Category Archives: tradition

Life gets in the way

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I made myself a promise that I would post a blog every day through the  month of November and, although I gave it a good run, I have failed.  Yesterday was the first day I didn’t post something and, although I feel slightly disappointed, I am not going to beat myself up about it.

Trying to find something to post about every day is difficult.  Sure, I could rely on old posts or memes to get me through but that would not be me and yesterday was a busy enough day without having to make time to create a meaningful post.

Having posted every day for 18 days in a row has been a blessing.  It has re-awakened my passion to write.  It has helped me to harness that creative flow within me and has given it a chance to speak again.

Life gets in the way of our best laid plans but, if we can keep the big prize within our sights, we can overcome any obstacle to make that plan a reality. I want to write.  I want to be published, and life is not going to get in the way of that.  Even if  I miss a day or two of blogging, it just means my creativity is being stored for the days that my words will have more meaning.

Me scribere.

 

The traditions of Christmas

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Each year, when my father was still with us, he would phone at 6:00 am to wish me a Merry Christmas and get the day started.  This year, I expect the lines from Heaven will be clear again Christmas morning and that phone in my head will ring just prior to that dreaded time in the morning.  But this, admittedly, is among the favorites of my Christmas memories.

There are many Christmas traditions we still follow and, although they become slightly modified as the years pass, the holidays wouldn’t be the same without them.  After we moved to our tiny little town, Christmas Eve was spent bundled in our warmest winter gear standing at the end of our driveway.  The sirens could be heard before the truck was spotted and the lights would crest the hill by our house.   Santa Claus was atop the biggest fire truck and would pass all of the eager children, bundled tight like we were, waiting for a glimpse of the big guy before we were hurried off to nestle in our beds.  There were no visions of sugar plums, only the wonder of how he fit his ever-growing frame down our very thin stove-pipe. I pondered that thought until the weight of my eyelids became too troublesome and drifted into sleep with that unanswered query still nagging my brain.

Santa on a fire truck

As the years passed we began to give back.  We would faithfully wait at the end of our driveway with a case of beer for the jolly man and the rest of the fire department.  I mean, he had to have been freezing up there and what better way to keep him jolly than with some beer?  I’ll never forget the eve of one particular Christmas when Santa told us that he didn’t drink beer, but instead enjoyed a Rye and Coke.  I guess everyone has a Christmas wish and the following year we granted his with a tall glass of whiskey and carbonated syrup.  My gifts were fabulous that year!!

We almost missed him one year and I raced to the corner of the next street to catch him on his way back.  I stood in anticipation, forever in the shadow of the child I once was and with the smile of the child I hope to always be. Santa waved and wished me a Merry Christmas and I walked back home with a smile that went from one ear to the other.

Every Christmas morning we were allowed to open our stockings and then we were forced to stare longingly at the big presents under the tree while we choked down some breakfast.  That tradition should have been abolished but still remains intact. Paper flew, boxes were cast aside and we became buried in a pile of pure love.  Thanks to my mom, inevitably one or more of the presents would still have a price tag on them and that became a much-anticipated tradition as well.  My brother followed up spectacularly a few years ago by not only leaving the price tag on a gift for my sister-in-law but the price tag was hanging outside of the gift box and not wrapped up inside.

My mother was the David Copperfield of making presents disappear. She loved to start her shopping in June and would hide the packages where we would never find them.  She mastered her craft so well over the years that we would receive some of our Christmas presents in March when they magically appeared months after the festivities had ended.  There was always a competition between my brother and I to see who would open the last present on Christmas Day.  We would skilfully hide a gift or two and casually pull them out an hour or two after the mayhem had ended.  My mom changed the face of that contest and it was anyone’s guess as to whose Christmas present was going to appear at Easter!!

As I sit writing this, the gifts are waiting to be coated in the festive colors of wrapping paper.  The Shrimp Dip has been made by my brother, (hopefully there will be some left for the big day) and he is busy preparing his house for the onslaught of family, food and extreme commotion.  This is the best of Christmas.  It’s not the gifts or the decorations, it’s time spent laughing about the price tags, the long-lost gifts and the early morning phone calls. It’s watching my brother “float” his Christmas dinner in gravy.  It’s Santa Claus on a fire truck and being tricked by my nephews to play a Shepherd in church on past Christmas Eves. It’s a glass of wine with the people closest to me, the people who don’t care that I have to unbutton my pants after eating too much turkey or that I may just wear track pants this year.   Christmas is about presence and not presents.

To all of you and all of yours – a very Merry Christmas and happy holidays.

Balls to the wall

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It lay dormant, nestled in the corner of the family dining room at the cottage.  It listened to every one of our crazy conversations and eventually became the topic of many of those conversations instead of just blending into the background.

Its birth was accidental.  It came to be through a simple act of property maintenance.  The family cottage was built in the early 1900’s and had begun to show its age so, without regard for its final appearance, a spray foam was used to seal a few cracks in the old building.  What resulted in the upper corner of that dining room was eventually named and heralded as a true piece of our family history.

Perhaps this innocuous object was made more grotesque by my family’s depraved sense of humor.  It is even reasonable to say that other families may never look at this simple mass and see what we all saw.  But from the first time it was noticed at a family dinner, it was affectionately dubbed the “shiny ball sack’.

Over the years, this harmless protrusion witnessed our highs and our lows.  It feasted on the sounds of our laughter and it absorbed the collection of our tears.  Somehow that inanimate object became a large part of the traditions of our family meals and I was devastated to find out it was going to be amputated from its place in those family traditions.

I haven’t been able to visit the cottage yet this summer so I was unaware that the surgical removal had taken place – until today.  I came home from work to find a lovely gift bag on my front door step and when I saw what was inside, my heart swelled.  There, gently preserved in a shadow box, was the shiny ball sack that has been a part of our family dinners for decades.  My aunt had painstakingly saved this piece of history and presented it in a way that would allow me to keep this little gem of our family history safe and sound.

ball sack

My mom and I used to laugh endlessly about this mutation of foam and it will now find its place beside a picture of my mother in my living room.  It is a fitting ending to this chapter knowing that two of the things that brought me so much joy will be together again.

 

 

The mosaic of a life

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My drive to work each day is relatively stress-free compared to most commuters.  I have a 10-minute journey through a small, quaint little town and the traffic in the winter is minimal at best barring any unforeseen wildlife charging through an invisible cross-walk.

This relaxing drive affords me the time to look around and absorb the nuances that make me appreciate the fact that this town is my home.  Like all towns, Port Carling is steeped in rich history and tradition and we are proud to boast those memories in our Museum as well as through unique artist renderings.  In 2005, “The Wall” was unveiled and, at the time, it was the largest historic photo mosaic mural in the world.

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(image credit: muskokalakes.ca)

This tribute to history contains 9,028 individual photos that bring to life the 1922 RMS Sagamo going through the locks in Port Carling.  These photos span a century from 1860 to 1960 and yesterday, for some reason, this mosaic really struck a chord deep within me.  I have passed it every day on my way to work and never took the time to truly comprehend how snapshots of occurrences in our lives can create such a grand picture of our past.

So many little pieces of our history are used to make up our most significant memories. Stopping to look at this wall made me think of all the snippets that have etched themselves into my brain and have begun to create the mosaic of my life.  Some of those fragments in time are dripping with vibrant colors of happiness and others are mottled with the greys of anguish and grief, but all of those hues combine to create the spectral portrait of my life.   

If you were to create an emblematic picture of your journey, what would your mosaic look like?

#heartgrew3sizes

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My early Christmas memories consist of an overflowing Christmas tree with presents that never seemed to end.  As as child, I thought that was normal.  I lived with the belief that every voice in the world was hoarse from saying thank you after each gift had been torn open.   I assumed every house was just like mine and every child was lost in a sea of wrapping paper, ribbons and tags after the last gift had been opened.

But that mound of brightly decorated paper blinded me from the reality I would come to know as I got older.  My Christmas was not the normal image of the holiday celebration.  The large roasted turkey and all the accompanying dishes that adorned our table did not magically appear in every other house on Christmas day.  When I learned that fact, my happiness was changed.

I had been oblivious to reality until I was in my last years of public school.  I honestly don’t even remember if there were food and toy drives when I was that age.  I just recall the anticipation of Christmas morning, not even realizing that there were kids I went to school with that may not see anything under their tree on December 25th.

Over the last three years, the Christmas tree that has become most important to me is the one in our hotel lobby.  It has become a temporary home for gifts that we have collected or purchased with the generous donations of our many supporters.   This tree overflows, much like the one I remember from my youth, but it will bring smiles to many more kids than just the two children who stumbled upon our family Christmas tree on that much-anticipated morning every year.

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This tree holds the hope that so many more children will be able to open a gift on Christmas morning.  This tree embodies the true essence of Christmas because the gifts that lay under its branches come from people who will not get the gift of seeing a child’s smile as they open their presents on Christmas day.  This tree truly represents the spirit of giving.

I can only hope that my future Christmas celebrations will embody the generosity I have seen over the last three years.  And my Christmas wish is that everyone takes a moment to remember those less fortunate, especially during the holidays.  The season is about giving to everyone…..not just the ones on your list.

 

 

We should give thanks every day

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Although our Canadian Thanksgiving has come and gone, I came upon this post I wrote at the beginning of my blogging journey and I wanted to share it again.  May my friends south of our border feel as many thanks as I do each year during our celebration.

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(image credit)

My family is a collection of characters.  They are as unique as snowflakes.  No one member is remotely the same but they are all intelligent, articulate, thoroughly amusing and fun to be around.  There is never a dull moment at the cottage when the relatives are in town.

With our hectic lifestyles and spanned locations, we don’t get to see each other as often as we used to when I was a kid but that just makes holidays and get-togethers that much more special.  Since it is Thanksgiving weekend, we gathered once again to celebrate the holiday and enjoy each others company.  The stress of life and all of the troubles that we face during the day seem to melt away when the family reunites and nothing else matters except the people who embrace you when you walk over the threshold of the door to the family cottage.  The outside world ceases to exist and laughter and love wrap themselves around our family members like a warm security blanket.  The food is abundant, the conversation is easy and the feeling of love is overwhelming.  There is nothing more important than family.  We can be thankful for all of our possessions, our jobs, our wealth, but all of those things are replaceable.  Family is not.

Thanksgiving is a time to truly reflect on what is most important in our lives.   I am certainly thankful for my health, having a job that I love, co-workers that I admire and respect and possessions and a home that I truly appreciate.  But I am most thankful for the branches on my family tree that continue to envelop me and wrap themselves around me when I need them the most.

With each passing year, the trunk of our family tree grows stronger and it roots itself more firmly in the soil of our existence.  That tree has weathered many storms but still manages to endure the bad times as well as flourish in the good times.  Its bark remains tough but the core of our family tree still remains tender and nurturing.

As seasons come and go our family tree continues to thrive.   I am thankful for my ancestors who planted the original seed.  I am thankful for my family members who have passed and still hold roots in my tree.  And I am abundantly thankful for the family who continue to create branches on that ever-growing tree.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  I hope you all take a moment to give thanks for the things that are truly important in your lives.

A little blood on Halloween seems almost redundant

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I used to love carving pumpkins.  I was one of those weirdos hoping to have the most creative pumpkin on the block, so I bought a carving kit and some patterns and locked myself in a room to avoid distraction.

Walls were spattered with stringy pieces of eviscerated pumpkin.  Elongated strings of profuse verbiage slithered under the doorway, assaulting the ears on the other side of the door, and small drops of minor arterial spray infused themselves into the paint on the wall.  But at the end of the painstaking process I achieved success!  The copious amount of band-aids, blood loss and light-headedness were worth the effort.  My pumpkins were the talk of the town.  My then-boyfriend’s children (who I still refer to as my step-children) were even proud to acknowledge the creativity on our front doorstep.

After my first attempt, I became a little less guarded when it came to the carving process and the whole family would get involved.  Where there were originally only two arms covered in pumpkin guts, eight sticky arms reveled in the joy of dissecting the large gourds and separating the seeds from the gooey mess.  Each of us skilfully created our masterpieces and sat back with a smile as the toothy pumpkins returned our stares.

The house would begin to smell of the roasting pumpkin seeds and, after a massive clean up, we would light our pumpkins and snack on the seeds in the darkened living room.  The memories of those nights of laughter and camaraderie are the ones I still hold close.

As the eve of Halloween approaches, I am slightly saddened that those years are so far behind me.  I live on a street where no children trick-or-treat so there is no need to create any more scary faces.  Perhaps this year I should take advantage of the fact that my digits are all still intact and drag out the carving tools once again.  I’m sure my dog would like to sit in the dark with me staring at faces like these:

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Happy Halloween everyone!

Ahhh….the profanity comes flooding back….

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I don’t have children but my countdown to the beginning of the school season is just as exciting.  There are no giant red X’s on any calendars but the anticipation for the first week of September is palpable.   While the teachers prepare their rooms with the letters of the alphabet strung across the top of the chalk boards, I am only concerned with three of those letters.  N-F-L

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(one of my favorite pics of my dad)

 

My child-like excitement for the sport is well-known throughout my friends and family and especially by many others who are members of my football pool.  My incessant emails begin during pre-season and escalate substantially as the NFL ramps up to the first kick off of the regular season.

I prepare my dog for the blast of profanities (my sports-related Tourette’s syndrome) that will inevitably be passed from my lips only to fall on the deaf ears of the referees.  This is a beloved family tradition passed down from my grandparents and who am I to argue with tradition?  They were masters of the verbal barrage of expletives and were not selective when it came to yelling at referees  – hockey, football, baseball umpires, nobody was safe.  I reserve my assassination of the English language specifically for the line judges, field judges, side judges and back judges of the NFL.  There are also a few well-placed curse words expelled during fumbles, sacks and interceptions.  (I don’t discriminate.)

I have been busy over the last few days preparing my three pages of football sheets for the over 60 participants in my football pool.   Let the games begin and let my grasp of the English language be slightly marred.  Hell hath no fury like a woman watching football!!

I followed the crumbs back home

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“A party without cake is just a meeting.” ~  Julia Child

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 I’m not sure how old I was or what passing birthday had just eclipsed my dream of being a child forever but I remember the birthday cake my mom had made.  It was a chocolate cake with homemade buttercream frosting and a bittersweet chocolate ganache.  It was decadent.  It was made with love.  And to a child still in single digits, it was crack cocaine.

Every special occasion I demanded politely requested that my mother painstakingly recreate that masterpiece.  Throughout my childhood, I never deviated from that cake.  It is one of the favorite memories I have of my mother.  I cannot recall whose smile was more prominent when the cake was delivered to the table, hers or mine, but I do know that cake was our moment to share.

Over the years, I lost track of the myriad number of times that cake graced our dining room table but I never lost my love of that cake.  I saw how much effort my mom put into that special treat and, perhaps through osmosis, I garnered the same conviction that cake made people happy.

After being absent for some time, due to unforeseen construction on the path of my life, I am back on the road that leads straight to my oven and my decorating tools.  I missed cakes.  I missed the escape from reality that decorating affords me and I missed the joy in people’s eyes when they had seen what I created for their special occasion.

The piping bags are ready, the cupboards are stocked and the fondant is ready to roll.   Let them eat cake!

An excellent “first date”

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I’ve watched them from birth to now.  I’ve seen them take a few of their halted first steps and utter the beginning of many words to come.  I did not birth them, but I love them just as much as if I had.

The time has gone by so quickly and my nephews are now 15 and 12.  They are unique characters and very different from each other which makes them all the more fascinating to a person who does not see them every day.  I get fragmented pieces of time to create memories and I have realized that time is quickly running out before they fly from their nest.

I had a date with my 12-year old nephew tonight.  It was more like an expeditious speed-date but it was an hour that I got to spend with just him.  We laughed, we talked in funny accents and we allowed ourselves the freedom to just be silly and enjoy each others company.  He and I are very similar creatures and it was nice for both of us to recognize that bond.  He reads as voraciously as I did as a child and shares my animosity towards running.

My 15-year old nephew is the opposite.  He most likely thinks he will burst into flames if he had to read a novel.  His hours of leisure, and work, are spent at a golf course.  He lives and breathes golf.  He has found his passion and it is something at which he excels.  He and I have yet to have our date but I will be asking him soon and I am  hoping to make these dates a recurring event before I blink and they are both in their twenties.

I want these moments.  I want to create this stronger bond before they have gone off to college and the miles are stretched between us.  I selfishly crave those snippets of time where I see signs of them becoming the men they will continue to be throughout their lives.  I want them to know how proud I am of the strengths they possess and encourage them to never let anyone try to change their ideals.

smallest things

(image credit)

These dates may seem like small things to them but the memories we create will reside in my heart, and hopefully their hearts, for many years to come.