Prompt # 69 - Treasured Possession

Prompt # 69 - Treasured Possession

I have so many inherited treasures. Two diamond rings, one mine, one my mother's, made from an old cocktail ring which belonged to my grandmother. Her brass Buddha in brass bowl on brass serving tray. Books. China. Photographs. My mother's wedding dress. And more stuff seems to arrive every day as my cousin Carol keeps sending me things. My great-uncle Murray's war medals, from the North West Rebellion and the Boer War.

The one object I have treasured since my Grandma gave it to me at her death is a ceinture fleche, a Metis arrow sash, a colourful mainly red wool scarf, over six feet long with four feet of fringe, handmade probably around Red River about 1870. I do not know its true provenance but her husband's family lived in Selkirk, Red River, later Manitoba, from about 1869 to 1891. I think she willed it to me because I lived in Manitoba at the time and she thought it should go “home.”

This fall as I was researching Uncle Murray who was a Mountie in the North West Mounted Police and then the Royal North West Mounted Police, from 1882 to 1906, I learned that some Mounties adopted the Metis sash because it was so functional. The Metis who wove the sashes using their fingers and chairs as looms, used them as a tump line and mainly as a belt, outside the overcoat, to keep out the cold, and to attach useful accessories to, such as knives, tobacco pouches, powder horns, purses. So perhaps the sash belonged to Uncle Murray. I wish I knew. I wish I knew how to find out. I also wish I knew how to take better care of it, because I have had it for fifty years and it really needs to be washed, but I do not dare.

Metis means “mixed” in French and is the name given people with both Caucasian and First Nations ancestry. Although I'm unaware of any blood connection, I have always felt of myself as in some way “between,” or spanning. Probably because I am so literal, and I take a symbolic meaning of my surname. I choose to see myself as a link, and the bridge I build between worlds is a bridge of words and story. 

Prompt # 68 - Memory Tree

Prompt # 68 - Memory Tree

Holiday memories include the eighteen Christmases I lived at home with my parents (and two younger brothers as they arrived) and the four years before my mother died, after I moved to BC to be closer to her. Christmas meant winter, snow, Santa Claus parades where helpers threw candy. After age 6, Christmas meant the school Christmas concert, with skits, plays, and choirs, and the arrival of Santa with a bag full of toys and an orange and candy for every child. The first role I remember, it must have been Grade 2 because my brother was in Grade 1, I was a baby doll, in my blue flower girl dress and a baby bonnet, and all I had to do was sit completely still under the giant Christmas tree on stage. I think it must have been some version of the Nutcracker because I remember my brother was a mouse and some of the boys were toy soldiers and my rival Jane was a Raggedy Ann doll with giant freckles drawn on her face with an eyebrow pencil. In Grade 3 I was offered a lead role but I did not want to talk so I asked if I could be one of the angels. Wish granted. I stood at the back of the stage with a spotlight shining the tinsel on our wings and halos. My ideal acting role.

At home, Christmas meant a tree, and stockings hung for Santa, and parcels to be opened after the breakfast dishes were done. Special foods were prepared weeks in advance—cakes made with fruit and brandy poured on them, steamed pudding, buns, roast turkey, dressing, jelly salads, brussels sprouts, massed turnip, potato, gravy. For the first eleven or twelve years, Christmas Day was at Grandma and Grandpa's farm and all the younger aunts and uncles would come home. The groups always split into men in the living room drinking whisky and maybe playing cards and women in the kitchen preparing the food. It was usually a big meal at noon and a turkey sandwich meal at supper. And it was always a ritual at Grandma's, crackers and cheese with cocoa before going home. We lived only three miles away, but the winter roads were unpredictable.

When G & G retired and moved into town, their house was too small for gatherings so we went alternately to our house and to Uncle Tom and Aunt Jean's, for Christmas and for the repeat, almost the same menu, prepared by the other hostess, for New Years Day. By this time we were down to the two families as all the other aunts and uncles had their own families by then. The one worry was the number of place settings. Grandma would not sit at a table of thirteen; it was bad luck. So there was usually a kid's table off to the side. Now a tradition started that on Christmas, one day a year, the men offered to do the dishes.

When I think of these memories, I miss Grandma, Mum, and Auntie Jean the most, because, being the only girl, I seemed to have spent most of my time with them, not with the men and the boys. They are all gone now, and I have neither parents nor children. I rely on the charity of friends, or I collect the widows and orphans and we celebrate together. This year I resolved not to bake, decorate, send cards, give presents, or entertain. Two out of five isn't bad. I did bake shortbread and gave a lot away. I am cooking for a friend tomorrow, and going to another friend's on the 25^th. I don't call it Christmas any more as I am not a Christian. I think the name should be saved for the true believers, out of respect for them. I celebrate the season, the Winter Solstice, which we all experience. Nature is inclusive and can bring us all together should we so choose. Where I live, here in Sto:lo territory, it has always been known as the Winter Dance season.

I just watched an interesting documentary with Joanne Lumley on her quest to see the Northern Lights. I would add them to my memory tree. The Northern Lights. Grandma Bridgeman. Auntie Jean. Mum. I miss them all. 

Prompt # 67 - Priorities

Prompt # 67 - Priorities

My first priority is work. My work is writing. Creative writing. My project this last year has been writing a novel. The Rocking Girl. I consider it literary fiction although it is also quite accessible (IMHO). I make my work a priority by keeping to a work schedule and putting work before socializing or recreation. So my goal for 2015 is to self-publish The Rocking Girl on Amazon. I am apprehensive. About the technical challenge of uploading. About the emotional challenge of “putting it out there” where it (and thus, me) is vulnerable.

I wanted to write the kind of book I like to read. With a female protagonist, Wyn McBride. Set in British Columbia, Canada. Incorporating art, poetry, music, history, geology, genealogy. It involves a quest--a search for self, for belonging, for home. It aims to be positive, uplifting, enlightening. Like my former writer hero said, it is a story without villains, where the conflict is internal and inter-personal. It involves “deep travel”, a return to the ancestral home in Ireland, where the most important aspect of the journey is what the traveller learns about herself. 

Prompt # 66 - Treasures

Prompt # 66 - Treasures

I treasure: my privacy, space, my home (which I will have to give up soon). Freedom to focus on what I choose to do (creative writing). The beauty in which we live. Way more friends than I deserve.

Prompt # 65 - University

Prompt # 65 - University

University of Manitoba Bachelor of Arts with a double major in English and history

Certificate in Education (teacher training)

Master of Arts in English (Canadian literature)

I recently watched Bill Moyers interview American writer Marilynne Robinson who stressed the error of thinking that education is there to serve employers. That the goal of all education is to develop all aspects of the individual – not limited to employment skills. I loved going to university and notice myself wanting to return to it every time I am facing a major life change. I am grateful that I had the luxury of being able to study subjects and topics which interested me personally, and which still interest me today. Reading. Writing. Creativity. Psychology. Linguistics. History. Political Science. My true passion, Geology. And Canadiana.

Geologists can tell where this chunk of obsidian was mined, and thus retrace the First Nations' trade routes. This sample is in the National Historic Site at Fort Langley, BC, a former Hudson's Bay Company trading post, which offered new weapons and tools to First Nations traders in exchange for the furs, salmon, game, and berries they brought in, and the baskets and blankets they wove.

Prompt # 64 - Jobs and Careers

Prompt # 64 - Jobs and Careers

jobs – car hop, dessert bar girl

au pair

Eatons catalogue warehouse worker

china department clerk at the Bay

bookstore clerk

house cleaner

careers – high school teacher

social service caseworker

coordinator of volunteers

correctional officer

correctional case manager

adult education instructor

tutor

freelance writer

Aside from student summer jobs, the variety of careers I have had are all to me forms of education. Once I realized that what I was really doing was collecting stories, I left paid employment to work full time as a writer. I still see stories everywhere. For example:

Prompt # 63 - Addresses

Prompt # 63 - Addresses

I lived in the same house on the same farm for all my first seventeen years until I left home to go to university. My mother moved to that farm as a new bride and my parents had their 25^th anniversary there before they retired. The farm was located 10-13-22 (section, township, range) in Manitoba, Canada. The phone number was Oak River 308-3. We picked up our mail at the post office in town, Box 61. No one ever lived in that house after my parents retired. In the last couple of years, my brother Harv has reported that the house and the yard and barnyard have all been bulldozed and no sign of our old home can be seen today. The land they occupied has returned to field.

Our only close neighbours were the Haggertys on the next farm, about a twenty minute bike ride west and south. Theirs was the only house, the only light, you could see from our place. Ann and Murray had three girls, Bev, Linda and Leila (twins). The twins were four months younger than me, but one year behind me at school, in the same grade as my first brother George. Our parents were good friends and we spent many hours playing together, at our place or theirs, in the house or outside. When Murray got sick and Ann went back to work as a teacher, the family moved into town and two years later, into Brandon, the closest city. As the twins entered their teen years and were into boys, we lost touch. When I was at university, they were already married. I have no idea where they are now.

For a couple of years after the Haggertys left the farm, families rented the house and then my dad helped my uncle Tom and aunt Jean buy that farm and our nearest neighbours became our cousins, Ron, Garry, and Brian, and Cameron who was born after they moved there. We visited a lot with them too, we kids playing cards or ping pong indoors or outside in the pasture, the bush, or around the dugout and barn. 

That house was an old house, bigger and a bit fancier than ours, with a basement and a coal chute. Inside there were embossed tin tile ceilings and a bay window. I spent hours in that house but I do not have one photo of it. One hot spring day the house caught fire and burned down. No one was hurt. Only Auntie Jean and the baby were home at the time. It was thought that perhaps coal chips or coal dust had ignited in the hot sun. They built a concrete basement and cistern and moved a modern new house on to the same spot as the old. Like Dad, Uncle Tom sold the farm when he retired. The boys live in Dryden, Ontario, Alexander and Flin Flon, Manitoba, and Lethbridge, Alberta, and thank goodness that their wives are on Facebook, I hear snippets about their lives.