Knick knack paddy whack

Knife, knit, knot, knack.  Gnome, gnat, gnarl , gnash.  Write, wreath, wring, wrought.  Oh so many letters that used to have a sense of purpose to their day. They were once pronounced right along with the rest of their companions but time has erased them from our speech. Not from our spelling though. There they have been preserved like strangers in a photo album.

Same awe

Jubilant.  Isn’t that the perfect name for someone who sings as though his heart has wings? 

The first time I ever heard Mary Did You Know, it was sung by Jubilant Sykes. Lyrics, melody and voice together became something so powerfully moving and memorable that I just need to hear the first notes to feel the same awe and joy I felt then. 

Illustrating

Art surrounds us. It is on packaging and signs, magazines and books and children’s books are my favourite. 

When I was a preschooler I badgered my big sister to read and reread The Gingerbread Man.  It didn’t have a happy ending.  A fox gobbled up the little cookie man, but I loved how he jumped off the cookie sheet and hot footed it out of the kitchen.  It was that kitchen that has stayed in my memory. The wooden walls.  The wooden salt box so European. The cast iron stove. The braided rug.  Sure sounds like my grammas log house. I never saw the connection until this moment.  But I do know that recalling that book and its illustrations has always comforted me.  I feel a literal warmth, golden and cinnamon infused. 

How amazing

How amazing it is that there are adventurous souls who have stuffed their passport and camera into a rucksack and headed for parts unknown.  I’ve been told that if you travel you realize how small the world is but I find that impossible to believe.  I once flew from southern BC to northern Alberta and as I watched mountain range after endless mountain range spread out below I had the most uncomfortable realization that my daughter and I were to be separated by an unfathomable distance.  

Maybe it is the ability to come home again that fools  people into thinking the distance is nothing at all.  Just a little hop in a plane and presto, half a continent is traversed. 

I think it is only this century that has come to think of distance so casually. 

We can travel into yesterday or tomorrow now with a plane ticket.  And we can see life unfolding under the sun while we dance under the moon. 

GG

 Do you have any memories or stories about your great gramma? My older grandchildren will remember little snippets of my mom and my children have memories of my gramma. 

The math of family demands that you have four great grandmas but the math of aging makes it unlikely that you will know any of them. At least not in person.  There are stories of course but those can be surprisingly scarce!! How can someone so important and impactful be completely forgotten? 

I only have stories about one great gramma, my mother’s mother’s mother.  My Gramma Nelson’s mother Minerva, was a Haddock by birth and was transformed into a Ray by marriage. She was thrifty, optimistic, resourceful, faithful, creative, generous, hardworking, intelligent, courageous, a woman of faith and good humour.  And I have a little story to back up very claim; all eye witness accounts by her own grandchildren. 

We never met but I love you, great gramma. 

Forgotten

Quick! Name the seven dwarves. My husband and I tried and we both forgot Bashful. That figures. Poor guy. 

Eeeee

 Even elegant eagles enjoy eagerly eating  extra enormous eggplant and escargot enchiladas with eggnog every evening even though eyelashed emu eggs and elephant ears are equally excellent though elusive and expensive. 

Diamond dear

In 1977, beside a lake as blue as the sky, with leaves twirling down like confetti, my smiling boyfriend placed a diamond ring on my finger.  In the spring of 1978 a glittering wedding band was added and neither ring has ever left my hand. They have felt like constant friends. 

The other night as I sat reading in bed, my rings caught my eye and I duly admired them, turning my hand to catch the light.  Lovely.  It occurred to me that I should take them to a jeweller and have the claws checked. How sad it would be to lose a stone.  

The next evening as I sat in the same spot with the same book my subconscious self who is apparently scanning and noticing, jolted me out of my reading trance. I had a feeling of trepidation as I raised my left hand and slowly turned it over. 

Gone. 

Six tiny golden claws gripping absolutely nothing. 

My husband was as stricken as I. 

Isn’t losing something dear a jolt?

“It’ll be alright,” I said, “At least I still have you”

Cherish

 I thought I would talk about crochet in honour of the letter C but as I sat huddled and cold, watching my grandson play hockey this morning while birds slept, I realized the letter C was all around me.  Not just the cold either.  There are coaches. Some, the definition of cool, calm control and others, “sound and fury.”

There is the constant crunch and crash as players launch themselves into the path of danger.  And a whole lot of checking and cheering. 

But the biggest C by far is the clock.  The large fickle clock that goes far too slowly when your team is perilously in the lead and far too fast when you are clawing your way from behind. 

The clock that says there is ten minutes left but you know by doing a series of complicated mathematical formulas that there is actually19 minutes of play left. 

And when you straggle out into the light of day, older and wiser, you are thankful because you know those moments are a limited time offer and therefore, something to cherish. 

Bookish

 “B, b, what begins with b? Barber, baby, bubbles and a bumblebee”  This snippet of awesomeness is Dr. Seuss, quoted from his alphabet book. I can still chant the entire volume front to back from memory, having read it and reread it, first to my tiny daughters and then to my equally tiny grandchildren. Aren’t books wonderfully re-readable? I have favourite books that I read once a year or every few years. In 2021 I read Silas Marner three times! I found it such a comfort; how he is crushed, numb with despair but gradually emerges into the light of love, his faith destroyed and then reformed aright. 

And I’ve read LM Montgomery literally dozens of times over the years. I wish I had to write a term paper on her view of war and how it shifted right along with public sentiment from the First to Second World War. And her commentary on the role of women in society is worth discussing at length. 

Some books have aged right along with me, their message morphing. When I first read Elizabeth Von Arnim’s Enchanted April in my 20’s it grated on my romantic sensibilities. Where was the passion!! But when I reread it years later I laughed and laughed.  How clever the author was. How witty and charming and hopeful and redeeming her view of love! 

Books, some books especially, have been my companions for years and years and have helped me through some perilous times,. 

“Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” Psalm 119:105 

Falling for autumn

 I am still astonished that I can pick up my phone and with a few taps, begin to read something written moments ago by someone on the opposite side of the globe.  The nature of social media means that one can stand in a circle  with others who are happily chatting and just nod and smile without saying a word though. In fact, they will not even realize you are there as a tiny but happy fly on the wall. Now, there is nary a thing wrong with observing and absorbing  kindness and creativity found in others but in the absence of knowing looks and warm hand clasps I’m resolving to speak up now and then with a ‘thank you’ and a ‘well done.’ 

Some time ago I came upon a blog called Small Treasures, written by a gentle and warm hearted woman in England. There was a pause in her posting but she is back now and creating a daily post, working her way through the alphabet. What a marvellous idea!! 

I was instantly seized with a desire to do likewise! Thank you Pensive Pensioner for the inspiration! 

This blog post is brought to you by the letter A. 

The first thing I think of when presented with a letter A is autumn. I tend to think of these misty, musty days as autumn and not fall as many do. When I consulted the Wise Man of the Mountain (google) about the seasonal alias, autumn AKA fall, I was informed that autumn is British whereas fall is more commonly used in North America.  And if you go back through the mists of time, no pun intended, you find a connection to the French word autompne and the Latin word autumnus. There is apparently a connotation to the passing of the year.

Well that’s good to know I guess. Autumn or fall; bring on the sweaters. 

(Now there’s another word worth pondering. Sweat-er? Sweating for sure? Apparently the original sweaters were for competitive boaters and were meant to bring on sweating and weight loss. Google seems to have an explanation for everything.