Prompt # 39 - My Safe Place

Prompt # 39 - My Safe Place

Time out for me is making an effort to go out for coffee or walks to be with people. The rest of the time, I am alone, reflecting, thinking, making decisions, creating on my own. My house is my safe place. I spend most of my time in my upstairs office, at my PC computer. Then, in the TV room, playing Scrabble or solitaire on my laptop, or writing the Book of Me. Or else I'm in my reading chair by the big window. Or in the kitchen, between stove and fridge and water taps. If it weren't for feeding the birds on the deck, I can go for days without stepping outside.

If it weren't for garbage day, and preparing the stuff to set out, I can go for a week without really being in the yard. Which is a shame because I love the yard almost as much as the house. The four small garden areas—along the south wall, in front of the deck, the curve of hostas beside the big rock, and the little yew triangle between the parking space and the house. The laburnum is in full bloom right now and the golden chains are hanging over the railing. The third rhodo has just come out as well - vibrant burgundy. The rest of the yard is my wildwood. The dogwoods and saskatoons are over. The honeysuckle are starting to flower. The wild rose will be a bit later. The rest is box shrub and fir. The yard smells so beautiful, especially right now in the rain, and you can really hear the creek because the freshet is here.

When I was a kid living at home, being the only girl,I had the luxury of my own room, although I usually did my homework on the kitchen table where the light was better. My favourite place on the farm was the pasture. There were flowers, three-headed avens, crocus, tiger lilies, aster, patches of box and other low shrub with cattle and rabbit trails through it, surrounded by mostly poplar groves. My mother said I had my first spanking in the pasture when I was a few months old. I had escaped the house and the yard and had trundled along the path to the pasture where she found me happily wandering among the cows and calves, with my bum in the air and my nose in a flower. I don't remember this, but I like the story. I guess this pasture has remained my happy place.

Prompt # 38 - When I Grow Up I Want To Be . . .

Prompt # 38 - When I Grow Up I Want To Be . . . 

The only thing I was ever good at was school. My career dreams seemed to be just to be able to keep going to school and then to university. Because I loved art and buildings, houses, I enrolled in Interior Design at the University of Manitoba Fort Garry campus in Winnipeg. Because I had no training in art, and because I learned very quickly that they accepted 120 students in first year and only graduated 40 in fourth year, expecting 80 of us to fail, I switched after three weeks to the Faculty of Arts. For four years I studied only subjects I loved including English, French, history, and geology (with intro courses in political science, psychology, and linguistics).

After teaching for ten years, I went back and did my Masters in English. My thesis The Indian, the 'Other,' In the Canadian Quest For Identity: Four Prairie Novels Of the 1970s is available online. Ever since completing my MA I've considered myself a writer. I've worked on contracts or in careers which have been great sources for characters and stories.

I still love art and houses. I collect mission oak furniture and art from artist friends. Visitors say my house reminds them of a museum. I would rather they said it is like an art gallery. Whatever. I am surrounded by objects I've collected and love.

Still Life. Art, "Plate Tectonics," by my friend Carol Hurst. Sweetgrass braids, gifts from friends at home. Medalta lamp. Green and purple rocks including obsidian and Malachite. Atop Mission Oak dresser.

Of course, one of the things I did learn in ID is the difference between decoration and design.

Prompt # 35 - Aunts and Uncles

Prompt # 35 - Aunts and Uncles

I seem to have missed a week. Aunts and uncles. Well, maybe it's just that I have too many to mention. My father had seven brothers and six sisters, and that meant seven sisters-in-law and six brothers-in-law. My mother had two sisters, three brothers, two brothers-in-law, and three sisters-in-law. Plus we had three great-aunts (Hilda, Ethel, & Beatrice) and one great-uncle (Bill), and we also called my grandmother's cousin Uncle E., so that makes approximately 40 (plus a couple of second marriages), of which about 14 are still with us. If I am lucky, I get to talk to or visit some of them once a year. When I lived with my parents, we lived closest to my father's family in Manitoba. Dad helped one brother buy the farm next to ours. My mother's relatives lived thousands of kilometres away. Those who were in British Columbia we visited about every other year.

Prompt # 37 - Feeding the Ducks

Prompt # 37 - Feeding the Ducks

I had the good luck to grow up on a farm. Ducks were wild creatures which, in season, my father shot with a shotgun and my mother cooked for supper. They fed us. On our farm, Dad fed the cows and calves, pigs, and chickens. Cattle provided milk, cream, butter, beef, and cash. The chickens provided eggs and meat. The pigs were for pork. Mum fed us, and the dog, Spot. I fed the house cat, Grey Kitty. We did not have horses because all animals had to have a purpose, earn their keep, and, as horses were no longer needed for farm work or transportation, they no longer qualified. Because this was the culture we were raised in, we didn't see wild creatures as pets. I don't feed ducks. However, against the advice of the local Bear Committee, I do put out a daily allowance of bird seed. This week it feeds robins, sparrows, chickadees, towhees, and Steller's jays.

Steller's Jay, Hope, British Columbia, Canada, April, 2014.

Above: Heifer and Calf, taken by my mother, around 1970. Oak River, Manitoba, Canada.

Prompt # 36 - Years and Years

Prompt # 36 - Years and Years

1966-67 was a pretty big year for me. I graduated from high school, and, at seventeen, left home, moved two hundred miles away to the big city, Winnipeg, where I knew no one, to start university. I changed faculties, from Interior Design to Arts, three weeks in, picking up two new courses, psychology and political science, three weeks after they had already started.

At commencement dance in the fall I met a person who turned out to be a criminal, my first encounter with evil, people hurting other people, and police involvement. I also met my first long-term boyfriend that year. In the spring, I moved into my first apartment with four other students, and started my first job as a car hop. I was so green, I tried to give back my first TIP, not realizing what it was. And another customer returned the first banana split I made on the job. I had forgotten the banana. I didn't really see a future career in food services after this beginning. I had to quit work to go to summer school, and before the fall term started, travelled to Montreal for Expo 67 and the Canadian Centennial celebrations. I travelled with my brother because my friend dropped out at the last minute, after the tickets were bought and the reservations made. So many changes. So much adventure. Sometimes I wonder, looking back, how I survived. And sometimes I wonder, how can I be so lucky?

As for the other, 1993-94 was another year of catastrophic changes beginning with my mother's illness and death, a separation, a major career change, and two moves. Crazy stress, not helped by a murder at work. But that second move brought me here, to my dream home in Hope, where I have lived for the longest of any home in my life. I will have to move, soon, eventually, but I cannot decide on any place I'd rather be, so I guess that's as good a reason as any to stay put until I'm sure. If in doubt, don't, right?