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.

Prompt #15 - Snow

Winter Solstice

 *

 

 

 

Saturday night after the hockey game a blizzard blows up across the prairie and when the wind finally rests, our farmyard is transformed. Mounds and drifts of pristine crystal blanket the lane, cover the snowfence, bury the woodpile and willow windbreak. The bare black boughs of submerged scrub oak stitch the sky to ground.

 

The snowplow will take days to work its way to us; there is nothing to do but surrender and snuggle into the warm cocoon of home. Turning our backs on bold boys busy at snowforts and battle we dress our dolls for the expected journey. Babe in swaddling cloth and downy bunting. Bride in robes of cowled velvet, covered with flowing chamois cape; moccasins laced to the knee. Tinsel to halo her wild curls, to circle her tunic, keeping net of crinoline like folded wings, concealed. Swan-necked staff of crumpled tinfoil to assist her long march down shimmering diamond path.

 

Word arrives--the plow has made it through. If we walk to the main road, we can catch a ride to the Christmas Concert. We bundle in layers--toques, gauntlets, cloaks, scarves--and, just after supper, we three set out. The clean cold touching the bottom of our lungs creates a strange buoyancy.

 

Our flashlights pale in the moon's silver. In the days we have huddled inside, sun and wind have crusted the drifts. Now we are spared the breaking of trail. We walk atop the frozen crests. Mock desert dunes and we the magi pageant. Our star is the moon in whose caressing light soft landwaves glisten and glow--a white satin comforter.

 

In shoes of priestly ancestors we assemble round candlelit Tree to celebrate the glory of this longest night and herald, in concert, the magic, slow return of Light.

Copyright J.M. Bridgeman

* Michael Eudenbach photo used with permission. jmb

Prompt #14 - Family Dinner

Prompt #14 - Family Dinner

My mother. My father. All four of my grandparents. All eight great-grandparents. This is what happens when you delve into genealogy. All those questions you wished you had asked when and if you had had the chance. Just this fall, I worked on a timeline for my maternal grandmother Winifred Joan Hayne Bubar and I have one whole page of Unanswered Questions/Brick Walls:

 

Who is the man in the locket?

Who is the woman with the necklace?
How do I access the ancestral links between 18th and 16th centuries without spending money?
Who is the boy in the marine coat photo? Did you have a second brother? If so, what happened to him? If not, what does the Feb 1900 refer to in the Family Bible?

After your father died, where did the children live when mother Anne moved in with her mother?
Is the address where brother Moreton sent letters and the telegram from the Palace announcing his death the address of the cottage? If not, what was your mother doing there?

With whom did you live (a doctor in Kaslo in 1913) and what did you do while you were there?
Why were you married in Nelson, BC?
When was the Kettle Valley WI formed? How was it different from the Fireside Circle?
What date did your sister-in-law Norah Bubar die in 1952?

When did your half-sister Georgina Hayne Godding die? ( b.Georgina Fanny Sarah Hayne, June 20, 1860)
If Georgina's son Frank Cane Godding was wounded in the war and died later (1919), what happened to Georgina's daughter?
When did you move from the ranch into the Midway house? How did you get it? Did you inherit money &/or jewels when the last aunt died?
What year and day did your youngest son marry?
Would you have liked your life to have been different in any way?

Some of these are basic and could be uncovered at the proper research centres, but some may never be answered to any satisfaction.

I expect it would be the same if I did the timeline for each family member.

Prompt #13 - Icons Picnics

Prompt #13 - Icons Picnics

 

Prompt #13 - Icons Picnics

 

A dinner party with 12 guests. Well, first of all, that would never happen. Thirteen at a table is unlucky and would never be permitted. I'm sure it was not my grandmother who invented the "kids' table" to avoid this problem. And you thought it was just to confine the noise to one corner!

 

Second, I'm one of those slow people, introvert and proud, who much prefers one-to-one to large group interactions. So, I'd set this challenge up as an interviewing process, and I'd get to talk to each applicant one at a time, a private screening of sorts. In order to free me to talk without having to play hostess, to serve, I'd bring a picnic basket, a "cooler" of Proudly Canadian foods to share and to honour my guests: smoked salmon cream cheese on Manitoba rye for starters, moosemeat tourtiere, rhubarb chutney, mashed potato salad, cold asparagus with vinaigrette, BC wine, wild strawberries, Nanaimo bars or butter tart bars made with dates and pecans (gifts from eastern and southern friends).

 

Choosing the Famous/Special/Iconic People to be my guests will not be difficult. The challenge will be to come up for each with one open-ended question about which I am curious. Apologies for the heavily weighted Canadian heroes and heroines, although I do hope that my questions will be relatively universal. Let's start with the women.

 

Ann Boleyn: "Five hundred years later we still talk about you. Of course, I want to hear “Anne's version” but in context. So, would you talk about what is/was the impact of your parents and their time on your life, early and later?"

 

Emily Carr: "You have made us proud to be female and British Columbian Canadian. In what ways was being born in Victoria a benefit to your career and in what ways was it an impediment?"

 

Marilyn Monroe: "Some Like It Hot is my all-time favourite movie. In what ways do you feel your personal background influenced your career and in what ways was it affected by the prejudices and mores of your era?"

 

Margaret Laurence: "You are the 'great mother/wise crone' of my life. Did/do you feel that your Canadian readers failed you, didn't get what you were doing with The Diviners? Or, with hindsight, would you have changed the way you did it?"

 

Alice Munro: "Congratulations on your well-deserved Nobel Prize for Literature. You make us all so proud. What kept you going in the early years? Were you ever tempted to abandon writing? Was there a shift from “telling” stories to “selling” stories? If so, did it change your writing? If so, in what ways?"

 

Louis Riel: "You are our Nelson Mandela. You are now acknowledged as the Father of Confederation for my home province even though when you left it and went into exile, there was a warrant out for your arrest. You stood up for your people against racial, religious, and geographic prejudice and were rewarded with the label “traitor” and a hangman's noose. Some still insist that your religious mysticism and questionable political choices indicate insanity. As if only an insane person would challenge colonial power! What really was the enemy you were fighting against? Would you do anything differently, if you were leading the Metis people, speaking to and for all Canadians today?"

 

Big Bear: "You were right, Old Man, Honoured Elder, and you are still right, and there is no one standing up and saying that, and no one willing to hear. Did you ever lose faith in your visions? What would you recommend for First Nations leaders today? What would you say to the rest of Canada?"

 

John A. Macdonald: "We acknowledge you as the Father of Canada. Without you, we would not exist as a nation. You were a man of your era, of capitalism and imperialism, Christianity and white supremacy, an immigrant from impoverished urban Europe. From what you have seen since, from up (or down) there, what are some of the negative impacts of your certainties, especially on “outsiders” or "others"? In other words, have you learned anything, Old Man? Do you repent?"

 

Thomas Hardy: "My grandmother's name was Woodland and she came from 'Wessex' too. So your stories are about 'my people'. What gave you the confidence to celebrate them, local, marginalized, hard-working, downtrodden, including strong female characters like Eustacia, Tess, and Bathsheba?"

 

Ernest Hemingway: "Determined not to be intimidated by your macho persona, I would like to say how much I enjoy your work, especially the Nick Adams stories. What would you have wished had been different in your life?"

 

Winston Churchill: "For every important event in Western history in the 20^th Century, you were there and somehow involved. When you were eight years old, what life did you imagine for yourself and how close was that imagined future to the life you achieved/created?"

 

Leonard Cohen: "Ever since I attended my first Leonard Cohen concert when I was seventeen years old, I have loved you. 'I love you in the morning, your kisses deep and warm.' What impact do you think Montreal and Canada have had on who you are and what you have created/achieved?"