Category Archives: memories

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?

First love

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The Daily Prompt asks:  Remember your first crush? Think about that very first object of your affection. Oh, the sweaty palms. The swoony feeling in your stomach. Tell us the story of your first crush. What was it about this person that made your heart pound? Was the love requited? Change the names to protect the guilty or innocent if you must! No judgement here. Happy Valentine’s Day!

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He had red hair and freckles and was the cutest thing I’d ever seen.  His name was Andy Keen and we were in the same first grade class together.  I was six, and although I was too young to really comprehend what romantic love was, I spent hours gazing at him across the classroom.

My family lived in a cozy neighborhood in Oakville, Ontario.  Back in those days it was safe for kids to play in their front yard and wander back and forth to the neighbors.  On my way home one afternoon, I saw a white bunny rabbit hopping down the middle of the street.  I was elated.  I had been asking for a pet rabbit but couldn’t have one due to allergies.  I scooped up the bunny and took him home.  I named him Thumper and was allowed to temporarily set him up in our home until we found his owner.   As fate would have it, his owner was Andy Keen.  At the tender age of six, I took that as a sign that we were meant to be together!

At Show And Tell the next day, Andy was at the front of the class expounding on the traumatic events his pet bunny experienced as a runaway on the hard streets of Oakville.  During his emotional tale, I was overcome by desire.  I ran to the front of the class and kissed him on the cheek in front of the entire class.  I’m not sure whose cheeks burned hotter with embarrassment, but I took off like a shot out the classroom door and left Andy standing in front of the whole Grade One class, mouth gaping open, completely speechless.

Our love affair was short-lived.  Andy was mortified after the Show and Tell episode and made every effort to run the other way when he saw me coming.   I hope his therapy was brief and inexpensive.  🙂

The memories that will linger from Sochi 2014

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(image credit: sochi2014.com)

I have been watching the Olympics intermittently.  During the time that I have been able to stop and watch, there have been some proud Canadian moments that will live on in our history because they have been documented.  Athletes have been awarded medals that will be displayed for generations and their names have been chiseled into the stone tablets of time.  Those victories have been celebrated and are cemented into the foundation for our future Olympians.

Dara Howell, a young girl from a small town so close to mine, proudly claimed her Gold medal and made the boundaries of Cottage Country swell with pride.   Sisters Justine and Chloe Dufour-Lapointe topped the podium and took home Gold and Silver medals together.  Alexandre Bilodeau won Gold and, once again, shared a tender moment with his brother Frederic who has Cerebral Palsy and is, undoubtedly, Alexandre’s biggest supporter.   These are the precious Canadian moments that make us proud of our fellow countrymen and make us bleed white and red in their honor.  Support and pride can be felt across the country for ALL of our Canadian athletes.

But there have been moments that may never be recorded in the hallowed halls of Olympics gone by – moments that not only made me proud to be a Canadian, but proud to be a human being.  Newscasters delighted in showing the film footage of our Canadian ski coach, Justin Wadsworth, unselfishly replacing the broken ski of Russian skier, Anton Gafarovski, so he could “finish the race with dignity”.  Justin showed the world the heart of a former Olympian, the heart of a Canuck and the heart of the true human spirit.

Gilmore Junio has been plastered all over the coverage of Men’s Speed Skating because he gave up his spot in the 1000M race to allow his teammate, Denny Morrison, to compete after Denny fell in the qualifying round and was not entitled to race.  Denny went on to skate the track of his life after being cheered on by his family, Gilmore’s family and the rest of Canada, and he earned a Silver medal.  Gilmore may not have won a medal for the 1000M race but he won much more than that.  He won the heart of every Canadian and many other hearts from around the globe.  In true Canadian fashion, Denny Morrison is now campaigning to have Gilmore carry the Canadian flag at the closing ceremonies.

I can only hope when I think back on the Winter Olympics in Sochi that I will remember these moments and not just the jubilant faces on the podium as the winners received their medals.  The Olympic games are about being the best you can be and, in my opinion, Justin and Gilmore both won the Gold in that category!

Love lost, such a cost – Trifecta Challenge

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hands

He used to reach for my hand in the dark.  Even though he was asleep, his fingers would seek mine and become entwined.  He was an angel on Earth.  Now he sleeps eternally.

~~

(image credit: fineartamerica.com)

Written for the Trifecta Writing Challenge:  This week we’re asking for exactly 33 of your own words about love gone wrong.  But we’re asking that you not use any of the following words:

love
sad
tears
wept
heart
pain

Her chosen path – Trifecta Challenge

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The decision made so long ago,

for her child to be given a better life.

She watched her from a distance,

hidden in plain sight.

Never being her mother, only a vague reflection.

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(image credit: Thomas Leuthard)

~

Written for the Trifecta Challenge – On to this week’s Trifextra challenge.  This week we’re asking for 33 of your own words inspired by the following picture.  If you use the picture on your  blog, you MUST give proper attribution to the photographer by providing a link to the photo, not just to Trifecta.  Failure to comply will eliminate you from the challenge.

Good luck and have fun with it!

A Word a Week Photo Challenge

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I haven’t participated in this challenge for a while but A Word In Your Ear has a great challenge where she opens a page of the dictionary and chooses a word.  You can opt to submit a photo, a poem or story, whatever genre you choose to help you describe the word.

This week the word is undulate.  As soon as I read the word, I was taken back to one specific moment in my youth that I have never been able to do justice with words.

lights

(image credit: ecopedia.com)

We lay on our backs on the dock at our cottage staring into the beauty of the night sky.  The world seemed to stop to allow every bit of life’s energy to be absorbed by the Aurora Borealis.  The lake was a sheet of glass and, while the ground lay breathless, the green hues undulated against the backdrop of the atmosphere and reflected off the water.  Although we were perfectly still, our bodies felt like we were surfing on the movement of the Northern Lights.

This photo, although beautiful, does not do justice to that night sky so many years ago but it does give you a glimpse into the beauty that we had the chance to absorb.

Say “holy s&*t” to the dress

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One of my guilty pleasures is to watch the TLC show “Say yes to the dress”.   I find it a perplexing notion that I can spend hours watching women from all walks of life find their perfect wedding dress when my real-life experience was so monumentally terrible.

I was never the little girl who dreamed about her wedding.  I didn’t have a clue what style of dress I wanted when I said ‘yes’ to the proposal of marriage.  I DID know I had no desire to stand in a bridal shop looking at countless styles of dresses while five pairs of trained eyes bore into my soul, annoyed that I couldn’t make a decision.  So I began and ended my wedding dress shopping online and I was thrilled with my choice.  It really spoke to the casual style wedding I desired and to the fact that I would be wearing sandals instead of constricting, mutilating high heels.

wedding dress

(image credit: alfredangelo.com)

This was my vision.  This dress, in all its simplicity, spoke to me and truly conveyed the feeling I wanted to have on my wedding day.  It was fun, it was carefree, it was casual, in essence, it was me.  I knew there would be alterations required and I did my due diligence in researching a seamstress to make the necessary adjustments.  What I failed to factor into my wedding planning was that, although numerous people gave this woman a glowing recommendation, there was a chance that this clothier would do everything in her power to derail the possibility of this dress being on my body on my wedding day.

The initial meeting gave me no foreshadowing feeling that there would be any cause for concern.  Measurements were taken and discussions were had about removing the zipper and creating a corset-style back with just a hint of green under the lace to match the golf theme of the wedding.  Everything was going as planned but the seams of this agreement began to rapidly unravel.  Phone calls went unanswered, fitting appointments were rescheduled due to her personal conflicts and time marched ever so quickly towards the wedding day.  Appointments I arrived for were met with a closed sign on the shop and a promise that she would be in touch to reschedule.  It never happened.

After one fitting and no communication for weeks from this seamstress, my dress arrived at my mother’s house five days before my wedding.  My mom called to say the dress had been delivered and I was dumbfounded.  First of all, I had no idea how this woman had access to my mother’s address.  Second, I had never had a follow-up fitting and I had never seen any of the alterations, but my dress now hung in the hallway of my mom’s house awaiting my inspection.

With trepidation, I closed the door to the bedroom and eased myself into my dress.  My mother could hear my sobs on the other side of the door.  She let herself in and did her best to lace the corset at the back of the dress.  The loop holes were so far apart that, upon tightening the lace, I began to look like a ridge-back dinosaur.  The top of the dress had been taken in but had been sewn in loops over the outer part of the dress making it look like a Grade 9 Home Economics project that had failed miserably.  The dress was a write-off.

I quickly scraped up what was left of my hope and began to make panicked phone calls to any other tailor’s in the area.   As bad luck would have it, it was the end of September and the most popular time of year for Muskoka weddings – not one person had the time to fix my dress.  The butchered, lifeless dress hung in my closet and I fully and painfully cried myself to sleep for the first time since I was a child.

The following morning my best friend arrived with a coffee in one hand and a rainbow in the other.  She dragged me out of my house, took me into town to the fabric store and there we chose a pattern and some fabric.  In four remarkable days she and her mother measured, they cut, they pinned, they measured again, they sewed and they created the dress that I wore as I walked down the aisle four days later.  They are angels.

After the wedding dust settled and life got back to normal, I eventually got the money back for the alterations as well as the full cost of the wedding dress from the “alleged” seamstress  (a few threatening phone calls and face to face meetings from my then hubby may have expedited the process).  I can only hope she is enjoying the career path she chose, the career path that led her to inexplicably close her business without notice and decimate the lives of the customers she left hanging in the balance.  After she hastily locked the doors to her alteration shop, she began her career as a Parts Manager in a plumbing store.  There has to be some “fitting” joke about her “flushing” her reputation down the toilet, but that would seem like a “common vent”.    I shall take the high road and wish that the only “snake” in her life is no longer her but the one used to clean out clogged pipes!

Instant idiot, just add alcohol

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This post was inspired by a weekend that happened at my former place of employment.  I’m not sure why this memory surfaced, perhaps because hiring season has begun, but I heed to the advice of my muse.

Our resort hosted a few bus loads of college students, or perhaps a more appropriate definition would be potential future employees.  These eager young scholars were taken on overnight excursions from resort to resort to see what working life would be in their chosen field of hospitality.  The direct result of this adventure was more of an extended recess than a field trip.

There is a reason that the LCBO and multiple organizations urge us to drink responsibly.  After a few too many, we become abhorrent mutations of our former selves and lose all sense of discipline and self-control.  The “White Elephant in the Room” campaign is meant to draw attention to drinking and driving.  Perhaps we should also have a campaign for drinking and being an idiot.   For now, let’s call it the “Saturated Moron” campaign.

I’m not going to lie and tell you that I have never over-imbibed but only once have I ever lost control of the person I have strived to become.  And even in that moment (that I am not so proud of) I have never left an impression of myself that created any ill will, any harm or caused any negative feelings.  With the advancement of technology today we have more than a fair shot of seeing our misgivings pop up on websites like YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook but that doesn’t seem to be enough of a deterrent for those afflicted with the “soak me in booze until I’m flammable” syndrome.

There are certain things to keep in mind when you are beginning a night out with friends and alcohol will be involved.  If you think you become more attractive when you’re hammered, you do not.  If you feel you can dance like a professional, this is untrue.  And if you think your friends won’t take every opportunity to humiliate you and make sure there is photographic evidence of your drunken shenanigans, think again.

Obvious health reasons aside, when we drink too much we simply make bad choices.  Perhaps the first bad choice was to drink to excess in the first place.  The thing to remember is what has been done cannot be undone.  People have very long memories when it comes to things you have done in a drunken stupor and they will do their best to never let you live it down.  Undoubtedly, they will take every opportunity to replay the videos or repost the images of your misfortunes during your intoxication.

Drinking to excess can cause you to black out and have no recollection of the events of the previous evening.  Be assured, it will either come back to you in small scenes like a movie trailer that you can’t seem to stop or in one horrific flashback that you wish you could eradicate from your memory.

These hospitality pupils failed to maintain any sense decorum during their visit because alcohol, which began the night as the co-pilot, swiftly took over the driver’s seat and all Hell broke loose.  The resort showed the battle scars the following morning as toilet paper dripped from the trees.  Broken glass could be seen littering the ground at every turn and a window was broken as the hooligans attempted to gain access to any snacks that may be hiding in the front office.

I can only imagine the fetid stench emanating from the bus windows on that long, torturous ride back to school.  My sympathy to the driver who may still be in therapy a year and a half later.  I’m sure the simple message about drinking to excess was lost on these poor, hung over souls but there was one directive that rang loud and clear that morning – I would not be hiring, or even recommending, any of those students for future employment.

There will be no ringing, merely a silent welcome

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The end of the year is nigh. As the clock slowly discards the seconds and minutes of 2013 the mad preparations begin for those who want to ring in the New Year with a bang. Parties are planned, the guest lists are set and the decorations are waiting to be boldly displayed. The party hats are silently waiting in a corner soon to adorn the heads of the anticipated drunken guests and the blowers will soon be filled with alcohol saturated saliva. The song Auld Lang Syne will be warbled, some syllables will inevitably be missed by the inebriated choir, and some words will be hysterically incomprehensible.

new-years-eve

This year, once again, I am following a beloved tradition that I started a few years ago – I will welcome the new year at home with no loud music and no intoxicated visitors. Like Valentine’s Day, for me New Year’s Eve is a holiday that I cannot seem to celebrate with the same enthusiasm as others. January 1st is certainly a new beginning but it really is just another day. It does not wipe the slate clean going into that New Year but brings with it all of the memories and experiences from the previous year. I do enjoy embracing a new calendar year and do think about the potential that the year ahead may embody but I choose not to begin that new calendar year with my arms wrapped around a porcelain vessel while popping Alleve like Tic Tacs and drinking more water than a camel that bypassed every pond in the desert.

My New Year’s Eve is quiet, contemplative and subdued. My New Year’s Eve is filled with twinkling lights, rich harmonic voices and the company of my four-legged fur child.

The beef tenderloin is in the fridge, the extra-large uncooked shrimp are in the freezer and an aged Shiraz Cabernet blend that I have been saving is awaiting the countdown on December 31st. This is my perfect New Year’s Eve. This small piece of solitude and reflection before the beginning of a new year is my favorite way to welcome January 1st. There are no noise makers, there are no obscenely drunk people pin-balling from random pieces of furniture and there is no making excuses for leaving early before the big countdown. This is bliss.

After setting up the candles and starting The Tenors ‘Lead With Your Heart DVD’, I will open up the wine and remove the crystals. I will graciously let it breathe on its own for about 20 minutes before I assist in the process and begin giving it mouth to mouth for about three hours. I will let all of the bad moments of this past year remind me of the lessons I learned and I will let the good moments bathe me in a euphoric feeling that I will carry with me into 2014.

Happy New Year to you all and may 2014 be the best year yet!!

Stories of Christmas

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Another Christmas has come and gone leaving us with more great memories for the scrapbooks in our minds.

My sister-in-law kidnapped my mom from her new home and Christmas Eve was spent standing in a sub-zero temperature to watch Santa Claus go by on the fire truck.  This has been a tradition in our family since we moved to our small town in 1976.  This year, however, was the first year that a Command Post vehicle followed behind the fire truck in case Santa became thermally challenged.  I’m sure somewhere in his mind the Ho-Ho-Ho evolved into Ho-Ho-Holy S*&t it’s cold up here.

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Once again we went, as a family, to church but this year there was no fear of having to don a Shepherd costume and stand in front of a crowd.  Roles had been pre-assigned and we were able to sit in our pews and enjoy the performance. The three Wise Men this year were comprised of an older gentleman, a seven-ish year old and a stand up comedian, turning their show into a couple of wise guys and a very confused child!  Hilarity ensued and our hearts were definitely light allowing us to forget the frigid temperature outside and the fact that the heating system inside the church couldn’t fight off the cold.

Christmas morning welcomed us with a beautiful sunrise and a temperature of -30C but nothing could slow the pace of gifts being exchanged and paper flying.  Although we had decided a few years ago not to exchange Christmas gifts, my brother surprised me with a CD of my grandfathers dialect stories that had been converted from a vinyl album.  It was an amazing gift and one that I will treasure.  My nephews ventured off in their own directions, one wearing his new blue tooth headphones and the other jumping into a new book and devouring the words.  My brother headed for the kitchen and, even after five cups of coffee, I still managed to squeeze in an hour and a half nap before enjoying the turkey dinner my brother and family created.

After pushing our chairs back to let the turkey settle, we listened to some of my grandfather’s stories as a family.  My youngest nephew had listened to the recording so many times he could recite bits of the stories and my oldest nephew punctuated the end of a conversation with one of the best endings to one of the stories – “so long, fat ass”.  His timing was impeccable and there may or may not have been some cheesecake remnants sprayed onto the tablecloth.

It was agreed that my mom would have another sleepover and, one by one, we began to assume something reminiscent of a reclining pose.  My 13-year old nephew was a sitting duck on the couch when the tickling began.  The musical sound of his laughter filled the living room and, after exhausting all my efforts, I finally heard the three words that every Aunt longs to hear – “Stop, I’m peeing.”

I hope you all had a Christmas celebration that will leave you with stories of your own to pass down over the years.  May our hearts continue to be light and may we feel this same Christmas spirit throughout 2014.