Prompt # 22 - Daily Routines

Prompt # 22 - Daily Routines


My main daily routine is coffee. Then some small breakfast muffin which usually includes oatmeal. I try to work (write) every morning. This winter I am experimenting, trying to heat the house with wood because my neighbor, Denis, gave me some free wood, and the hydro bill gets so high between December and March.

My friend Carol and I try to walk usually at least four afternoons a week. I go uptown to her place or she comes over here. I shop for groceries about twice per month. I have no housecleaning routine although I know I should.


My home routine during childhood included: Dad getting up, lighting the fire, putting on the coffee to perc for Mum and making a pot of tea for himself and probably his own breakfast. Mum would get up and get the kids up for school, making our breakfast and our school lunch, while Dad was outside doing the chores. The school van arrived at 8:25 am and we returned at 3:55 pm, just in time for me to have one cookie and settle down to watch The Lone Ranger.


My favourite weekend or holiday routine was urging my Dad to hurry as we drove over the "blind" road the three miles to Grandma's house. My goal was to get there before Grandma put her teeth in (no idea why this appealed to me) but if we were on time, she popped them in and then applied white creamy Jergen's hand lotion on her hands and rubbed the excess on my hands. It had the most lovely smell which I have since learned is almond.

Prompt # 21 - Childhood Hobbies

Prompt # 21 - Childhood Hobbies

My childhood hobbies, besides reading, included stamp collecting and rock collecting. I carried on stamp collecting in an album my mother had started. I may still have it, or I may have given it to my nephew Roy.

I also still have my rock collection, and parts of my brother George's rock collection, and some of my mother's more prized pieces. I collected mostly with my mother and with my younger cousin, Cameron. Friends often give me rocks as gifts because they know me and honour my passion. A dinosaur bone. A Gulf of Mexico rose. Aragonite. Selenite from the Winnipeg Floodway.

I have written about rock collecting on my other blog, Earthabridge. Please feel free to check it out. http://www.earthabridge.blogspot.ca , three posts on The Joys of Collecting Rocks posted September 27, 2012 (09/27/12), complete with pictures.

Prompt # 20 - The Feeling of Home

Prompt # 20 - The Feeling of Home


Everything I write is about home. I have used the title “Writing Home” more than once, and published a creative non-fiction piece “Without a Map” about one of our regular return visits to the old home place on the Manitoba prairie. It's all about home or the feeling of home. Of belonging. To some place. It's place that connects us to the planet.



All my places have trees. At the first place, the farm outside Oak River, the trees were poplar, Manitoba maple, American elm, willow. With, on the lawn, lilac, honeysuckle, caragana, and the fir tree my mother “rescued” from a road allowance ditch near the national park boundary. And in the bush, there were hawthorn, saskatoon, chokecherry, box, and wolf willow. This home had lots of space, big sky, sunsets, with stars, bright moons, northern lights.


In Winnipeg the trees were mostly American elm, so big that their branches entwined over the pavement making in summer a green nave in front of my house on Ruby Street. There was also an avenue of elms leading into the University of Manitoba campus, planted as a war memorial. I think they are gone now, victims of Dutch Elm disease.


When I first moved to BC, the trees around the house in Agassiz included fir, weeping willow, holly, laurel, and black walnut, with a wild cherry and a bouquet of white birch at the back, a yew tree in front of my studio, wisteria over the front deck, and some strange vine-like “weed” tree, perhaps acacia. I looked that up. It looks like Robinia pseudoacacia .


The year after my mother died, I moved to live on a corner of the ranch where she grew up. The trees there are ponderosa pine with an old Manitoba maple in the yard, brought when the family migrated west. Willow trees, and a flowering quince. Something with hot pink flowers. The Kettle River valley is high and long and people take their lawn chairs outside every night to sit and watch the sunset.


Out here they have a saying about someone who likes to dress the part--”He's more hat than cattle.” My place now is like that, “more tree than lawn,” and that's exactly the way I want it. Mostly grand fir, some hemlock, cedar nearby, dogwood, at the front, over the rhododendron and box and the moss lawn, a bouquet of “weed maple.” With fern around the edges. The mountain to the west blocks the setting sun, but the mountain to the east, the backside of Mount Hope, is a spectacular view, especially when the sun climbs it in the morning and then bursts out, and when the moon climbs the mountain at night. It is really too beautiful. So beautiful that I sacrifice work and opportunities and choose to stay happily home instead. Maybe I'm just feeling nostalgic because the neighbour is out there as I write, wielding his chain saw.


I've been ridiculed in the past about my love of trees. A tour of the Scottish highlands with only pictures of trees. “But where are the people,” viewers ask, perplexed. But the answer is simple: “I didn't know any people. Just trees.” Don't know why or how this obsession started. Something to do perhaps with names. My grandmother born a Woodland, my godmother a Mrs Grove.


My homes have to have a river too. My home town was called Oak River, although we were maybe three miles west of the river bank. There were sloughs along the lane and behind the barnyard. In Winnipeg I lived on both the Red and Assiniboine rivers, and in northern Manitoba, along the Nelson River. In BC I've lived in the Fraser River valley and steps from the Kettle River. Home today is within the sound of Silver Creek as it makes its final rush to the Fraser River. If only I could get this darn upload to work, you could hear it too.

Prompt #19 - Who Do I Miss?

Prompt #19 - Who Do I Miss?

Who do I miss? I miss my mother.

A few weeks after she died in 1993, I wrote this piece, imaging a final farewell hike. The feeling of abandonment was and is still very real.

Bridal Falls

Through arching green boughs draped with silver moss we ascend to the granite rockface washed with whitewater cascading in tiers from invisible Source to the tumbled boulders below. The rustle of this billowing train whispers in the echoing nave.

We have hiked this trail before. Skirting the Pixie Cups and Fairy Slippers. Tending the Shooting Stars. With child ears I still hear her telling me the understory—Five Fingers, Maidenhair, Bracken and Swordfern. With her eyes I first did see bruised white blossoms 'neath the canopy dappled with growth and decay.

In this box of polished cedar I carry the woman who carried me. Defying the signs, I leave the path, break a pungent trail through fallen timber. Beneath the nurse log suckling twins, I sprinkle her into beckoning Ghostfingers, onto pallid Angel Wings. With the mist rising from Bride's veil, she vanishes into the tapestry of the grove.

I step through the falls into a shaft of light and return alone to the plain.

My mother is not. She is moss. She is cedar. She is jade. I am no one's daughter. I am a space in the lace of Bride's crown. I am shadow dancing in the shimmer of brocade. I am willow pining, water winding home below the falls. I am dogwood centred from all the trees—in a rush of confusion as the nails enter. Say you have chose, not forsaken me. Tell me this pain is ecstasy.

Photo is from Windows Free Background images, photographer unknown.
This looks very similar to Bridal Falls.

"Bridal Falls " Copyright J.M. Bridgeman

Prompt #18 - First Gift

Prompt #18 – First Gift

It seems I am not alone in scratching my memory for a first gift. Hand-me-down clothes. A potty. My panda which I called Teddy. My baby doll BettyAnn. A book from my Grandma called Just Like Me which had pictures of all sorts of baby animals. Then someone's Bunnykins helped me remember my dish. A baby dish that is so heavy that only a Paul Bunyan baby could pick it up and toss it from the high chair tray. It is cream coloured, about eight inches round, with a thick edge. On the back it is stamped Royal Doulton so I expect it came from my Grandmother or perhaps one of her aunts still in England. The decal under the food is a girl in a pink dress and sun bonnet with a watering can watering rows of flowers (an iconic image which still applies to me today.) And surrounding the scene are four lines from a nursery rhyme--Mary Mary Quite Contrary/How does your garden grow?/With silver bells and cockle shells/And mussels all in a row. (Usually, the rhyme says "pretty maids all in a row.")

I have loved flowers and gardens all my life. One of my nicknames was "the flower girl." I loved the challenge of learning to identify flowers which were not local--silver bells, cockle shells, mussels, pretty maids? Were the sea shells just fertilizer? Perhaps some will say that the verse gave me permission to be "quite contrary" which is another thing which also still applies to me today. Then, I learned later, the history of the rhyme. Mary was Queen Mary, King Henry VIII's older daughter, who attempted to reinstate Catholicism to England during her short reign and did so in a somewhat "bloody" way, by executing people who challenged her. Dreaming Casually in WhatDoesHistorySay.blogspot.ca says that the bells may refer to church bells, the shells to pilgrimage (the image of the Camino Way), and the pretty maids to nuns. She adds that the bells and shells may also refer to methods of torture, the pretty maids to those waiting to be beheaded, and that the "garden" which is growing is actually a cemetery becoming more and more crowded with executed subjects. I also learned even later, and am continuing to explore through genealogy research, that some of our relatives were indeed "flowers" in the gardens of Mary or of Henry VIII. So this verse which I saw three times a day for my first few years was an early lesson in the power of art as commentary, and in the power of art as the memory of a people and their history. Stylistically, it is linked to my awareness of the use of rhyme as a memory aid in oral literature, and to the way we associate it now with childish verse or song lyrics.

Many years later (more than 25 years ago) when I was working inside federal correctional institutions, I extrapolated on this verse in a poem of my own. I still like this effort which, if nothing else, is proof of Wordsworth's truism that the child is mother to the woman, or that beginnings are important, or that the past is always with us, or that life is a braid of past, present, and future. All the Best for 2014!


Mary Mary


It's Easter Monday I'm

thirty-nine years old

digging in   delving deeper

preparing the beds

for re-planting

I've collected donations from all my

acquaintances--calla lilies, mission

bells, twinflowers

sweet baby's breath

--how does my garden grow--


Yesterday

rototilling the south plot

struck shard of pottery

which miraculously dug out intact

this morning my fork strikes

tinkle of metal

a tarnished key

dropped by Raven

on the thirty-ninth day

Searching for meaning

I deposit them both into

the dishwasher

Surprised by Joy

they wash up clean

smooth and shiny the little dish

swirls of green and blue a nest

for my key and the one hollow chocolate egg

I have managed to resist


Thirty-nine years old and single again,

a woman over forty has

a greater chance

of being killed by terrorists

than she does of marrying

the clock is ticking   the clock

ticks Lock them all

bombers hijackers kidnappers too

in the west wing

--pretty boys all in a row--

I carry the big brass keys myself

I keep them safe

I watch them grow


Finish this digging

then transplant

Proud lilies crowd out

the bleeding heart   worms

have eaten the cherry tree

I have made this bed I have made

this bed And I am tired

A soaking bath by candleglow

--you are a creature all enraptured--

blue wax drips

into shiny blue bowl

the impression of a key

the key was in the garden

--in the garden wet with rain--

©

Copyright J.M. Bridgeman

Prompt #17 - Toys

Prompt #17 - Toys

I am the first born, and the only girl, of three children born within four years. Although today I'm not a "fluffy" kind of person, not attached to "stuffies" as the kids today call their stuffed toys, as a girl I loved my panda and my dolls. My first doll, Betty Ann, had a pink dress with madras plaid trim at yoke and hem. Years later I realized that she was named after my mother's two sisters, and was a sign that I wished for sisters of my own which never happened. She met a sad end, a mysterious fractured skull which I always suspected that my brother knew something more about than I did.

The doll I remember most is Sally, my bride doll, who arrived from Santa one Christmas probably when I was about six. I probably named her Sally because that was the name of the baby sister in the Grade One readers from which I was just learning to read. Dick, Jane, Sally, Spot, and Puff. Back then, Bride with her white mary-janes, her white taffeta gown with net overskirt, her white net veil, stood for all brides, girls becoming young women becoming wives, making that transition from child to adult, from maiden to matron. Around that same time I had a chance to be a flower girl when my aunt Olive was the Bride so weddings were a big deal. A walking bride doll was one way society trained us female children to focus on our future as bride/wife/mother. I sort of grew out of that, accepting the revolution of the Sixties which implied freedom of choice and the expectation of independence and self-support promised by a career and a life outside a house which, through housework, we would still be expected to transform into a home.

Later, on that seminal trip to Ireland, I kept hearing the phrase "Bridget slept hear" and I did not know what or who they were talking about. My ears were piqued because Bridget was a nickname some friends gave me as a child, a shortened version of my surname. Bridget, the Irish hosts explained. Aka Bride. One of the three patron saints of Ireland. That was how I discovered my namesake, and that Bride was actually a goddess, one of the incarnations of the Celtic goddess of peace, patron of poets, smiths, cowgirls and cattle, with a cauldron of cream which never emptied. This meaning has remained closest to my heart. Goddesses represent the divine and the spark which resides within us all, which role models like Bridget keep alive for us everyday. So now, my dolls, my Bride doll, is recognized for what it is, an icon, and her resting place, for what it is, a shrine. Places where the divine lives and reminds us of our own divinity. I wrote a poem about this Bride, a poem which has been published in Canada, the United States, and Ireland.


I still have Sally, in the ancient family trunk which looks like a treasure chest. She is wrapped in silk, keeping the dismembered limbs together, awaiting the day when a doll hospital can reattach her arms and legs. I still have her white shoes, and also a pair of moccasins that fit her, and she still has the dress (minus the veil) although various kittens have not liked the net (at least that accounts for the shreds and tears in my mind.) She rests with three teddies, one in overalls made my an aunt, another a knitted bear with skirt made by my mother, and a calico bear I bought in Seattle when I first moved to the West Coast. They snuggle up with Brenda Jean, my last, a "teen" doll who arrived just before "Barbies" were invented. And a Quatchy, a Sasquatch "stuffie" from the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. Not that I'm a “stuffie” kind of person (did I say that already?) But there is always hope that some children may visit.

PS

I see I missed part of the prompt. Games. Our family were card players. 52 Pickup. Go Fish. Old Maid. Rummy. Crib. Crazy Eights. Canasta. 31. Bug Thy Neighbour. Hearts. 500. Euchre. And Poker and Bridge, which I have not permitted myself to learn because of the time involved. We also played board games like Steeplechase, Clue, and Monopoly which I hated then and which I still hate. I think it was the idea that in order to prosper you had to make someone else suffer. We also played Scrabble which I still play at least once a week, and constantly on my computer. We also played Crokinole which is a round board with a target design. By flicking your finger, you shoot wooden “rocks” like curling rocks or shuffleboard pucks at the opponent's or the opposing team's rocks and you try to finesse a “twenty,” which is sinking your rock in the centre hole on a deflection or directly, if there are no opposing rocks to get rid of. I have the old family crokinole board but it only comes into play if my brothers visit. I Googled this to check the spelling and to see whether the Canadian roots of the game are true. Wikipedia say yes, with a picture!

Prompt #16 - Message In a Bottle

Prompt #16 - Message In a Bottle

Where I live is 150 kilometres (100 miles) from the ocean, with a fantastic mountain view. I am not a "water" person. Water makes me nervous. Water, open water, is threatening and I do not think of it as linking or connecting me with anything, least of all with adventure or rescue, which the phrase "message in a bottle" seems to evoke for me. So I couldn't think of anything connected to this topic. But then, as I prepared for my birthday party on the 16th, it hit me. Bottle.

I had purchased a huge "bottle" on the plane en route home from my bucket list visit to England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Wales. A bottle which became the focus for this special Kittens and Cream party. The cream. An Irish cream. Which I had first lapped up in 1978 on my first trip to Ireland. When friends who were travelling and stopping the Winter Solstice holiday weeks with relatives invited us to join them in Clara, County Offaly. Airport line-ups. Hand-frisked luggage and body pat-downs. Durty Nelly's and Bunratty Castle. Clonmacnoice. Mullingar. Tullamore. Dublin. How two inches of snow shut down everything--roads, taxis, airports. Peeling fresh shrimp. Picking brussels sprouts off tall stalks growing in front gardens. Bare trees in green fields, ivy everywhere. Guinness and Harp and lager and lime. And this delicious concoction of cream, whiskey, with mystery undertastes (I'm still not sure what--chocolate?)

When I returned home to Canada those many years ago, whenever I found myself in an LC, a Manitoba Liquor Control Board outlet, which was much more often in those days than now, I asked if they had this cream. Finally, someone had an answer. They had investigated. They had researched. They had tried. They had contacted Ireland but had been told: because of the cream content, the liqueur did not travel well. They were working on some way to stabilize it and as soon as the scientists had devised this precious formula, Irish cream would be ready for export and Manitoba would be ordering it. Yes!

I'm not sure how long that took, but, true to their word, the cream arrived and has remained a special treat ever since. Although, when I ordered my duty-free bottle on the plane this past summer, I didn't realize it would be a 40-ouncer (one litre, along with a750 ml 26 ounces of vodka for the house-sitter.) All the more to share, I told myself. Clink, clink, clink, as I dragged my way through customs. I left it unopened for six months (Best before November 2014 it says on the bottle) so that it would be there for my special birthday. I did enjoy it, this message from the past in a large brown bottle. And I do believe my eight or ten special kitten guests did enjoy it too. I resisted the temptation to brag to them about how I thought that one of the greatest achievements of my life is the fact that I am responsible for the arrival of the original Irish cream in Canada. Bottles, bottles, and more bottles. Bottles of love from the cows of Ireland.