Monday Memoirs - Drama Queen

Of course the obvious question here is not why am I on the roof in my mother's skirt and high heels, no, the obvious question is where the heck was my mother when I was up on the roof in her skirt and high heels?

I can't answer that question except to say my brother and I most likely waited until mom was on her way downtown to do her shopping, oblivious to the risky activities her youngest two got up to in her absence.

On the back of the photo the words "no, don't shoot" are written in a childish hand. My brother and I loved to act out skits of our own making, especially since finding mother's old movie magazines in the small closet under the stairs. We tried using a tape recorder that Kim got for Christmas one year but got into major trouble one night when in the midst of creating quite amazing sound effects we dropped the tape recorder onto the glass top of our coffee table shattering it into a million pieces. The amazing sound bite was rather diminished by our mother's wrath.

So we turned to photography and my brother made me, yes made me pose in all kinds of crazy getups in all kinds of crazy locations while trying to emote major silent movie style mannerisms and facial expressions in my limited way(think Gloria Swanson - "I'm ready for my closeup Mr. DeMille). I can't recall the storyline which would rationally explain why someone was trying to shoot me after I had clambered up onto the roof but I bet it would be a blockbuster!

I'm sure they would have missed me anyway as I dove into the upstairs window - the bad guys were notoriously bad shots in old movies, still are in fact.

Monday Memoirs - Life Cycle of a Laying Hen

Chickens have always played a large role in my family. What an odd statement. But true nonetheless. There's my dad holding a chicken in his arms at age 4. He lived almost 80 more years and raised countless chickens.

Unfortunately not all of my experiences with our chickens were pleasant. I have memories of one flapping around me when I was about 3 and digging its talons into my bare back. Not a happy memory. And I was always a little hesitant opening up the henhouse door when I had to collect the eggs. Hesitant was good because if I opened the door suddenly all the hens would fly up and flap their wings and the air would be full of squawking and feathers. Tiptoeing in was better and gently gliding my hand under their bums in one smooth quick movement to clutch and grab the still warm eggs.

I have to admit there was a certain fascination for me in watching my dad select an old hen for the stewing pot. He had a long metal hook and would reach with it into the chicken coop and give a quick yank on the neck of one of the older hens. Then he would chop its head off with an axe and yes, I have seen them run around headless, but not for long. Then he would dunk it into boiling water and pull out the feathers.

Now for the insides. Dad would spread newspaper over the picnic table and carefully explain to me each organ as he would remove it - I was spellbound but in no way did the experience make me want to be a vet or a doctor. It was more an interest in the whole process - from a live chicken in the coop to a simmering chicken pot pie in the oven. Yum.

I never remember feeling sorry for the chicken, I do remember feeling "lucky me"! Chicken for supper! I mean, that's the way it was. We eked out our diet by raising chickens and growing a large garden. The chickens roamed free most of the time, had a good life laying eggs and scratching about in the dirt, then when they were old and couldn't lay eggs anymore, sacrificed their lives to give us one more meal.

I just can't feel sad about that!

Happy Mother's Day! all you Mothers!!

My mother would have been 85 years old today if Parkinson's hadn't taken her away at the age of 77. But while she lived my mother was a thoroughly modern woman. Born in 1923, the second of 4 children and the only girl, she had an independent spirit and a gift for drawing, painting and writing. Growing up during the depression with only a mother she dropped out of school in Gr. 10 to work in the local broom factory. Times were tough yet photo after photo show her impeccably turned out in a wide array of flattering outfits - how she did it I'll never know.

Somehow she also managed to clothe and feed her five active and always hungry children, including me, pictured above in a pretty snazzy outfit for a 2 year old. Note my mother's stylish coat, coordinated head scarf and of course spotless white gloves. You'd think we were quite well off by appearances. And you know, we were, in the things that counted.

Today I'd like to thank my mother for a simple gift she gave me, which I enjoyed to the full today. The gift of artful puttering. My mother loved to putter, indeed, she lived to putter. There was nothing she loved more than to putter around the house in the morning - sorting through the accumulation of stuff on the dining room table, a little dusting, writing a few lists, putting misplaced items back where they belong, moving around a few pieces of furniture, trying on a new blouse or two, pruning a few houseplants, reading a few snippets from the newspaper, magazines and a half dozen books, sweeping the kitchen floor (a task she did so often we called her The Grim Sweeper!), and a myriad other little odd jobs.

While I puttered around my trailer today, inside and out, I thought fondly of our "ma". How she would have loved it at the trailer I thought as I vacuumed, dusted and arranged several new storage ottomans. "Just the ticket" she would say, "so handy - you can sit on them, you can store extra linens etc in them and flip over the top and it becomes a tray to hold cups of tea and cookies!" As I raked leaves I could envision her sitting on a lounge chair with her favourite book in hand and the inevitable cup of tea on a side table.

And as I swept my large front porch I wished she was there with me, because then SHE would have been sweeping instead of ME!