Category Archives: history

The birthday present that keeps giving

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The first phone call today won’t be my mom or my dad calling to wish me a happy birthday but somehow I know theirs will be the first wishes of the day.  That is how it always was and how it shall remain.  And the first face I shall see when I wake up is the same face (or close to the same face) it has been since I was a child.

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My mom made this Winnie The Pooh for my first birthday in 1970 .  Since then he has helped celebrate my successes, been suffocated in my hugs, saturated in my tears and dragged through more drama than a bear should have to face.  But his allegiance to our friendship remains just as strong now as it was then.

Birthday celebrations would not be the same without Winnie.  It may be a childish tradition but that bear represents a great deal of love and a longing to hold on to the memories that mean so much.  He has seen his share of joy and tragedy.  He has undergone facial reconstruction and some botched plastic surgery (thanks to an over-excitable Labrador Retriever that belonged to a roommate) but he never fails to hang in there to share year after year with me. He and I have weathered many successes and many ominous periods together but he still remains the same source of comfort he has always been.

I can’t imagine a birthday celebration without him.  And now that my mom is gone, Winnie is the strongest connection to her that I can still hold in my hands.  His abiding presence in my life not only allows me to look to the future but keeps me rooted in my past.

Happy birthday Winnie.  May we be together, sharing our day, for many years to come.

 

 

 

Willie, may the odds be ever in your favor

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Superbowl Sunday has arrived!  The culmination of seventeen glorious weeks of watching the pigskin, followed by Playoffs and now it’s time for the Big Show!!  Even the groundhogs get a reprieve this year and get to watch the game in the comfort of their burrows without being dragged into the daylight until tomorrow.

Ah, Groundhog Day – that magical morning when we put our faith in an abundantly nourished, rotund mass of fur to predict the arrival of Spring.  This over-sized rodent is depended upon to prognosticate to the best of his ability and tell us, by virtue of seeing or not seeing his shadow, when we can expect the return of Spring.

Last year my post about this auspicious day focused more on the history and process of Willie’s predilection for weather.  This year I thought I would look at things from the perspective of poor Wiarton Willie (the Canadian version of Punxsutawney Phil).  First, he is rudely roused from his winter-long slumber to come out of his burrow and predict something even educated meteorologists cannot agree on.  Second, when he finally does make his appearance, he is greeted by a bemused but somewhat urgent crowd as they try to keep themselves warm enough to endure the period-costumed pomp and circumstance.

I am inclined to guess that Willie’s urge to get back into his cave has nothing to do with seeing his shadow.  I don’t know about you but, if I awoke to large crowd focused solely on me, I would be in one Hell of a hurry to bury myself back under my nest of blankets, shadow or not.  I feel somewhat sorry for Willie.  After being forced from his snug home out into an artic-like morning, the New England Patriots are probably not the only ones with deflated balls.

Given the success rate of these whiskered weather forecasters, the only prediction I would really take to heart is perhaps Willie’s prophecy about Superbowl 49.  Enjoy the game Willie and good luck with the madding crowd on Monday!

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Getting the lead out

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The Daily Prompt had me thinking again this morning.   This is what it had to say – “When was the last time you wrote something substantive — a letter, a story, a journal entry, etc. — by hand? Could you ever imagine returning to a pre-keyboard era?”

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I vaguely remember the pre-keyboard era.  Either that, or I am trying to block it out because I do remember it and it makes me feel somewhat vintage.  I was the girl who loved to write letters to pen pals, write silly love poems, short stories and crazy plays that could only be created by an 8-year-old mind and acted out by animal puppets.

I would spend hours printing and practicing my ‘cursive’ writing.  (that word plays heavily in my vocabulary these days, but with an alternate suffix and a very dissimilar meaning!)  I loved to write so much that my wonderful penmanship turned into an obsession with calligraphy.  My doodles in high school were never flowers or hearts, but intricately designed versions of the alphabet.  There was something so satisfying about being able to create that type of flare with my own hand.

calligraphy

(image credit)

Now the world is so different.  Millions of fonts can be downloaded with the touch of a button on the keyboard and all of that creativity I used to enjoy has been replaced by technology.  I miss the excitement of buying new ink for my calligraphy pen or having to buy new pencils because I had spent so much time writing that they had all been worn down to little nubs of wood and lead.

Although I began writing my novel in longhand, the novelty wore off when I realized how much faster I could record the ideas on ‘paper’ by using a keyboard.  I do miss the days of the natural flow of ideas from brain to pen or pencil and didn’t have to tune out the incessant clacking of the keys.  Oh, how we suffer now for our arts.  😉

 

 

Sometimes you just need to look backwards

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reflection quote

“A lake that is noisy cannot reflect anything”

– Robert Adams

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I like to spend time reflecting.  I don’t dwell on the past but I do visit from time to time so I can take a moment to appreciate the lessons I have been taught along the way.  I am a different person from the one I was masquerading as many years ago.   And yesterday, the serenity of my day off provided me with ample moments to look back and plenty of time to plan my journey forward based on where I am in my present.

My lake was quiet today.  It afforded me a few precious moments to realize that if I hadn’t experience failure, I wouldn’t have learned to appreciate success.  If I hadn’t lost pieces of myself along the way, I would never have been able to have found the real me and respect who I truly am.

Looking backwards may seem like a waste of time but that personal reflection will remind you of where you came from and make you acknowledge where and who you are today.

The perception of time

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“Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.” ~ John Lennon

Time is a less of a constant than it is an illusion.  Although it seems linear, it can deviate from its path if  you are not keeping track of it at every turn.  Time can occasionally seem like it is a figment of your imagination.

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Yesterday, I experienced time on a whole new level.  My hour-long drive seemed to take a week and the four hours I spent catching up with an old friend was gone in the blink of an eye.  And although twenty-five years have passed since we last saw each other, the ease of the conversation made that twenty-five years feel like only one year.

Time has a unique way of showing us what really matters.  The faster those seconds tick by, the more you want to make that clock stop and hang onto those moments.  Because time really is measured by those moments and not by a clock.  You will never remember the counting of those seconds, but you will remember the company you shared and the laughs you had as those seconds unknowingly ticked by.

I can only hope that the time that passes between now and our next visit doesn’t feel like another twenty-five years.

 

Knock, knock. Who’s there? It’s your past.

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knocking

When people think of their past knocking on their door, occasionally there is a nagging worry of something coming back to haunt you and uncovering long-buried skeletons.  This was not the case for me.

I was sitting at my desk yesterday when a short email popped up in the work inbox from a name I have not seen in twenty-five years.  “Hey, it’s Marty from the 80’s…..write me back if this is you.”  The most astonishing thing about getting this email is that I had been searching for Marty online for the past two months, to no avail.  He seemed to be off the grid.

My brother and I spent much of our younger lives hanging out with the same group of people.  It was a great way to grow up and it made us very good friends as well.   Marty was one of those guys that was very tight in our circle of friends.  My parents had welcomed him as one of their own and we created many great memories back in the good old days.

I stared at the email and read it over and over again.  We exchanged a few brief messages and I knew I had to hear his voice.  As soon as we started chatting, it was like I had stepped into a time machine.  I could picture the feathered black hair and was immediately reminded of the song he loved to roller skate to (it was the 80’s after all) and that song now finds itself among the collection of tunes in my iPhone.

It was a truly serendipitous moment.  After a very long hiatus, we have Marty back in our circle of friends and many years ahead to catch up on all of the ones we missed.

(image credit)

 

Innocence (fiction)

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The curtains had already parted and the blackened room was silent.  There was no Maestro leading an orchestra to fill the deafening reticence.  He was pushed forward onto the stage and he sat in the still, invisible air, straining to hear any signs of movement or shallow, clandestine breathing.  The scraping sound of the rusting pulley system startled him as the curtains were drawn closed behind him.

 Although he was not bound to his chair, he was unable to move.  The bright stage lights abruptly came to life and blinded him, etching his likeness into the velvet material behind him.  He could not see the crowd that sat only yards away from him but he could feel them.  He could feel their hatred and the anger in the myriad pairs of eyes burning into every fiber of his being.  

The energy in the theater rose to a climax and the chanting of the crowd became almost ritualistic.  The three-dimensional quality of his body seemed to dissolve under the pressure of their angst.  His tortured screams filled the hallowed space.  They came to reap what he had taken from them.  They wanted their souls back.  One by one he felt the energies being ripped from his body and his cries slowly muted into whispers.  His physical body became lifeless and transparent and his screaming could no longer be heard.

His own soul had been the last to leave his body.  His mouth is forever open, frozen in a scream of repentance and regret.

7, January 1655

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“Do you believe any of that, Marcus?”   Danielle continued to read the information in the tour brochure.

The tickets to the historical theater are sold for $10.00 each.  Those who really want to impress their friends say they can still see his shadow on the curtain but those who come looking for their lost soul can still hear him screaming, fighting to get back the essence of the souls he had taken.

Marcus shrugged and didn’t know what else to say.  “Maybe Pope Innocent X wasn’t so innocent after all.”  He subconsciously rubbed his fingers on his ears to silence the sound of the more than century-old screams.

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Written for the 2nd challenge at Grammar Ghoul Press.  I love that this new challenge is greasing my writing wheels!  The challenge was to write a story based on the above picture and the following word prompt:

Reap (verb):
Receive (something, especially something beneficial) as a consequence of one’s own or another’s actions.

Lonely Boy – 100 Word Challenge

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We always find each other.  In each lifetime, on each plain of existence we come together again.  Our lives converge and our eyes meet.  We know we are two old souls being reunited and, with each meeting, the feelings become more intense.

But our timing is never perfect.  Each time fate brings us together the black keys on the piano play that melancholic refrain of longing.  It’s too late.  We both ignored the yearning from the past and forgot to wait.  But you are forever a part of my soul.

You are the lonely boy I carry in my heart.

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Written for the 100-Word Song Challenge at My Blog Can Beat Up Your Blog.  The song is Lonely Boy by The Black Keys.  (I even managed to get the band name in the story as well!!)

Juggling the balls of justice – Trifecta Challenge

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The prosecutor stifled his laughter.

“Did you, or did you not state, Mrs. Bobbitt, that you would go free because the evidence would not, um, stand up in court?”

She was not amused.

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

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Written for this week’s Trifecta Challenge – I’m really not sure why I chose Lorena Bobbitt and the misfortune of her husband’s manhood, but I did!  I apologize to all of the guys crossing their legs right now.

On now to our quick and dirty Trifextra prompt.  Plenty of times over the past two and a half years, we’ve given you the beginning of a story and asked for you to complete it.  This time, we are giving you the end, and we are asking you to start it for us.  We want 33 words in addition to and preceding the following:

That wasn’t what I meant.

So, to clarify, you write 33 words and then you tag on the five that we’ve given you.  Our five come after your 33 for a grand total of 38.

From the Horse’s Mouth, literally

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Today was a creatively inspiring day.  Today I went from not having any neurons firing in my brain to a cosmic overload of things I want to talk about.

On Friday I wrote a post about my first crush.  It was a Daily Prompt that inspired me to write a cute, truth-based story in response to the idea.  I haven’t thought about that adorable, freckled-faced red-head for many years but writing that post made me smile thinking about him.  The story also encouraged me to check the vast world-wide web to see if he would appear in real form instead of just the memory of a six-year-old.  The result of my search was successful and way beyond my expectations.  It also took me in a few directions I had not anticipated.

I had reached out to him on LinkedIn and found that he graciously accepted my invitation, perhaps out of morbid curiosity, but he accepted nonetheless.  We exchanged a few words and he inquired about the blog post that led me to him.  I acquiesced and sent him the link.  His initial response after reading it was more favorable that I imagined and I was curious to see where his life had led him after our brief time together in school so many years ago.

The object of my youthful affection is a now a documentary filmmaker in Toronto.  He has won several awards for his talent, including two Juno awards, and is now working on a project that is far closer to my life than I would have thought possible.  His company is called Regular Horse Productions (he was formerly with Horse’s Mouth Media) and he is currently making a film about Massey Hall, a significant Canadian structure, a piece of history that MY ancestors donated to the city of Toronto in 1894.  My middle name is that same family name and carries on the tradition of the historic family that is etched into the arts and entertainment district of one of the most popular cities in the world.

I have yet to discover the direction that his documentary will follow but I will be waiting with bated breath to see how my family history will come to life.  I have three original Chatelaine magazines from June to August of 1964 that document and detail the pilgrimage and the ancestral tree of the Massey family dating back to 1531.  Perhaps one day Andy and I will share a coffee and some conversation about my ancestors that will help shed some light on how that beloved plot of land was donated so many years ago and still thrives in Toronto today.

And to think, this random connection almost forty years later began with a school-girl crush and a lost bunny……who knew?