#MicroblogMondays: Suddenly, September

Suddenly, it's mid-September.

How did this happen??

The neighbourhood kids are back at school.

Last Monday, it felt like 40C (104F) when the humidity was factored in. :p  (I refused to leave my air-conditioned house.) Yesterday, it got up to just 13C (about 55F).  When we went out, I had to forgo my beloved capris & sandals and don long jeans, shoes, socks and a jacket, for the first time in months. 

We had the comforter on our bed last night (also for the first time in months), and when we woke up this morning, it was just 19C (67F) in the house.  Brrrr!!

The morning light filtering into our bedroom has a different quality, somehow.

There are already tinges of red and gold on the leaves of some of the trees.

Summer went by way too fast. And I'm not sure I'm ready for what comes next...!

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.     

Grade 12 (!)

A Facebook find from a childless-by-choice friend.
I don't even have the dog to offer as an alternative. ;)  :p

It's (finally) the first day of school here, where I live. A day I have been dreading for a long, long time.

It's been an agonizingly long wait.  As I wrote earlier last month, "first day of school" posts & photos from parents in the U.S. have been popping up since August 10th (!!) in my blog reader and Facebook feed, with each Monday since then (FIVE WEEKS' WORTH, people...!!) bringing a fresh new batch of photos and posts and stories and laments about how quickly these children are growing up.

At least they ARE growing up.

Sorry if I sound a little bitter. You see, this would be Katie's "Last First Day." (And ours too, of course, by extension.) Today, she would have been going into Grade 12 -- senior year, for those of you in the States. Of course, next year would have been the first day of university, with more first days of class to come over the next few years (because of course she would have gone to university, right??). (According to dh, she would already be doing her doctoral studies by now, because of course, our daughter would be brilliant. Yeah, right... ;)  )

But the last year of high school is special, isn't it? (At least, it's supposed to be.) A milestone. A time to look back, and to look ahead.

I can look back, too -- on an entire lifetime of experiences she -- and we -- have missed out on. Things that never were. And look ahead too, to the things that never will be.

It's hard to believe she has been gone for so long.

She would be turning 17 in November. Over the past 11+ years, she would have survived daycare, kindergarten, first day of Grade 1 (and all the other grades). Learned to read. Inherited my Barbie doll collection & Nancy Drew books. Attended playdates and birthday parties. Cried over party invitations anticipated but not received. Made friends (perhaps with LGND), and endured catty comments from others. Had crushes on boys, and maybe even a boyfriend or two by now. Taken music lessons. Gone to a rock concert (maybe Bruce, with Mom & Dad, or (taking after her mom's boy-band inclinations, lol) 1D or Justin Bieber).  Learned to swim and skate, perhaps to figure skate, or even play hockey. Joined the Girl Guides, or some other such organization. Maybe spent a week or two at summer camp. Spent a couple of weeks every summer visiting Grandma & Grandpa out west (and getting royally spoiled). Been smuggled into a bar, underage, by her doting auntie. ;)  Learned to make tomato sauce with her other doting (Italian) zia (auntie), and been treated to gelato by her doting zio (uncle). Been teased by her adoring cousins. Learned to drive. Begged her dad & me for a car (among other things). Battled with us over curfews and Facebook. Maybe had a part-time job.

She would be looking forward to university applications, and prom next spring, and graduation next June, and university next fall. She would, no doubt, have been a bridesmaid in her cousin's wedding next fall, and full of plans for dresses and bouquets and showers and bachelorette parties. Perhaps thinking about her own wedding someday, as many young girls do. Perhaps her own family. My grandchildren. (Grandchildren!!)(Several of my peers, cousins & high school friends, some even younger than I am now, are grandparents already.)

All this would, could, should have been hers, and ours.

People often don't realize that when you lost a baby, you don't just lose a baby. You lose the toddler, and the first grader, and the tweener and the teenager, and the high school graduate and the college frosh, and the bride (or groom) and the young employee and the young parent he or she would have become. The children they might have had, too.

I never had any of it. Never got to see it, experience it, enjoy it.

But I miss it, and I feel cheated out of it, just the same. Even 17 years later.

*** *** ***

Previous first day of school/school-related posts:

Grade 6 (2009)
Grade 7 (2010)
Grade 8 (2011)
Grade 9 (2012)
Grade 10 (2013)
Grade 11 (2014)
Graduation blues (June 2015)

Book: "Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography" by Laura Ingalls Wilder

If you're like me & enjoy reading footnotes, have I got a book for you!!

I heard about "Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography" by Laura Ingalls Wilder, expertly edited by Pamela Smith Hill, a few years before it was released last year, and I have been following its progress through "The Pioneer Girl Project" blog of the South Dakota Historical Press. The publishers vastly under-estimated the interest in this book, which created huge backlogs in orders. It wasn't even available in Canada for a long time, but I was finally, recently, able to get my hands on a copy.

Like many of you, I'm sure, I grew up reading the "Little House" books and watching the television series.  I bought a boxed set of the entire series early in my marriage, intending to read the books with my kids someday, and one of the happiest memories I have of my pregnancy is sitting up in bed with my hand on my swelling stomach, reading "Little House in the Big Woods" aloud to my tummy while dh smiled at me from the doorway.

In past blog posts, I've reviewed several "Little House"-related books, including "The Wilder Life" by Wendy McClure and "Confessions of a Prairie Bitch" by Allison Arngrim (TV's Nellie Oleson). I've also read "Prairie Tale" by Melissa Gilbert (TV's Laura) and (back when I was in high school or university), "Laura," a biography of Wilder by Donald Zochert.   

So I was fairly well versed in Wilder's life story. Even so, there was plenty here that I did not know, had forgotten, or thought I knew but did not know the full story.

"Pioneer Girl" is really three stories in one.

First, it brings to the public for the very first time Laura Ingalls Wilder's unpublished handwritten memoir, "Pioneer Girl," which became the basis of all the subsequent "Little House" novels. In many ways, as some reviewers have noted, it's a much darker and more complex story than "Little House" readers will remember. For example, the novels gloss over some of the Ingalls family's wanderings, entirely skipping over the unhappy time the family spent in Burr Oak, Iowa (where the family helped run a hotel next door to a saloon, and Laura narrowly escaped molestation by a drunken man who entered her bedroom one night). The novels also don't mention the existence of Laura's baby brother, Freddie, who was born in Iowa and died as an infant.

Second, it's the story of the manuscript itself, and of an editorial and creative process: the introduction and footnotes detail how Wilder worked to refine the manuscript with her daughter, author/journalist Rose Wilder Lane, and how it changed and evolved into the Little House books that so many of us grew up knowing & loving. Many have thought that Lane was the actual author of the books (and she clearly helped herself to material from her mother's stories for use in her own works);  "Pioneer Girl" puts that theory firmly to rest. She obviously played a major role in editing the story and marketing it to potential publishers, and in shaping the books that followed (particularly the earlier ones), but Laura's voice and vision of what the books should be is clear and unmistakeable.

Third, as I mentioned earlier, "Pioneer Girl" verifies the historical facts underlying the manuscript and, by extension, the "Little House" books themselves. ("I don't suppose anyone will take the trouble to look it up," Laura wrote in a note to her daughter, after arguing whether a historical point should be altered to make a better story. Boy, would she be surprised....!)  Editor Hill and her team of researchers have done an absolutely amazing job of fleshing out Wilder's manuscript and adding to our knowledge of the books and the author's life by researching & verifying the stories, characters and places referenced (and pointing out the discrepancies between Wilder's manuscript, the finished books, and what the historical record would indicate).  Using census, newspaper and other records, they tell us more about people such as Soldat du Chene, Robert & Ella Boast, Reverend Alden, Cap Garland, Mary Power, and Laura's aunts, uncles and cousins, and what happened to them. (Nellie Oleson was a composite figure, drawn from three different girls Laura knew in both Minnesota and Dakota.)  They pinpoint the actual or likely dates of events Laura describes (everything from cyclones to blizzards to ice cream socials);  they find lyrics to songs that Laura herself could only partially remember.  The pages and pages of footnotes, photos and maps (plus a detailed introduction, conclusion and appendices, as well as bibliography & index) outnumber the pages of the manuscript itself.

This is not a quick read -- jumping back & forth from text to footnotes and back again -- but it's fascinating and absorbing and, if you are a big Wilder fan, an absolute must.  It's also beautifully designed and laid out, coffee table book size.

And now I want to go back & re-read all the "Little House" books again. :)

This was book #21 that I've read to date in 2015. I've now surpassed the number of books than I read in all of 2014!

#MicroblogMondays: Fired up

When I was growing up, fireworks were a special occasion, once or twice a year kind of thing.  Seeing them would involve a trip to a community park or ballfield at dusk on Canada Day (then called Dominion Day) or the Fourth of July, if we were in the States visiting my grandmother, equipped with lawn chairs and plenty of mosquito repellant. (I don't remember fireworks on Victoria Day in May until I moved to Ontario.) I do remember my uncle & cousins setting off some fireworks and firecrackers in Grandma's garden on the Fourth of July one year (possibly Bicentennial), and all of us kids running around with sparklers, but home fireworks were not something I grew up with in Manitoba.

So it was a bit of a shock when dh & I moved to the suburbs -- where the backyards are small and the houses densely packed together -- and discovered our neighbours liked to set off their own fireworks displays in the street outside our house and in their backyards on the Victoria Day & (especially) Canada Day long weekends. A little too close for comfort, perhaps, particularly it was dry or a bit windy...

But fireworks were still a special Victoria Day/Canada Day thing. Until recently. We had fireworks going off on the street behind our house on the August long weekend -- which woke me up just as I was drifting off to sleep. :p  And fireworks again Saturday night and last night -- BOOM! BOOM!! like a cannon -- which had me levitating about a foot off the couch. No doubt there will be more tonight.

Maybe I'm turning into a grumpy old lady, but since when did fireworks become an "every long weekend (especially in the summer)" kind of thing??

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.   

#MicroblogMondays: We're everywhere...!

Dh & I went to see "Mr. Holmes" this past weekend, starring the wonderful Ian McKellen as an aging (93 years old) Sherlock Holmes in post-WWII Britain.  I'd read a few reviews when the movie came out earlier this summer (most of them fair to middling), & I knew it was about an older Sherlock Holmes recalling his final case before retirement, some years earlier -- but not much else, so we didn't have many expectations, going into the theatre. And we both liked it a lot. It's not your typical Sherlock movie, but we both thought McKellen's performance was Oscar-worthy.

The one big surprise (potential slight spoiler alert here): pregnancy loss figures prominently in one of the storylines. And grief, loss and regret eventually permeate much of the movie.  Not that it's a big downer of a movie;  as I said, we both enjoyed it tremendously, overall. But I must admit, I was taken aback when the subject was introduced. It's not something you expect to find in a Sherlock Holmes movie, is it?

Have you seen "Mr. Holmes"? What other movies or TV shows have you seen where pregnancy loss (or infertility) were introduced in an unexpected way?

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here. 

Turn the page

From a friend's Facebook page.
Obviously, my boy-band-loving past continues to influence me as an adult, lol.

Blogging odds & ends

• I feel like I haven't been posting anything lately (let alone anything of importance), since I got back from vacation, and was thinking I should write some kind of apology. Just haven't felt overly inspired to write.
• Then I looked and realizef this will be my 11th post in 26 days so far this month;  i.e., I've had a post of some sort just about every other day or so in August.  Granted, most of those posts have been either book reviews or #MicroblogMondays posts. But posts, nevertheless. So I guess I should stop fretting. ;)  The muse will return, eventually...!
• Over the last few days, I've had the bizarre experience of watching my comments disappear one after another into the ether. It mostly happens on WordPress or self-hosted blogs, it seems. In some cases, I've tried to rewrite/repost the comment -- only to see that one disappear too.  I mentioned this in private emails to Mel & Mali, and both discovered my wayward comments lurking in their spam folders -- but there are quite a few more instances where I didn't get in touch with the blogger. Not sure exactly what I'm doing wrong (and if anyone has any suggestions, let me know...!)(I've run malware and virus scans, just in case, but that still didn't seem to help) -- but if I often comment on your WordPress/self-hosted blog posts and you haven't seen anything from me lately, have a look in your spam folder. There might be something there.  ;)