Show & Tell: The angels wanna wear my red Olympic mittens...

In case you've been living under a rock the past few days, the Winter Olympics are now under way. In Vancouver, on the wet -- errr, west -- coast of my home & native land.

I marked the occasion of the opening ceremonies by donning my red Olympic mittens. I am not the only one. I am getting a huge kick out of watching the crowds at the outdoor events on TV, & seeing what looks like a sea of red mittens being waved in the air. I even saw one guy pointing to the white maple leaf after Maelle Ricker's awesome gold medal victory in the snowboard cross yesterday. For all that they have been so hard to find, I guess someone has been buying them -- last I heard, almost 3 million pairs have been sold.

I actually wrote about my red mittens and how I managed to scoop up a few precious pairs last week, but I couldn't resist putting up a picture of them for Show & Tell. : )

To see what others are showing & telling, head over to the Stirrup Queen's blog.

Show & Tell: Winter Wonderland

I didn't have to dream of a White Christmas; I actually had one. Which is nothing new, since I am from (& spend my Christmases in) a part of the world in which white Christmases are the norm. I can count on just a few fingers of one hand the number of Christmases I have had that were NOT white.

There was actually not a lot of snow when we first arrived -- but a few mornings into our trip, I woke up to find everything covered in hoarfrost. So pretty!!

Here is the view from my parents' front window of one of the neighbours' houses:


The huge mugho pine in the front yard:


It started snowing lightly on the night of Dec. 23rd. All through the day on Christmas Eve, the snowflakes continued to fall gently. Perfect.

And then we woke up on Christmas morning. I wouldn't call it a big blizzard -- I don't think we had anywhere near the amount of snow some people in the States had. But there was still snow. And it was blowing. Travel was not recommended. Thank goodness we were all safely together already.

In some parts of the yard, the snow drifted up quite high, depending on where the wind was blowing. Here's my dad using his favourite seasonal toy, his snowblower, to blow out the drifted snow on the back patio. You can see here how deep it got!


See what others are showing & telling this week at the Stirrup Queen's blog.

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By the way, I am still trying to catch up on my blog reading. Seems like no matter how long I sit at my computer lately, I never manage to crack the 700 unread posts mark. Eeeekk!!

Show & Tell: This year's Christmas card

As I explained in a Show & Tell post last year about my Christmas card strategy, I almost always know my Christmas card for the year when I see it. In past years, Classic Pooh has been a favourite theme, but Pooh designs seem to be in short supply this year, at least hereabouts.

I found my last year's card at a Chapters/Indigo store, and I saw one design I liked at a Chapters store, during the week that we were on vacation last month. Mid-October seemed a tad early to be buying Christmas cards, though (!!), & I decided to look around just a little bit longer. I'm glad I did, because another Indigospirit store I was browsing in recently had a card I had not yet seen at the other store -- one that stopped me dead in my tracks to say, "Yes, THAT one."

I went back & practically cleared out their supply today. (It's STILL awfully early, but I didn't want to go back two weeks from now & not be able to find it.) Like last year's card, it's by Papyrus. It's called "Little Boy Pulling Red Sled" -- but I think it could very easily be a little GIRL pulling the sled, don't you? ; )

The message inside reads, "May the simple joys of the season be yours/Happy Holidays."

It was more expensive than the Hallmark cards I usually buy -- but so worth it.

To see what others are showing & telling this week, pop over to the Stirrup Queen's blog.

Show & Tell: My new "toys"

Dh & I have been in this house 19 years... so that means that our stove, refrigerator, washer & dryer (all Gen.e.ral Ele.ctric brand) were also... 19 years old. A few of them were beginning to show signs of wear & tear, so while I was at home on holidays in mid-August, I finally got a repair guy in to look at them.

The stove & fridge were fairly easy fixes (he commented that they're both in mint condition ) -- but he took one look/listen to the washer (which had recently started making a horrible loud squeaking noise while agitating the clothes) & told me it wasn't worth fixing. Something about the agitator being slowly stripped, & it would eventually just stop agitating the clothes, possibly even float off & get oil on what I'm washing. He said was OK for the time being but not to leave it too long. He didn't charge me anything for looking at it.

I didn't have him look at the dryer, but one of the cycles wasn't working anymore (the dial seemed to get "stuck" without actually completing the cycle & shutting down), so I figured it was time for a new dryer too.

I mentioned that several of my friends have gotten (& love) the front-load models recently. He said he actually didn't think too much of them, that they have been known to develop a musty odour that permeates your clothes & is impossible to get out (although some of the newer models have features to try to prevent this).

This surprised me -- so I sent out a mass e-mail to a bunch of my friends, quizzed my co-workers and posted on some of my regular Internet bulletin boards to find out what they thought & to get their recommendations on brands, features, etc. I also did some Googling.

Everyone told me they loved, loved, loved their front loaders. Most of them hadn't even heard of the odour problem, but from those who had, & what I read on Google, I learned a few tips:

• wipe the rubber gasket dry after finishing your laundry for the day.
• leave the door open when the machine is not in use to allow it to dry out thoroughly.
• use only the recommended detergents & fabric softeners -- i.e., ones labelled "HE" (high efficiency).
• once a month, run a cycle (some machines have a special cleaning cycle) using hot water & bleach, or a special HE machine cleaner.

After surveying our friends, looking around & talking to a very knowledgeable saleswoman, we wound up buying a Ken.mo.re pair (manufactured in Germany by Whirl.po.ol) for a quite decent price. The saleswoman said she bought the same set for both her sons when they got married, which I figured was a pretty good recommendation. ; ) Decided to skip the platforms, which would have added an extra $400-500 to the price. I figure for $500, I can bend over, lol. Plus, as she pointed out, you can fold things on the top when they're lower down (which I often do).

They got delivered this past Saturday morning. I was having serious anxiety & could hardly sleep all Friday night -- I had it in my head that the machines were not going to fit through the laundry room door. The laundry room was built 10 years ago by my FIL around the old machines. The door is also at such an angle that I feared the machines' passage in & out of the room would be blocked by the furnace.

But all went well. The delivery guys -- scheduled to arrive "sometime between 7 a.m. & 1 p.m." arrived at 8:45 a.m. In less than half an hour, the old machines went out to the curb (where they were scooped up overnight by some treasure hunter!) & the new ones went in smoothly & were installed without a glitch.

Well, almost. The hoses that came with the washer were too short to reach the taps, so dh & I had to make a trip later that day to Home Depot & hook them up ourselves. Neither of us is very mechanically minded, but all went well, & we ran a test cycle that worked perfectly. I was amazed by how little water the washer used!

I am looking forward to doing my first full loads this weekend!




To see what others are showing & telling this week (& to check out her spiffy new digs), visit the Stirrup Queen's blog here.

Show & Tell: Back to school time

When you are childless-not-by-choice, there are certain times of the year that can be more painful than others. Holidays, certainly. Christmas. Easter. Halloween.

Labour Day is not a holiday that, at first glance, you'd associate with children. Until you remember that, in Ontario, at least, Labour Day marks the end of summer and the last day before the kids head back to school.

Since 2002, for us, Labour Day weekend has meant dh's cousins' annual barbecue. When dh was a kid, all his aunts, uncles & cousins lived within a quick walk or bike ride of each other, and we saw them often when we were first married & living in the city. Over the past 20+ years, of course, almost everyone has gotten married, bought houses, spread out across the metropolitan area, & gotten busy with their kids.

To ensure we all get to see each other at least once a year for a good visit, aside from the occasional wedding, funeral or first birthday party, the annual cousins' barbecue was instituted. Everyone takes turns hosting. This year, we all chipped in & had the food catered; in previous years, everyone was assigned to bring something (which usually wound up being way too much food, no matter how much we tried to pare the food list down) & the hosts provided the setup & drinks.

In general, it's a good time. Some years have been better or worse than others, depending on what's going on with me and with others (how many new babies make an appearance, etc.). Almost every year, we gather together the kids -- the next generation -- for a group photo. And of course, every year, as I look through my camera lens, I think about the little girl who's missing -- right between one cousin who is exactly six months older than she would have been, and another who is exactly six months younger. (Fortunately for me, both are boys.)

And of course, every year, "back to school" is a major subject of conversation. Not just because everyone's kids are going back to school, either: two of dh's cousins are teachers, one works at a school for the school board, and one works part-time at her daughters' old grade school. As I have joked in the past to my childless friends, not only do I get to hear about their kids, I get to hear about everyone else's too.

I had a hard time the year I realized Katie would have been starting junior kindergarten (they call it "nursery school" where I come from). Somehow, though, the hardest year was September 2004, when she would have been starting Grade 1. I was having a tough time facing all the back-to-school shopping flyers and signs at the mall. Six Months Older was also starting Grade 1, & at the family BBQ that year, everyone was fussing over him, asking him whether he was excited & saying what a big boy he was now, etc. (while I stared at my plate & wished for a hole to open up & drop me through). That was pretty brutal.

One day on my lunch hour, I was at a card shop at the Eaton Centre. I was looking at the Boyds Bears display, as I collect Boyds Bears figurines -- not obsessively, but dh & I have given figurines to each other as presents over the years on special occasions. He gave me a Boyds Bears statue of a pregnant Mama Bear for the Mother's Day when I was pregnant, which I used to illustrate a blog post about Mother's Day.

And there in the display case was the perfect way for me to mark this milestone occasion: "Bailey: Off to School." Fighting back tears, I hailed a sales clerk & asked her to unlock the case & box it up for me.

It now sits on top of my armoire in the bedroom, along with two Classic Pooh music boxes (one of which I posted about before), a framed photo of me, dh & my mother with Katie, and a couple of other Katie-related mementos.

Katie would be going into Grade 6 this year. Grade 6!!! She'd be 11 years old in November. She'd be starting junior high next year, for crying out loud. How could that be possible??

To see what others are showing & telling this week, visit the master list at Stirrup Queens.

Show & Tell: Katie's Dresses

At last week's S&T session, Luna posted on S&T about the "amazing blanket" her sister-in-law made for her new baby. (If you haven't seen it yet, go have a peek. It's gorgeous!)

This reminded me of something special that I could Show & Tell.

To begin at the beginning:

During my roller-coaster pregnancy 11 years ago, dh & I didn't buy very many things for our baby. It seemed like such a tentative pregnacy for so long -- spotting almost from the very beginning, all through the first trimester, a suspicious triple screen test followed by a less than stellar ultrasound that showed (among other things) that our baby wa significantly smaller and growing much more slowly than she should be -- followed by amniocentisis, a three & a half week wait for the results (and four more ultrasounds while we waited).

During this time, dh would often pass by a children's clothing store in the concourse of an office tower close to where we work, en route to buying himself some lunch. There was an adorable little dress in the window & he often thought about buying it for our baby. Even after Katie was stillborn, he would pass by the window, look at the little dress, and think about buying it.

He didn't. He couldn't. Buy a dress for a dead baby? (Especially when you're a guy, buying a baby's dress -- what sort of questions would he be fielding at the cash register.) What would people think if they found out?

Of course, the little dress eventually disappeared from the window -- and dh has never stopped regretting that he didn't go in & buy it. He has often told that story to the members of our support group, with the added moral to trust their instincts -- if there's something they really want to buy or do to remember their babies, do it, and to heck with what everyone else might think.

One of our (now former) clients -- who has since become a good friend -- is an amazingly talented quilter, and has given beautiful quilts to some of her fellow client/friends who have had subsequent babies. At a meeting that took place around the one-year anniversary of her loss, several years ago now, she quietly handed me a soft little parcel. We never want clients to feel that they need to give us gifts, so I slipped it into my bag to open at home later.

THIS is what she had made for us:

It's not a full-sized quilt, but a square, about 12"x12" (about the size of a scrapbook page -- and yes, she scrapbooks too!). You probably can't see, but in each of the four yellow corner squares (and one yellow centre square), there is a heart stitched.

On the back, she has printed:

Katie's Dresses

For Sam and Lori (lastname)

in memory of Kathleen Maria (lastname)

with heartfelt thanks from

(her name)

(place)

2003

Here are some closeups of each of the smaller squares/dresses. I can't get over the detail that went into each one!

A little pink dress with a ladybug.

A sporty dress, accessorized with baseball & bat.

A little plaid dress for school, complete with wee pencils.

And a red dress for Christmas, of course.

This now hangs on the wall as you walk into our bedroom.

To see what others are showing & telling, visit this week's Show & Tell post at Stirrup Queens.

Show & Tell, Part 2: It (also) came from the crawl space...

Second of my two-part Show & Tell this week (Part 1 is just below, here) No, I couldn't make up my mind just what to show you. So I'm showing everything I can think of, lol.

For last week's Show & Tell, I wrote about how we tackled the crawl space below my parents' house -- and some of the "buried treasure" we dug up.

The items I showed you then were sentimental items, ones that got the tears flowing. This week, I wanted to share a couple of "fun" (re) discoveries.


Like these:

When my sister & I were about 6 & 7 years old, living in northern Saskatchewan in the late 1960s, the one thing we wanted for Christmas was a set of walkie-talkies, like the ones we'd seen in the Eatons catalogue. I don't know why they piqued our interest, but they did. Maybe we'd been watching too many episodes of Get Smart (we used to fight over who got to be the glamorous Agent 99 when we acted out the episodes we'd seen), & this was the closest thing we could find to a shoephone. ; )

I remember standing outside the Santa Claus matinee at the little movie theatre that December, after watching a kiddie movie & getting a free bag of hard candy. (Admission: 35 cents. Popcorn: 10 cents.)(Am I sounding like my own grandmother or what?) We couldn't get near the Big Guy himself (& were probably too shy to talk to him anyway), but I vividly remember talking to his assistant, a female elf by the name of Mary Christmas, whom we had seen on the after-school show of the local CBC-TV affiliate (a TV star!!), and telling her this was what we wanted. She said maybe, if we were good. And there they were, underneath the tree on Christmas Day.

We had fun playing with the walkie-talkies for a few years, and then almost forgot about them, until the summer of 1975. We were going on a long-planned road trip all the way out to the west coast -- Vancouver & Victoria, via Edmonton, Jasper & Banff -- with the family that lived across the street. We were travellling in two cars and I had the brillian (if I do say so myself) idea that we should take a walkie-talkie in each car to communicate with each other (this being at least 20 years before any of us owned a cellphone).

And it worked out really well. If we wanted to talk to someone in the car ahead of us, we'd flick our headlights on & off, open the window (although it was probably already open, given that we did not have air-conditioned cars in those days & it was hotter than H-E-double-hockey-sticks driving across the Saskatchewan and Alberta prairie) and raise the antenna. Not a great way to carry on a long conversation, but good enough for a static-y "Let's stop for gas in the next town."


This slightly fuzzy photo shows the microphone from the very first cassette tape recorder we ever owned, circa about 1970. The tape recorder itself is long gone, but we found the microphone in a box with my sister's stuff.

The tape recorder was a source of endless entertainment for my sister & our friends (three sisters) from across the street (the same ones we went with to B.C.). We taped records for each other. In those pre-VCR/PVR/Tivo days, we would set the microphone up in front of the television set and tape our favourite TV shows, like the Partridge Family -- & them listen to them, over & over & over again. (There is one Partridge Family episode -- "Danny & the Mob" -- that I think I can still recite dialogue from.) Or, when we were visiting our American grandparents, and luxuriating in the multitude of TV channels there (i.e., more than the one we got, lol), we'd tape the songs & guests that we liked on American Bandstand. We taped commentary, a la Danny Gallivan on Hockey Night in Canada, while our dads faced off on our friends tabletop hockey game. And we taped shows of our own -- singing along to my girlfriend's guitar music, telling silly jokes, and giggling. Lots & lots of giggling.

Years later, I was visiting one of the girls who had lived across the street, and lo & behold, she produced one of our old show tapes. We listened to our younger selves, absolutely killing ourselves laughing. (She made me a copy -- which I really should transfer to a digital format...) Her young daughter -- who had had a video camera pointed at her all her life -- was quite bemused by it all & wanted to know why she couldn't WATCH us.

And this is me, doing my best Partridge Family imitation. (Truly, I do not always look this dorky -- even cropped -- and I debated about sharing this one, but I decided you needed to see it to understand what I was writing about.)

Long before karaoke machines, or Guitar Hero & Rock Band, my sister and our friends used to put Partridge Family, Archies & Osmonds albums on the record player and sing along, pretending we were the band. We decided that we needed microphones, and (real or even play microphones being either extremely rare &/or expensive in our part of the world at that time) we eventually found the ideal solution. We covered the handles of our skipping ropes with tinfoil & sang into those (they even had cords we could swish back & forth!!).

Believe it or not, I found a skipping rope, tin foil still covering the handle, coiled up inside of a round zippered doll's suitcase -- like the round suitcase Tracy Partridge used to carry in promotional photos.

To see what others are showing & telling this week, hop over here.

Show & Tell, Part 1: Look what followed me home...

This week's Show & Tell comes in two parts. Yes, when I'm on a roll, I'm on a roll. ; ) This is Part 1. Part 2 appears just above this post, here.

My belated thanks to all of you who sent comments & good thoughts for me, dh & Katie on Aug. 5-7. We both really appreciated it.

I kept myself busy all day Friday, cleaning house (so I wouldn't have to do it on Saturday). After having my shower, I spent some quiet time going through Katie's things & re-reading my blog entries from last year that told her story. After dh got home, we ordered in Chinese (as we did when we got home from the hospital, 11 years prior). And then we went to the market, got some pink roses, and headed to the cemetery.

Afterwards, we decided to head to the local megabookstore for a Starbucks treat & a browse.

And I found THIS little guy:



A soft, fuzzy, cuddly Classic Pooh teddy bear. A whole display of them, actually, along with Classic Eeoyores and Classic Piglets, and copies of Pooh story collections (which I have).

Katie's nursery was to have been decorated in Classic Pooh -- we have a quilt, bumper pads, curtain vallance & matching wallpaper border, bought on sale at Sears in late July 1998 -- among the very few baby items that we bought during my rollercoaster pregnancy. And in the years since then, we've added to our Classic Pooh collection.

But of course, times change and baby fashions change, and Classic Pooh has fallen somewhat out of favour.

Needless to say, I simply could not resist. : ) It just seemed like fate that I would find a whole pile of Classic Pooh stuff on Katie's special day.
I wasn't quite sure what I would do with it or where I would put it when we got home. But when I walked into my bedroom, I instantly knew where Pooh should go.

I have two other (Gund) teddy bears sitting on our bed. I bought one for my annual workplace Christmas teddy bear drive some years ago. He was just so cute I couldn't resist buying a second one for myself. A few years later, I couldn't resist buying another, smaller Gund bear.

Dh once asked me if the two teddys were representative of me & him. I never really thought of it that way. I did always think of them as guardians of the house while we were away. ; ) I also didn't think of it until later, but they reminded me of Mr. Bear and Little Bear in Dare Wright's book The Lonely Doll, which I read & loved as a child, but had forgotten about, until I read an article about the author in Vanity Fair several years ago.

Anyway, the twosome is now a threesome. Maybe I AM unconsciously trying to recreate our little family??


This wasn't the first time I found comfort in the bookstore on August 7. On that day in 2004, we spent the day in much the same way, heading to the bookstore after visiting the cemetery. As I wrote in a post on a childless living board I frequent:

"... (a mocha frappucino is a great mood lifter, lol). They always play music in the store, of course, & while I was browsing, they started playing Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water," which I have always loved & always gives me the chills. It just seemed so appropriate for the day! Then, after that song ended, they started into "Stand by Me." It just kept going: the next song after that was "Lean on Me," & then a great sort of bluesy soul song called "Have a Little Faith in Me" (VanMorrison? Joe Cocker?). And as we left the store, they were playing "I Will Remember You" by Sarah McLauchlin (sp?). I just couldn't believe it -- it was like it was tailor-made listening for me. I got teary & then I started to laugh as I listened. Whoever it was that was responsible for the playlist, thanks!!"

To see what others are showing & telling this week, hop over here.

Show & Tell: It came from the crawl space...

When my sister & (especially) I moved out of our parents' home, we left a ton of stuff behind.

In the summer of 1980, we were preparing to move out of the house we'd been living in for the past six years. I was home for the summer, working, after my first year at the University of Manitoba, & my sister was graduating from high school. Finding no houses they liked in the new town, my parents decided they would build a house.

My dad went on ahead to start his new job while my mother stayed behind with my sister & me to pack up & get us off to university. In late August, the moving van pulled up & took our things away to storage, & my mom drove my sister & me to our respective university residences, and then proceeded to live with my dad in a motel (with sanity-saving visits to my grandparents and other friends & relatives) for the next three-plus months, moving into the new house just before we arrived home for Christmas vacation.

My parents moved again, in the spring of 1984, just before I finished grad school. And they've been living in the same house ever since then -- 25 years. Their house is a split-level, built in the early 1980s. Beneath the upstairs bedrooms is a family room, bathroom & spare bedroom -- but below the main floor level, there is just a crawl space, about four feet high. That's where they store most of their "stuff" -- including some boxes that have not been opened since our move in 1980.

My mother has been complaining for years that she's getting too old (even though she's only 68) & creaky to be crawling around in the crawl space (although she recently got a small wheeled stool that helps immensely). Not to mention that all that stuff crammed down there, close to the furnace & hot water heater, is an enormous fire hazard (eek).

So, for several days during the past two weeks while I was visiting, my sister & I helped Mom haul dusty, musty boxes up from the basement and into the garage, and started going through them.

Oh. My. God.

I knew I was a packrat... but even I couldn't believe some of the stuff that we dug up. (Did we EVER throw anything out??)

Here's (some of) what it looked like in the garage while we were going through some of the boxes. (Some of the stuff in the background is normal garage clutter and did not come from the basement.) You can see my mom, sitting behind the table & in front of the refrigerator.

My sister kept insisting, "I've already gone through my stuff. That stuff there is all Lori's."

Well ha ha -- much to her surprise and chagrin, the first four boxes we brought up were all her stuff. ; )

But there was definitely stuff there that was mine -- stuff that I knew was there, but also stuff I had totally, completely forgotten about.

Like a stack of cheap, dime store scrapbooks, with bubblegum cards and posters from Tiger Beat and 16 magazines of the Partridge Family & Osmonds & Bay City Rollers scotch-taped inside. The scotch tape, of course, had totally lost any sticking power after 30-40 years, & everything fell out with each page that I turned. (I was a scrapbooker even then -- but obviously not an archivally safe one!)

Like an entire carton full of pristine Tiger Beat and 16 magazines from the 1970s. (I think we must have saved every issue we ever bought.) And another box full of somewhat musty comic books (mostly Archie & the gang) from the late 1960s & early 1970s, some of them priced at a mere 12 cents each (!). (Ditto.) We tossed the teen mags & told my mother she could try to sell the comics at her next garage sale, if she wanted.

Like ALL of the posters that hung on the walls of my university dorm rooms. Including a poster for a dance that Harlequin played at John Taylor Collegiate in Winnipeg in the early 1980s -- signed (personally, to me!) by all the band members! I have never set foot in JTC in my life. I have a hazy memory that someone knew I liked the band (they played at many of our high school and university residence dances before becoming rich & famous... well, about as rich & famous as a band from Winnipeg got in the early 1980s) & got their autographs for me, but I can't for the life of me remember who it was.

I saved that one, as well as the poster from the movie "Reds" (with Warren Beatty & Diane Keaton) which my friend Heather & I went to see on my 21st birthday (January 12, 1982) at the beautiful old (but now sadly abandoned) Metropolitan Theatre, across the street from Eatons department store (sadly gone; now the site of the MTS Centre) in downtown Winnipeg. (We both loved the movie & begged for the posters from the manager after the show.)

And a poster of Bruce Springsteen, which hung in dh's dorm room, the one year he attended U of M. I already knew him, but I was on his floor, visiting some guys I knew one day, poked my head in the open door & said, "Hey, who's the hunk up on your wall?" "That's Bruce Springsteen," he said, patiently (probably thinking, "duhhh..."). And that's when it all began. ; ) He gave the poster to me when he was leaving to head back to Toronto for the summer, & then off to grad school. Next time I go home, I'm bringing back a mailing tube (so that I can put it into my suitcase without crushing it) & I'm going to get a frame for it & put it up in our basement. : )

Like a whole banker's box full of notebooks and projects from my school years (as well as others from university). Before the 1980 move, my mom gave us each a box & told us any school stuff we wanted to keep had to fit inside one of those boxes. So we had already chucked a lot of stuff back then -- but yikes, there was still an awful lot of stuff there. I kept my very first Grade 1 reading workbook (Dick & Jane!!), all of my essays & a few other projects, and all the valentines I could find (yes, I still had all those too) that my grade school crush Kenny B. had given me ; ) -- but chucked everything else.

Needless to say, going through -- and dumping -- so much of my past was hard, and emotional. I always had visions of going through those boxes someday & showing this stuff to my kids.

Not. Gonna. Happen.

(Of course, who's to say they would have been interested anyway, right? They'd have just had to go through it all & dump it when I was gone.)

For some reason, I felt a particular pang looking through the Barbie dolls & clothes (some of them from the early 1960s -- vintage stuff, albeit well used and not in mint condition) that I shared with my sister. "I don't know if I'm ready to part with these yet," I told my mother. "What are you going to do with them?" she said. I left before we made any definitive decisions. I'm hoping she doesn't sell it all anyway.

The most emotional part for me, though, came when I opened one of the first boxes we brought up.

When I was pregnant, I had mentioned to my mother that I'd like to use my christening dress for my own baby's baptism, if I she could find it. (I'd seen it before and knew she'd saved it.) My daughter was stillborn long before we had to start planning a baptism, but I often wondered what had happened to the little white christening dress, and my baby book. At one point, my mom confessed to me that she hadn't seen them in years & was afraid they had gotten lost in the shuffle of one of our moves.

But, going through one of the boxes, my eye caught some labelling on the side. I delved down under a pile of old clothes. And came up with three small boxes. I immediately knew what they were, and ran into the house, in tears, to get my mother.

One box contained my baby book.

One box contained a little red & white sweater that one of my mother's high school girlfriends had knit for me when I was a toddler, with distinctive little buttons, shaped like an owl's face (which I vividly remember wearing).

And one box contained my christening outfit.

My christening dress (early 1960s style -- short and sheer over underslip -- sleeves frayed), & little white slippers with blue ribbon ties (badly yellowed).

Closeup of the little slippers.

A little embroidered bib stored in the same box.

(I wish I had a photo of me as a baby wearing the outfit that I could show you.) (There ARE photos; I just don't have any here in my immediate possession.)

We didn't get the entire crawl space cleared out (if that's even possible). And I know there is more of my stuff in the well-stuffed closet in the upstairs bedroom that was briefly mine (for the nine months, post-grad & pre-wedding, that I lived with my parents). Including the pale blue gown that I bought for my high school graduation at Polo Park in Winnipeg for the princely sum of $65 -- the most expensive dress I had ever owned up to that time -- and only wore that one time. And the hideous long blue gown that I sewed myself as a 4-H project for my Grade 9 junior high graduation (probably the last garment that I ever sewed, come to think of it). And the coral pink dress with the white crossstitch embroidery on the sleeves, neckline and pockets that I had made for a year-end Grade 8 home ec project. (I found the accompanying notes for the dress while going through my old school stuff, and the teacher's marks and comments. I got an A+.) I know my old diaries are all in a box there (eek), & all my Bay City Rollers memorabilia, including a big box of letters from some of the penpals I had back then.

But we did tackle a huge chunk of it, and get rid of a whole lot of paper. There is no curbside recycling in my parents' town, so we had to take everything to the recycling depot uptown. We made at least three trips with the trunk & backseat of my mom's car fully loaded.

Of what we went through, I managed to whittle down what I wanted to keep into one box (which my parents will keep, for now). I'm hoping that someday, they will come out here by car again, or dh & I will make the car trip ourselves, & bring some boxes back with us. It's at least a 30 hour drive, going straight through. But with me not driving and dh not having much experience as a long distance driver, it would take us at least three or four days to drive there. One way. So, because our vacation time is short & precious to us, we have always flown. My mother insists that dh must make that trip someday, so that he can see just how far away he has taken me!

I have one or two other (fun) items that I photographed that I hope to share with you all in a future Show & Tell. : ) Meanwhile, hop over to the master list on Melissa's blog to check out what others are showing & telling this week.

And if you didn't see it on last week's Show & Tell, check out the video of Melissa's keynote reading at BlogHer of one of her most memorable posts. Reading the words onscreen was priceless; but to listen to her read it, live, and hear the audience reaction, will have tears running down your face. First, she touches your funnybone; then, she touches your heart.

Show & Tell: Our anniversary weekend in Stratford

(Apologies in advance for the wonky formatting -- trying to get the photos & text in the right places has been an exercise in frustration...!)

Thank you for all your good wishes on our wedding anniversary. Most years, we've fallen into the pattern of just going out for dinner, & then doing something special on the anniversaries that are divisible by 5. Even though this wasn't one of those years, we decided we wanted to do something a little more.

We've realized that we've fallen into a bit of a rut these past few years. Because we don't have any kids, we're obviously free to take off whenever we want -- and yet, we rarely do, especially the past 10 years. When you factor in commuting, we're out of the house for 11-12 hours every day, & we're pretty tired when we get home (how on earth do working parents do it???). It's very easy to fall into a rut & wind up laying on the couch watching TV (or mesmerized by a computer screen…!).

We decided that really needs to change! I recently started working on a scrapbook that will include at least one two-page layout for each year we've been married, with a selection of photos & highlights from that year, including vacations we took, shows we saw and what we did on our anniversary that year. (Hopefully, it will be finished in time for our 25th anniversary next year.) Anyway, going through my old datebooks, I realized, "Boy, we used to get out & about a LOT more!" Yes, I know we're 24 years older than when we were first married… but we're not THAT old, not yet…!!

We tossed around a few ideas. We considered going to Niagara on the Lake, one of our favourite getaway spots -- home to the Shaw Festival, as well as some fabulous wineries, & only a half-hour drive from Niagara Falls. We've been to NOTL many times before, though, most recently for our 20th anniversary. (I must blog about NOTL some other time.)

And so, we decided to head to Stratford -- home of Canada's Stratford Shakespeare Festival. (How lucky are we to have two such fabulous summer theatre festivals so close to us?) We've only been to Stratford three times (twice for the theatre, once just to look around) -- never overnight, & the last time was 20 years ago -- so we decided it was about time for a return visit.

And we are so glad we did. All weekend long, we kept looking at each other & saying, "WHY don't we do stuff like this more often??" lol


Stratford is about a two-hour drive west from Toronto, population around 30,000. It's a very pretty town, first settled in the 1830s, with some very well preserved Victorian-era houses & buildings, lots of gorgeous trees and parks, etc. The only thing I really didn't like is that almost ALL the parking downtown is metered -- 2 hours max -- & the parking lots are expensive (captive audience, I guess). Most plays run well over two hours, so dh had to leave the Sunday matinee at intermission to put more money in the meter. Be forewarned & bring lots of quarters, loonies & toonies!

(At left: Stratford City Hall.)

Ontario Street (Main Street)

Downie Street (I think?)

The world-famous Shakespeare Festival began in 1953, with performances in a tent. Over the years, it has expanded to four theatres and broadened its repertoire beyond just Shakespearean plays, with performances by renowned actors such as Alec Guinness, Christopher Plummer, Peter Ustinov, Dame Maggie Smith and William Shatner.

Both the Shaw & Stratford Festivals are heavily dependent on tourists (from both sides of the border) -- and both are hurting this year, because of the economy as well as the new rules requiring passports to cross the U.S.-Canada border. The Saturday night play we attended was fairly full, but not a sellout, as you might expect on a holiday weekend for both Canada and the U.S. We heard one hotel employee saying that when the Canadian dollar was at around 60 cents U.S., they used to get retired Americans coming & staying for two or three WEEKS, because it was such a cheap vacation for them. Not these days, unfortunately.

Nobody we talked to had been to Stratford recently & could recommend accommodations for us, so we scoured the Internet looking at hotel reviews. (Stratford has tons of B&Bs, but dh is more comfortable in a hotel setting -- preferably something fairly modern, lol.) We settled on the Arden Park Hotel -- a nice, clean, relatively modern, 5-storey hotel that had been recently renovated -- big room with a king-sized bed, flat screen TV, etc. -- new(er) carpeting, new tiles & fixtures in the bathroom, etc., located directly across the street from a Williams Coffee Pub and a Dairy Queen. It is a 20-30 minute hike downtown, but just a 5-10 minute walk down the side street & through a beautiful park to the Festival Theatre, the festival's largest venue.


We had better luck asking for recommendations on where to eat. Dovetailing nicely with its status as a tourist mecca, Stratford is home to a chef's school. There's a wide variety of very good restaurants to suit every taste & budget.

While visiting friends recently in nearby Waterloo, we asked whether they knew of any good places to eat. The husband works with a woman who has lived in Stratford all her life, & she had given him the names of two good restaurants to try. So we made reservations for one, Foster's Inn, on Saturday night. It's known for its steaks, so we both had steak & it was very good.

The restaurant is actually just a few doors down from the Avon Theatre -- however, the play we were seeing Saturday night was at the Festival Theatre, so we decided to return to our hotel, park the car & walk. The play was "Cyrano de Bergerac" which was wonderful. I saw it at Manitoba Theatre Centre years & years ago, when I was about 14 -- Len Cariou, a Winnipeg-born actor who has won Tonys on Broadway, played Cyrano then.

This time, Cyrano was played by Colm Feore, who is probably one of the better known stage actors in Canada (his wife directed the production & their son had a minor part in it too). I don't watch "24" but the program said he's on it! -- so you might recognize him. Some reviews I've read say he was a better Cyrano in a 1996 Stratford production. I don't know about that, but I thought he was wonderful, as was the young actor who played the tongue-tied Christian.

The next day we had brunch at the hotel, which was OK. It was served buffet style -- however, you had to go to one of the ballrooms to load up your plate at the buffet & then walk with it back down the hallway to the restaurant!! Kind of strange. Also, the hotel had hosted a wedding the night before & many of the guests were staying at the hotel, so it was very busy.

After brunch, we took a walk back to the park to look around (since we'd been in a hurry the night before), crossed the street from the theatre & took a walk along the beautiful Avon River (got some great photos of people feeding the swans).


Waterfall in the park -- when we were walking through on Saturday night, there was a whole family here having their portrait taken. Very cool setting!


Garden with a sundial & statue of Shakespeare on the grounds of the Festival Theatre.


Swans on the Avon River.

Another view of the river.

Returned to the hotel, got the car & headed back downtown for a Sunday matinee performance of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" at the Avon Theatre. OH MY GOSH -- it was hysterical!!! I was honestly getting weak from laughing so hard. Really, really funny & very well done! It's gotten great reviews. Dh saw the movie years ago (with Zero Mostel & Phil Silvers) but it was all new to me (except for the opening number, "Comedy Tonight"). I understand Nathan Lane starred in a revival on Broadway about 10 years ago (I could definitely see him in the role!).

We had hoped to go to dinner at the other restaurant our friends had recommended -- but when we went to call for reservations, we realized it was closed on Sundays. A lot of the restaurants in Stratford are, it seems. Very long story short -- after some wrangling with dh over what to do, we wound up at the hotel dining room. We looked at the menu in our room upstairs, picked out what wanted & headed downstairs & were seated. Only to find out that they didn't serve the regular menu on Sunday nights. We had a choice of three main courses, plus the salad bar & dessert bar (leftovers from brunch! -- which didn't appeal to me, so we didn't have any of that).

I had the prime rib & dh had broiled whitefish (the other choice was pineapple chicken). It was OK, but nothing special. Lesson learned for next time! Later, we walked across the street to the Dairy Queen & I had a Skor Bar Blizzard. : )

We got up the next morning (Monday, which was our actual anniversary), had breakfast, checked out before 10, & were back home again by noon. Went out for dinner again later that night.

We will definitely be doing this more often in the future. : )

To see what others are showing & telling, hop over to this week's Show & Tell post at Stirrup Queens.

Show & Tell: Pat Benatar, I wasn't...

(Photo: Me, as a 19-year-old university student in my dorm room, going to a punk rock social (dance) at university, February 1980, and trying to look appropriately sullen & smouldering, lol. You can't see it, but I'm wearing safety pins -- carefully sterilized in rubbing alcohol (I wasn't THAT much of a punk...!) -- instead of earrings. My sister was visiting for the weekend & took this photo with her new Nikon SLR camera, & there must have been some static on the lens, because there is this cool lightning burst effect happening all around me -- which seemed kind of appropriate in the context of the event, lol.) 

(Warning: long, rambling post ahead that may not ultimately make much sense...) 

I just dropped a card in the mail to one of my oldest & dearest friends, one of three sisters who lived across the street during my growing up years. Her 50th birthday is this Saturday. It had a cartoon KISS-like band on the front, with a message inside that read something like, "As you turn 50… rock and roll till nine and party every other Saturday," lol. 

My own 50th birthday is not for another 19 months… but I know it's coming. Fast. And it occurred to me that, this fall, it will be 40 years -- 40!! -- since our families became friends. 

And so I've been pondering (not for the first time, nor, I am sure, for the last) -- how did I get here? I certainly don't feel like I'm almost 50 (...well, most days, anyway). I know I look older than I used to, but I don't think I LOOK almost 50. 

*** *** *** 

I think this latest round of introspection was triggered by the sight of that yummy Rolling Stone cover in my last post. As I recently commented to Irish Girl, it shows I CAN write about something other than infertility & childlessness (lol)… and yet it's still somehow all tied in with the way I feel about myself. 

Part of me felt (feels??) ridiculous, lusting after a singer (in much the same way I used to drool over pictures of David Cassidy & Donny Osmond) -- one who is (gulp) young enough/old enough to be my son (not to mention, as Deathstar so aptly put it in her comment, playing for "the other team"). And yet, watching the online video clips of Adam (yep, he can sing…), strutting his stuff confidently onstage with note-perfect renditions of Led Zeppelin & Aerosmith songs from my past, reminded me of that part of myself that still likes to listen to the local classic rock radio station at full blast (and sing along). It takes me back to a time when I was younger & thinner & prettier & (slightly) wilder, and music was so much better than the rap & hiphop cr@p that seems to dominate the airwaves these days. 

Even before I saw the Rolling Stone cover, I was in a nostalgic frame of mind about music. CBS Sunday Morning recently did a story on Green Day, who first became popular in the early 1990s -- long after I had left university, but whose energetic, guitar-oriented style brings back fond memories of the edgy new wave/power pop bands I loved back then. Last Saturday, dh went golfing, and while I cleaned the house, I was energized by "American Idiot" & "21st Century Breakdown" blasting on the stereo. (Hey, if the teenagers across the street can blast my eardrums with rap while they wash their cars, they can put up with my music for an afternoon, lol.) I'm not as familiar with the new album yet, but I loved "American Idiot," especially "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" and "When September Ends" (which, Billie Joe Armstrong explained, he wrote after the death of his father). There's something achingly beautiful about the imagery of the words and his clear, piercing vocals over the melody of the guitar. 

Music has such power to conjure up images, to transport us back in time. Yesterday, browsing at a nearby music store on my lunch break, I found newly remastered copies of the Rolling Stones' "Tattoo You" and "Emotional Rescue" albums, which were both popular while I was in university. I was instantly back in a dark student lounge, smelling of beer, pogo-ing madly on the dance floor with some cute young guy as Mick Jagger wailed "I'm so hot for her and she's so cold." 

University was my liberation. It was, hands down (and with some apologies to dh -- although he was a big part of it too, toward the end), the absolute best time of my life -- lots of fun, little responsibility. You have to understand -- since I was a kid, I had struggled with feeling shy and insecure -- always the new girl in town, always feeling conspicuously different. 

This was compounded when I got glasses at the age of 7. I hated my glasses, & when I learned that these things called contact lenses existed, I couldn't wait to get rid of them. My optometrist had other ideas: he felt that teenagers were too irresponsible to handle the consistent care that contacts required. He was probably right -- but the summer before I entered Grade 12, when I was 17, I finally got my contacts. I was ecstatic. 

(Ironically, a few years ago, I got an eye infection & wasn't able to wear my contacts for several months. By the time it cleared up, the type of lens I had always worn was no longer manufactured. I haven't been able to find a comfortable lens that provides good vision since then, and so I've been back with my glasses for some years now.)(And they're BIFOCALS now, too…!!) 

Of course, Grade 12 is pretty much too late to change the order of things in high school. I did have a couple of memorable makeout sessions with my sister's boyfriend's best friend -- but, for the most part, in high school, once a geek, always a geek (even if you suddenly become a somewhat more attractive geek). 

In May 1979, the year I graduated (30 years ago now -- eeek), my local Rotary Club sent me to Ottawa for a week as part of an amazing program called Adventure in Citizenship. I found myself among more than 250 other high-achieving high schoolers from right across Canada -- kindred spirits. I sat on the airplane to Ottawa -- my very first plane ride -- with two fellow Adventurers, both from British Columbia -- a girl (whom I'm still in touch with), and a gorgeous guy with a warm smile who said he wanted to be the first NDP prime minister of Canada. I was a staunch Progressive Conservative back then ; ) but I was instantly smitten. 

I had a fabulous time on that trip. I flirted shamelessly with a few other guys (including one whose byline I now see in a local newspaper), but when the time came to say goodbye to B.C. Guy, in the sumptuous lobby of the Chateau Laurier, I sobbed on the shoulder of his powder-blue, three-piece suit (it WAS the 70s...) while he patted my back in bemusement. I felt like Cinderella. I'd been to the ball & had a tantalizing taste of an alternate life -- but now the clock was striking midnight, and I had to go back to the kitchen (i.e., high school) to toil once more in obscurity. (He and I exchanged letters for a month or two after we returned to our respective homes and then lost touch.) 

My mother had always told me "Things will be different when you go to university," & thankfully, she was right. At university, I blossomed. Always at or near the top of my classes in high school, I was content to coast along on Bs & B+s. In retrospect, I think -- I know -- I could have done better, had I studied more and partied less -- but I was having an absolutely blast. 

University was a blank slate, where few people knew me, and I was free to be the person I had become. I lived in a residence for the four years of my undergrad (which is where I met dh, in third year). Weekends started on Thursday afternoon & the partying didn't stop until sometime Sunday. My family only lived an hour away that first year, & yet I can probably count on my fingers the number of weekends I went home to visit -- that's how much fun I was having, & how much I didn't want to miss out on any of it. I can remember how the residence newsletter profiled the girls from my first-year floor in a sentence or two each. Beside my name: "Loves the attention." Touche. (It was an eye opener to see the same guys who'd flirted all fall with me that first year trying the exact same lines and tactics on a fresh crop of first-year resident girls the following September… and the September after that...!)

Towards the end of first year, I met my first serious boyfriend (whom I'd had a crush on for as long as I'd known him). I couldn't believe my luck. That such a nice, gorgeous guy that I liked so much was actually liking me back seemed too good to be true. 

In the end, it was. We went together for almost a year, before he broke up with me (and broke my heart). (I believe he wound up getting married to the girl who was my next door neighbour in residence that year. Hmmm.) 

In that summer between first and second year, though, he came to visit me and accompanied me to an all-class high school reunion (points to him for that!!). It was one of the most satisfying moments of my life to walk into the hall where the classes from the 1970s were holding a banquet -- me, the girl who'd never had a date in high school, accompanied by this tall, blond, gorgeous looking guy -- and watching jaws drop. : ) 

I read the Rolling Stone interview with Adam and I recognized some of myself in his story. Not the gay part, obviously ; ) -- but the drama geek who didn't quite fit in at high school, began exploring his sexuality when he left, did some partying and eventually found his sense of self and self-worth. Maybe that's why it resonated with me as it did. (That, & it's a hot picture, lol.) 

*** *** *** 

I can remember being near the front of a stage at a Cheap Trick concert in the late 1970s or early 1980s, just in front of the dark, good looking bass player -- almost close enough to touch him. I was newly liberated from my hated glasses (thanks to the contact lenses), and (finally) feeling pretty. We made eye contact & he smiled at me, more than once. It was a heady sensation. 

Another time, a couple of years later, I was with a girlfriend at a local dive on a hot August night, watching a popular band from the nearby city, from a table near the stage. The guitar player had long dark curly hair & smouldering dark eyes. I couldn't take my eyes off him, and he was watching me too, as he played. 

During one of the breaks, he came over to our table to chat. Having now hooked my prey, however, I had no idea what to do. I may have been a flirt, but I wasn't a groupie (totally inexperienced at that point, in fact), and the aura of danger that surrounded this guy petrified me. The mantra of the day may have been "sex and drugs and rock & roll," but for me it was more like "flirtation, alcohol and rock & roll." 

So -- reality & my conscience intervened. The spell was broken, the conversation ultimately went nowhere, & when the bar was ready to close, my girlfriend & I left. We drove past the band standing in the parking lot, smoking and chatting up some other (more receptive) chicks, and I had this funny feeling: "That could have been me." 

Not that I REALLY wanted it to be me. I may have fantasized about bands, but when push came to shove & fantasy threatened to become reality, I knew there was something wrong with this picture. I liked to have fun, but deep down, I knew who I was -- & I wasn't that much of a risk taker. Years later, I read Pamela DesBarres memoir, "I'm With the Band." I admired her chutzpah, & was fascinated by the stories she dished out, but knew it was definitely NOT me. It was a parallel world that I briefly had the key to enter. I chose instead to remain on the outside, looking in. 

I still get that feeling sometimes today, albeit under very different circumstances. I see pregnant women and moms with babies and children and know that this, too, could have been my life, with a little more luck and perhaps a little more effort and persistence on my part. Ultimately, it was my choice not to continue to pursue infertility treatments, or adoption, and remain childless/free -- just as it was my choice not to hang out with the band after the show that night. I knew, then and now, that both were ultimately the right choices for me. 

Yet still I think about that point of choosing -- and the mystery & allure of roads not taken. In some ways, I feel like I'm back in high school again, since Katie was stillborn & we abandoned infertility treatments -- knowing I'll never be part of the popular clique (i.e., parents), but also that there's another world waiting out there for me. It's taken awhile for me to find my niche, but as time goes on, I'm adjusting to this new world more & more. 

*** *** *** 

So what happened to the girl who once dared to wear safety pins as earrings, and flirted with guitar players (albeit from a safe distance)? 

She grew up, met a wonderful guy, got married, got a job, got a mortgage and moved to the suburbs. 

She tried (and failed) to have children to pass her vinyl collection along to, and gained weight and a few grey hairs in the process. (Recently -- reluctantly! -- her hairdresser persuaded her to colour her hair for the first time in her life.)

Right now she's feeling a little old & creaky -- particularly among all the 20 & early 30-somethings she now works with (some of whom, like Adam, could very well have been her kids). 

She's struggling with the feelings of invisibility that women over 40 sometimes talk about. She finds she needs reassurance from her dh now & then that she's still attractive & desirable, despite the extra years & pounds. 

And she still loves music. 

I wrote earlier that university was the best time of my life. That doesn't mean I would want to be 19 again. There was angst, & too much of it, over guys who really didn't deserve it --until I met dh, & even then, we had a few years of long distance romance until we finally got married that I wouldn't want to repeat. There weren't all that many hangovers, but there were a few doozies that were hard enough to handle at 20, never mind 48. 

I'm older, but I'm wiser too. I've earned all my wrinkles & grey hairs, & then some. The rock & rollers I admired as a kid are all older & wiser too -- many of them with families, and even grandkids now -- & many of the ones who weren't so wise aren't here any more. I think it's normal to feel some wistfulness, some raging at the dying of the light. But there's still a lot of light left. (And wasn't rage what fuelled the punk rock/new wave movement in the first place?) 

At any rate, I know I have company. My friend is turning 50, and more of us will soon follow. My perky, single, miniskirted 20-something co-workers will someday be 40+ too, & fretting about their weight & grey hairs (enjoy it while it lasts, kids...). Dh has already crossed the rubicon (i.e., he's over 50 now) -- his hair is more grey than not these days -- but I still think he's boyishly cute. ; ) The Stones are all pushing 70 (!), but they're still going strong (so much for Mick's infamous quote about not wanting to be 40 & still singing "Satisfaction"...!) …and Bruce Springsteen (whom I once dreamed I found skinny-dipping in my swimming pool)(I don't actually have a swimming pool, let alone one with Bruce Springsteen in it...)(and more's the pity, lol) is still jumping off pianos & doing knee slides across the stage even as he nears 60. So maybe there's hope for me yet. : ) 

To see what others are showing & telling this week, click on over to Stirrup Queens.

Show & Tell: Happy birthday, Grandpa & Grandma

I've been thinking a lot about my maternal grandparents lately. Both of them had birthdays in early May -- Grandpa on May 3 (he'd be 97) & Grandma on May 11 (she's be 95). Theoretically, they could both still be here.

But although I was lucky to have them for many, many years, I'm not lucky enough to still have them here. Grandpa died in October 1998, at age 86 -- three months after we lost our Katie -- and Grandma died almost a year to the day later in October 1999, at age 85.

Christmas 1998 was doubly hard, not only because of the loss of the baby we had hoped to bring home to my family, but also because, for the first time ever, my Grandpa wasn't there.

I was the oldest of four grandchildren and, being first, I suppose, I had a special relationship with them (or at least, I like to think so!). We lived only 20 miles away from them for the first two years of my life, so I saw them often, and lived with them for awhile, when my father was transferred to a small town in northern Saskatchewan.

When I was 14, we moved closer -- about two hours away from the small town where they lived in northwestern Min.neso.ta-- & the visits became more frequent again. My sister & I spent a good chunk of our childhood summers with our grandparents, and many holidays. Especially Christmas.



Some Christmases, we would make the long car trip back to Min.neso.ta to be with my grandparents. For Christmas 1976, the year my great-uncle passed away, we all spent Christmas with my uncle & his family. Once my sister & I were in university, Grandma & Grandpa always came to spend Christmas with us.

There were a few Christmases, when we lived in northern Saskatchewan, when Grandma stayed at home with my great-uncle (who lived with them), or travelled to be with my uncle and his family. Sometimes, Grandma & Grandpa would make the trip together to be with us. (After my sister & I started university, they always spent Christmas with us and, in later years, as they became increasingly frail, we would drive down to pick them up.)

But Grandpa always, always was there -- every single Christmas of my life. I can remember the year when I was 3 or 4 and my father drove to a nearby town to pick him up from the train station. I pulled my little chair up to the window & sat there for what seemed like hours, watching & waiting. It was dark & cold, with frost on the windows (houses not being quite so energy efficient back in the early 1960s), and I think I fell asleep, or at any rate was half-asleep by the time the car pulled up in the house & my Grandpa finally came in, giving me a big, cold hug and bearing suitcases full of presents, like Santa Claus.



Grandma & Grandpa met when they were barely teenagers -- Grandma was in Grade 8, I think -- &, aside from a few months when they had a spat & my grandfather went down to Iowa, where several of his siblings had found work, they were rarely apart from that time on. (This adorable photo was taken in 1929, when Grandpa was 17 & Grandma was 15.)

Since this was during the Depression, they didn't have much money, and didn't get married until June 30, 1937, when Grandma was 23 & Grandpa 25. A new grandstand had been built at the county fairgrounds, & the fair board came up with a "gimmick" to draw people to the fair: they advertised for a local couple to get married as the closing act of the grandstand show on the final night of the fair. My grandparents applied & got the gig, figuring it was the only way they would ever be able to afford to get married. They had to keep it a secret from all but a few close family members.

Sadly, no wedding photos were taken (that I have ever seen, anyway)... but there was a priceless item published in local newspaper. A family member went to the local museum, found this article in the archives, & read the following item aloud at my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary party:

"The closing and probably one of the most interesting events of the fair was the public wedding solemnized on the evening of the last day of the fair... "I Love You Truly" with orchestral accompaniment was sung as the bridal party entered. The bride was attended by eight young ladies of [the revue]. They were appropriately attired for the occasion and each carried a bouquet of roses which was afterward showered upon the bride while the groom was almost smothered with kisses and hugs from the group."

I've always thought this was the coolest thing… but I think my grandmother was embarrassed. Whenever I asked her for details about that day, she would claim she didn't really remember much. Her youngest sister, my great-aunt, who passed away last year, was not quite 14 at the time. She once told us she remembered walking around the fairgrounds after the wedding, crying, because now that her sister was married, who was going to do all the housework?? (lol) (But then she met her older brother, who gave her some money for a treat, and that cheered her up, lol.)

(In the mid-1990s, that beautiful old wooden grandstand was destroyed by a tornado, which skirted the edges of town. A monstrous tin structure arose to take its place, just in time for my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary in 1997, which we celebrated by serving cake & coffee at the seniors' home where they now lived. Everyone teased that there was a crowd out at the grandstand, waiting for them to come and renew their vows.)

They took the train to Winnipeg for a honeymoon, and briefly set up house on their own (although many of the promised gifts from local merchants, as part of their fairground wedding, never did materialize), but soon moved in with Grandma's family in a little house across the street from the railroad tracks in the north end of town. As my sister once said, it's kind of a miracle we're all here today, because there can't have been much privacy in that tiny old house, with at least four other people living there, including my great-grandparents as well as at least two of my grandmother's siblings. They stayed in that house until the early 1980s, when a weak foundation & escalating upkeep issues persuaded them to move into an apartment in a fourplex in town. They spent the last few years of their lives sharing a room at the seniors' home in town.

My grandparents were salt-of-the-earth people. Grandma worked in her younger years, but became a homemaker after she started her family. When I think of Grandma, I see her in the kitchen at the old house, wearing an Edith Bunker-style bib apron. There was always a pot of coffee percolating on the gas stove, cookies in the cookie jar (which now sits on the countertop in my kitchen), and there were always people dropping by to share a cup & some conversation -- and laughs, lots of laughs -- around the kitchen table, or on the little screened-in porch off the kitchen on the side of the house, covered in Virginia creeper.

Grandpa worked at the farm implement shop when I was little, then at an auto body shop as a partsman, and retired after several years as a custodian at the high school. He also drove a school bus for several years. He knew everyone, and everyone knew him. He loved kids, & kids loved him. The class of 1972 dedicated their yearbook to him, much to his immense pride.

When my sister & I were little, he would tell -- tell, not read -- us fairy tales at bedtime, taking on different voices for the different characters. After dinner, he would often take us and our cousins out for a drive in the country to look for deer & wildflowers by the side of the road, winding up with a treat at the local Dairy Whirl drive-in.

When we were planning Grandpa's memorial service, the regular organist at the little Episcopal church he faithfully attended was not in town. Someone suggested a local woman who might be able to fill in. "Did you know my dad?" my mother asked her. "Oh sure -- he drove the school bus," she responded, then added, "I would be honoured."

A few years ago, we held a family reunion in my mother's hometown. Several of her cousins attended from Iowa & Michigan, and wanted to see the farm where my great-aunt, one of my grandfather's sisters, had lived. A whole procession of cars drove out to the farm & parked in the yard, much to the bemusement of the current owner, a farmer who was just coming in from the fields on his tractor. My mother got out of the car & went over to introduce herself. Through the window, I could hear her say, "I'm (Grandpa's)'s daughter." A grin broke out on his face; he nodded and said, "Oh, sure." I turned to my sister with a broad grin. "She said the magic words!" I giggled.



A woman who worked at the nursing home took this photo of my grandparents in December 1997 -- the last Christmas we had both of them with us. They were dancing to an orchestra that was visiting the home. 60 years married, still always together and devoted to each other.

My grandmother, already suffering from mild dementia, was a lost soul after my grandfather died. In bewilderment, she would ask where he had gone & when he was coming back.

That first Christmas without both Katie & Grandpa, I told my mother that I could not go with her to Christmas Eve church services. Normally, I love the Christmas Eve service, but singing "Silent Night" chokes me up at the best of times, and I knew that "Away in a Manger" would send me into hysterical sobs. While my parents & dh went to church and my sister & her boyfriend (not churchgoers) smoked in the garage, I sat on the floor beside my grandmother's chair in the living room. She asked me where Grandpa was, of course, and I remember telling her that he was in Heaven -- adding that I liked to think he was with my baby girl. "Oh, I forgot, you were going to have a baby," she said, & I put my head in her lap & sobbed while she stroked my hair, like I was a little girl again.

The photo at the very top of this post was taken by a cousin in the summer of 1984. She brought an enlargement to their 60th wedding anniversary party, & we put it in a plexiglass frame & displayed it at both their funerals. After Grandma's funeral, we brought it back to my grandparents' apartment (which my mother had mantained while they lived in the seniors home) & propped it up on the low brick-&-board bookshelf, behind a couple of stacks of small photo albums. Grandma loved to sit in the easy chair beside the shelf & flip through the albums looking at photos.

The next morning when we got up, the framed photo was lying face up on the floor in front of the easy chair. A few of the small albums were scattered around its edges, but they did not cover my grandparents' faces. We figured it must have slipped off the shelf during the night, & picked everything up & put it back.

Then we started thinking... how did the photo fall off the shelf, flip over, land face up, & take some but not all of the little photo albums off the shelf with it? It couldn't have slid off the shelf, because it would have taken all the little photo albums with it, & there were still some sitting on the shelf.

My sister had been sleeping on the couch & said she hadn't heard anything. (Of course, a freight train could be running through the living room & my sister would sleep right through it.)



(As we puzzled how this might have happened, I recreated the scene we had found & took this photo of it.)

My mother firmly believes this was a sign from my grandmother -- that she had found Grandpa, & they were together again and everything was OK.

I had them for 37 & 38 years of my life, which I know makes me incredibly fortunate. They've been gone 10-11 years now. I still think about them every day.

I miss you, Grandma & Grandpa.

Here's a link to the main Show & Tell thread -- drop by & see what others are showing & telling this week.