in close confines, not to mention the stress of traveling such a long distance, my siblings and I were starting to become unbearable brats... no amount of prodding, gentle persuasion or even threats were keeping us from acting like little terrors.
I remember specifically sitting with my grandmother at the kitchen table of the motor home while she tried to share a news clipping about the family reunion and how special it had been, not only for our family, but also for the town of Lac Vert. On any normal day, getting that one on one attention from Nana and reading the paper would have been important and special to me...especially since my name was printed in the paper as having attended... but my temper was so short and I was so out of sorts and tired that I did the unthinkable - I screamed, threw a fit and cried and said hateful things that I'm sure I apologized for later in life, but in the heat of the reaction, I was just a brat...
Things came to a head after that outburst, and the adults in the family realized that maybe another week to ten days cooped up together wouldn't be a fabulous idea after all... so while I calmed down and had a good cry on my grandparents big bed in the back of the motor home, a plot was hatched.
We'd drive to Saskatoon, the nearest city, and my grandparents would part ways with the rest of our clan... heading off for some well deserved 'adult' time, while my mom, sister, brother and I would embark on a new adventure together - an airplane ride!
We stopped in at a store on our way to the airport and we each got to choose a small toy and a book for the trip - my sister and I chose little dolls that came with accessories and a carrying case that strapped to your wrist and if memory serves, my brother picked a truck... These toys were safely stowed in Mom's carry on until we reached altitude and promised to behave for the rest of the trip, knowing that our new treasures would disappear if we fought (too much)
My sister and I sat together in the front of the plane, while my mother and brother sat a row behind us... I remember that neither Catherine, nor I got a window seat, because we had taken whatever seats my mom could book, so some poor business man was our window seat companion.
I had the aisle seat and remember people watching and talking to the flight attendants as they walked back and forth up the narrow aisles - I was lucky that for part of the trip my sister napped... so I couldn't fight with her too much :)
I also remember craning to look out the windows at the fluffy clouds and blue sky as the pilot crossed over Manitoba and brought us back into Ontario. I marveled that a trip that had taken us more than a week by land was over in about 3 short hours...
I'm sure we saved my grandparents sanity, and probably my mother's when the decision was made to head back quickly rather than staying with them and it capped off an adventure of a lifetime for this 6 year old and made memories that have lasted a lifetime!
What was your first experience or memory with airplanes? Do you have memories of family reunions or family summer trips? Please feel free to share them in the comments - or if you've written a post about it, leave a link for us to read about it!
Canada Day recipe... Butter Tarts
This is my grandmother's recipe... and a yummy one at that... it makes wonderfully gooey tarts that just melt in your mouth...
12 pre-baked tart shells (2 inch diameter)
1 egg
1 egg sized piece of butter at room temperature (I always figure just over 1/2 a stick in the US)
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup golden raisins
Pre-heat oven to 350F
Mix eggs, butter, brown sugar and vanilla together in a bowl.
Cover the bottom of each tart shell with raisins then spoon the butter mixture over it to 2/3 full
Bake tarts for 7-10 minutes or until sugar begins to crystalize
Remove from oven and let settle for 1 hour or more...
Options: you can use walnuts or pecans in place of the raisins for a crunchier texture
You can also bake this as an 8 inch pie instead and increase the baking time to 15-18 minutes
Don't forget to come back tomorrow for the Nanaimo Bar recipe... and a surprise!
'Iwannastay'
Everyone has that special place where their childhood memories are all wonderful and you leave a piece of your heart... for me that place was my grandparents cottage on Chandos Lake in northern Ontario. As my grandmother described it in her memoirs, its a beautiful, clear lake surrounded by Jack pines, maples, cedars and more. It is a glacial lake carved into the Canadian Shield and is both deep and mysterious and sparkling and fun. Their little slice of heaven was originally a 110 foot frontage that they eventually added to when their neighbour Paul sold his land and little fishing cabin to them.
You arrive at the cottage by way of a number of small winding highways, followed by dirt roads that get smaller and smaller... and hillier and twistier... if you hit some of the hills just right, you leave a little of your stomach there... but not for long...
As you get closer to the cottage the forest starts to envelop you, with occasional breaks for sparkling sunshine... There's no glimpse of the lake after you leave the last highway... and even then its only a brief view at the public beach... but its enough to whet your appetite to jump straight out of the car, run past the building, down the stairs and off the dock into the cool, clear depths..
There are so many floods of memories once I am there that it's hard to pinpoint just one or two...and before I do, now that I've set the scene, I'd like to share a few of my favourite pictures.... Chandos Lake at twighlight... taken the last time I was there.... in Summer 2007.
You arrive at the cottage by way of a number of small winding highways, followed by dirt roads that get smaller and smaller... and hillier and twistier... if you hit some of the hills just right, you leave a little of your stomach there... but not for long...
As you get closer to the cottage the forest starts to envelop you, with occasional breaks for sparkling sunshine... There's no glimpse of the lake after you leave the last highway... and even then its only a brief view at the public beach... but its enough to whet your appetite to jump straight out of the car, run past the building, down the stairs and off the dock into the cool, clear depths..
There are so many floods of memories once I am there that it's hard to pinpoint just one or two...and before I do, now that I've set the scene, I'd like to share a few of my favourite pictures.... Chandos Lake at twighlight... taken the last time I was there.... in Summer 2007.
Now as for memories... in a place that beautiful there are many. My favourites were learning to play bridge and scrabble around the kitchen table after we had cleared off and washed the dishes.. no dishwashers there... jumping off the dock for the first time every summer, just to see if the water had warmed up.. but of course it was still cool, clear and beautiful... the lake was so deep that the water never really warmed past cool.
It was a great place to be a kid and explore... there was 'Club house mountain' where bits of wood had been cobbled together to make a table and chairs so that we could go and climb the large rock and have a place to eat the candy we had conned out of Mom or Pompa (Grandpa) after a boat ride to one of the three marinas... my favourites were always the shaped sugar candies that came in garbage pails, lockers and other neat shaped containers, but sometimes you just craved any candy...
There were trips to the neighbours cottage - we didn't really socialize with either of our direct neighbours - at least the kids didn't...there were no kids there :) but we'd spend hours at the Canden's cottage two doors over... not really an kids there either, but Mrs. Canden had all kinds of toys and neat things in her small cottage... and a really neat concrete dock that jutted high out of the water to jump off. As we got older, the thing to do was to jump off our dock, swim to the Canden's, climb out and run, soaking wet, back to our cottage and start again... then we'd become better swimmers and would swim there and back, and finally, as we got older we'd be able to swim the other way... past several cottages of people that Nana and Pompa knew, but we didn't.
The other thing I remember about the cottage is that's where I developed a love of bird & animal watching. The kitchen and living room both had wide expanses of windows, due mostly to the fact, I'm sure, that my Grandfather was in the glass and mirror business... but it was a wonderful window on the world.... and with all those trees, not a minute went by when you couldn't see a curious chipmunk, chatty red squirrel, blue jay, hummingbird, chickadee, or any other of a multitude of birds, animals and insects... my favourite to watch for was the Great Blue Heron... if you were up early enough, he'd be there waiting to say good morning, standing on the end of the dock, watching the glassy water for his breakfast. Sometimes he'd do a fly by later in the day, but he was almost always there in the creeping dawn....
If you didn't know what bird you saw, Nana was the expert... with her Peterson's Guide to Birds, well loved and never too far away. I also learned all about the fish in the lake, but was never really a fisherman... the rule was you had to bait your own hook and take off your own catch and that wasn't for me... so my brother and sister fished, and I cast a weighted bobber off the dock with no hook, just for casting practice...
My favourite time of year at the cottage was the middle of August... Raspberry season... There is absolutely nothing like fresh-picked wild raspberries that you've scoured the ditches by the dirt road for... juicy, tart and perfect... we'd pick pints at a time and they'd be gone within an hour... the only evidence was the raspberry stained plastic container and our juicy looking fingers... One year we actually had a bumper crop available, so much so, that we pulled all of Nana's recipe books down, searching for yummy raspberry recipes... and decided to make Raspberry Sherbert.. My Aunt Barbara helped and boy was it delicious...
The cottage was a great place to be a kid... and my Great-Uncle Dick Parker christened it with its name long before grandchildren were even a thought on the horizon, but he knew exactly what all of us were going to say at the end of our time there... "Iwannastay"
Sunday Family Stories - I'm a Tea Granny...
I was struck by a flood of memories while I was pouring my tea this morning ... probably because I have started to scan some old family pics now that I've finally hooked up my scanner... but the ritual of having a nice hot cup of tea goes way back into my childhood...
I've been drinking tea (heavily laden with milk) since I could drink out of a cup - its just the way things go in my family... but one of my fave stories from childhood is:
My mom was a Stay At Home Mom with 3 kids under 3 years old - me being the oldest and the bossiest of course... and so I had a standing once a week playdate at my Nana's house so that mom could have a bit of sanity in her world... (who can believe that a mom of 3 toddlers could need sanity...). It started when my sister (the middle child) was little and continued on after my baby brother (not so little any more) were born... but somewhere in there, I was about 2 ... and I came home from my Nana's house to have a cup of tea with my mom and announced "I only drink tea from a china cup!" "Nana says tea tastes better in a china cup!" to which my mom promptly announced that I should move in with Nana, because in her house tea came in mugs...
I've been drinking tea (heavily laden with milk) since I could drink out of a cup - its just the way things go in my family... but one of my fave stories from childhood is:
My mom was a Stay At Home Mom with 3 kids under 3 years old - me being the oldest and the bossiest of course... and so I had a standing once a week playdate at my Nana's house so that mom could have a bit of sanity in her world... (who can believe that a mom of 3 toddlers could need sanity...). It started when my sister (the middle child) was little and continued on after my baby brother (not so little any more) were born... but somewhere in there, I was about 2 ... and I came home from my Nana's house to have a cup of tea with my mom and announced "I only drink tea from a china cup!" "Nana says tea tastes better in a china cup!" to which my mom promptly announced that I should move in with Nana, because in her house tea came in mugs...
me and my Nana - whose name eventually morphed in to Grandma, 11 years go at my wedding.
Tea is one of the things that all the women in my family share - along with other rich heritage... All of us, the first daughter of a daughter (including my daughter of my heart, Robyn) all share Anne as a middle name. I have a picture of me, my mom, my Nana and my Great-grandmother - the four Annes as we were called from when I was about 5 years old... (for Mother's Day 1980 as my Nana kindly inscribed the back of the frame)
As a child, my Nana's house was a wonder - in her basement was a great family room and a closet that was six feet wide and chock full of toys from yesteryear - there was the large plastic dolly (toddler sized) with no hair and no toes who was walked up and down the street in the huge pram that I'd been walked in... barbies from the 50's and 60's and all manner of other great toys... She had a big family style kitchen with a cupboard full of neat instruments of torture... plastic containers, old pots and such that we could pull out and bang at will... there was the living room where you had to be on your best behaviour, with its floral couch, red chair and ottoman, big mirror above the sofa made for making faces in, and the fascinating bunch of grapes lamp that hung over the big red chair... but my two favourite things about being let into the living room were the covered candy dish that was always full of neat things and the end table that stored the memories - photos of all shapes, sizes and descriptions - from baby pictures to wedding albums to birthday celebrations - it was all there behind the doors with the little hooped pulls...
My tea this morning sparked all those memories and more, and what's more, I am currently transcribing my Nana's memoirs for her and learning more and more about the remarkable woman she is... stories I've heard and some I haven't are coming alive... so I dedicate this blog post to my Nana and plan to offer you more insights into my family history over the next several weeks ... so that maybe over time I can build a legacy for my children and grandchildren as strong as the one I am helping to transcribe :)
Thanks for reading,
H.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)