All Grown Up And Wondering What Happened

All Grown Up (Photo credit: Sandie Edwards)

Daily Prompt:  All Grown Up  When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?

Strangely enough, I can remember as plain as day telling my mother on my sixth birthday how happy I was to be the wonderful age of six and all grown up at last.  Too bad I don’t recall what her reaction was to that.  But six to me was such a magical number, so incredibly more mature than 4 or 5.  I would soon be going off to school with my big brother. I would learn how to read what the people in comic books were actually saying to eachother without making any of it up.  How could life possibly get any better than that?

My daughter had a similar epiphany at an even earlier age.  She made a simple announcement one day.  “I can tie my own shoes, and I can blow bubbles with my gum, and when I get some hair in my nose I will be all growed up.”  Who was I to argue with her criteria?  These things are different for everyone.

I don’t remember my son ever making any such great declaration about adulthood, so maybe it’s just a girl thing.  Whenever W talks about his own childhood we’re left with the impression that he was born grown up, since he vows he never did bad or childish things and never once, even as a teenager, disappointed his parents.  I’m certainly glad he got a little more interesting later in life.

The funny thing about having felt grown up so soon is that it has given me more time than most to realize I might have been wrong about it that first time, and just as mistaken at all the different stages in my life where I’ve believed (however briefly) the very same thing.  Graduating highschool, going to college, getting a real job, being in a serious relationship, getting married, having children, and asking myself with every new experience, now have I learned everything there is to know?  Have I left childish things behind?  Am I living my very best grown up life?

The older I get the less I care.  Growing up is no longer one of my lofty aspirations.  There are days when being a grown up really bites and I think how much fun it was to be that deluded little six-year-old.  With less visible nose hair.  Age and wisdom and maturity are not always all they’re cracked up to be.  It’s silly to be in such a hurry to grow up and take on all the hard stuff that life is going to hand you.

For some reason or other, growing older is what has finally taught me how amazing it is to see the world through the eyes of a child.  And the older I get, the more I want to act like one.  I don’t mean the crying, foot stomping, temper tantrum moments (although every once in a while those can be wonderfully therapeutic).  I mean experiencing moments of pure delight and wonder and joy, being happy with the simplest pleasures, playing and laughing and loving and holding nothing back.

So if some serious stick in the mud adult rolls his eyes at your antics and tells you to grow up, don’t do it.  Just say no.  You don’t have to stick your tongue out for real, but imagine in your head how great actually doing it would make you feel.  And then go ahead and feel exactly like that.

 

Just Jazzy 74

If a messy home is a happy home, my house is in a state of euphoria.

(….and by the way, perhaps this is why God gave us two hands….)

 

Assoil Us From Rainforest Homebrew

Rainforest pool ferns. Australia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Daily Prompt   Free Association

Write down the first words that come to mind when we say . . .

. . . home.

. . . soil.

. . . rain.

Use those words in the title of your post.

I’m totally cheating on this one, because the first thing I thought of was ‘ what happens when it rains on insects who make their home in the soil?”  But I couldn’t really make myself care enough about that to take it any further. They get wet and wallow around in the mud for a while.  And that’s that.

My second choice could be beautiful words taken from a prayer.  Assoil is archaic and kind of biblical sounding, meaning to absolve or free.  And people pray for the rainforests while at the same time frowning on excessive alcohol consumption.  So who could not totally elaborate on all that?

 

Not the Lords Prayer

Our male person who dwells in Utopia

(What was your name again?)

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,

In paradise and our own backyards.

May we all have what we need to survive today,

May we all forgive and be forgiven

(especially for blasphemous nonsense which ultimately means no harm)

Please don’t mess with our minds making us do even stupider things than we can dream up on our own to do,

Assoil us from rainforest homebrew and similar evils,

Because we are all small parts of the big picture and the power and the glory

And would not like to be responsible for messing things up,

Now and forever and ever,

Amen.

(Ummm….no, I haven’t been into the wine yet today.  Why would you ask me that?)

 

Homeward

The Hague Jazz 2009 – Rod McKuen (Photo credit: Haags Uitburo)

Thank you Seeker for sharing this song, Homeward, by Rod McKuen with me in yesterdays comments about going home.  The lyrics are wonderful – but we would expect no less from such a great song writer and poet.

This morning I picked W up from the airport and lost count of the times he said “It’s good to be home.”

If you’re one of those people who can’t wait to get the hell away from home, this song will be a depressing one for you.  Sorry.  But if you’re a complete home-body like me, you will appreciate knowing that no matter where you go, you are always going home.  Or homeward bound.  Or about to be home alone.   Home, home, home sweet home.

Tomorrow I promise I will not talk about home again.  Even though it appears to be one of my favourite subjects of all time.

 

Who Says You Can Never Go Home Again?

“Home wasn’t a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.”  Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye

The west veranda at the farm.

This is such a simple picture, and yet it brings back a flood of memories for me, even though it was taken on a day when I’m sure I wasn’t even there.  My dad was the only one in his family who made his living by farming.  His siblings were teachers and nurses and professionals, and ended up living in towns and cities.  And all of them – every one – came to visit him and mom here with their families.  If they hadn’t, we would never have known all our aunts and uncles and cousins so well, because running a farm means almost never getting away for trips much longer than a day.  But if the relatives wanted to come and stay?  They were welcomed with open arms.  We had lots of room and the doors were always open.  No offer of help was every refused.  You might end up peeling the potatoes or shelling the peas for your dinner, but you never went away hungry.

The garage is on the far left, then dad, mom, the window to the den, Aunt Lorna, the main door, Aunt Marie, the edge of the big kitchen window, extra lawn chairs, a strange looking wooden whirly decoration that twisted in the breeze, flower beds gone wild.  That little thing hanging on the bricks that resembles a bird house is a box that held a pencil and some notepaper.  On it was written “If at home you do not find us, leave a note that will remind us.”  I once pointed out to my mother that it didn’t make any sense.  If you were away from home, surely you knew that already and didn’t need a reminder of it.  I was just being a mouthy teenager.  But I still think the message is stupid.  And I don’t know why I’ve never forgotten it.

The view to the west was of maple trees bordering the laneway, the bank down to the pond, and fences and fields as far as you could see.    Those numerous round white dots that look like holes are actually real holes in the photograph.  It’s been pinned up to a cork board and shuffled around a lot, stuffed in a box, lost for awhile.  And then it made its way to me.  In this shot it looks like the veranda floor has had some repairs and a new coat of paint.  I remember it being a steely blue grey with loose boards you could lift up and hide things under.  I don’t remember dad ever saying he was tired of nailing them back down.

It’s a summer afternoon, dinner is over, the dishes have been washed and put away, and it’s just too nice to sit inside.  If there are kids around, they’re off climbing trees or throwing sticks for the dog, or gathering firewood for the bonfire in the backyard after the sun goes down.  I can almost hear dads voice, saying something profound in a lazy off-hand manner.  Mom saying “Oh, Hank”, and laughing,  Aunt Lorna’s droll observations (we never knew if she meant to be funny or not) and Aunt Marie’s infectious giggles.

The farm was sold years ago.  We drove by it last October and saw the changes.  The front veranda has been closed in, the barn is being torn down, the gigantic garden has gone to grass.  The house is so old I’m surprised it’s still standing.  It’s just another old building to me now.  It hasn’t been ”home” for a very long time.

And yet in my heart it will always be home whenever I remember all the people who were part of it, and who made it come so alive with laughter and fun.  I’ve had a lot of homes in my life and I carry parts of every one of them with me. The pictures in my head are as vivid as the real ones.  I can visit them anytime I choose, simply by remembering the people I loved who lived there with me, and loved me back.

 

A House Elf for Christmas

My house husband (he’s like a house elf except taller) is either bored out of his mind being home all day or really super excited about Christmas.  Just a second while I check the calendar .  It is still November, isn’t it?

Never EVER have we had our outside lights up, our Christmas tree decorated, and our cards on the table ready to be signed, sealed and sent before the middle of December.  Until now.  Every day some new Christmas thing magically appears on a doorknob or a shelf or a table or some random wall space.  Things I’ve had packed away and forgotten about are surfacing everywhere.  It’s a little scary.

For instance, there’s this card that I brought home from Scotland in 2007.  Because that’s what people do when they travel to Scotland - they buy Christmas cards and bring them home across the ocean.  I did that, so it must be true.

There was a box of different designs by Thomas Joseph and somehow I missed sending this one out to anyone. So now it’s a keepsake.  It was in a rather large box filled with a random assortment of unsent cards from years gone by which W is strongly suggesting I use up before purchasing more.  (Too late, but he doesn’t need to know that right now.)  And he also may have mentioned the many rolls of unused Christmas wrapping paper in the store-room.  As well as the fact that the whole house is full of an insane amount of shit.

So on the one hand he’s telling me to get rid of all this crap, and on the other he’s wondering whatever happened to that plastic ice holder thingy that used to be in the freezer because he’d like to put ice in it.  The more I think about it and search for it, the more convinced I am becoming that I probably threw it out last summer.  I went through a crazy stage in my life where I was making a supreme effort to get rid of a bunch of the shit that our house is so full of.  And see what happens when I try that.  So I’m not doing it again without supervision.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not in any way being critical or trying to discourage whatever the hell he’s up to around here.  Even though some of my cupboards have been rearranged and he hangs things up that should go in the dryer and vice versa and he threw out my half glass of wine that had been sitting on the counter for about 48 hours.  Maybe I was letting it breathe.  He could have asked.

Nope, I’m actually thrilled that I didn’t have to wrestle with the stupid tree this year or figure out where to hang that snowman with the dangly legs which end in giant jingle bells.  When W goes to bring in the paper tomorrow morning with that thing hanging on the doorknob, whatever happens next will not be my fault.

I think it’s excellent that he discovered we already had parmesan cheese out of sight in the back of the fridge, but his timing was off and he should have let me know that before I came home with more.  He’s been doing most of the grocery shopping and apparently I just mess up his system, so perhaps I should gracefully hand that responsibility over to him in its entirety.  I’ve done it for forty years, the next forty can be his.

I can’t get out of the Christmas card writing though. If he did the cards with his House Elf handwriting most people wouldn’t have a clue who sent them.  Sometimes he can’t even read what he’s written himself. So I’ll let him off the hook for that Christmas chore.  And I’ll probably still cook the turkey.

But everything else – wow – he’s doing a bang up job.  I will try to stay happy cheering from the sidelines.  For the next thirty days.  It’s gonna be a long Christmas.

 

Magical De-Cluttering

Although it would be nice to just whip out my magic wand and zap about a hundred objects per room into oblivion, I haven’t perfected that method of de-cluttering yet.  I’m working on it.  In the meantime, I’m reading this book because I need help with housekeeping.  I’m sure recognizing that I have a problem is half the battle.

Sitting in the living room this morning enjoying my second (or maybe third – who counts) cup of coffee gave me a chance to look around with a critical eye.  I tried to be objective, and imagine how a stranger would view my collection of random things.

It might be a stretch for that person to believe I love, need, and use all this crap, or that it brings beauty to the atmosphere and joy to my heart.

Tess Whitehurst suggests several external clutter categories (paper, clothes, books, decorations, furniture, gifts, food, unfinished projects and broken things) but I think the decoration category is my biggest challenge.  I’m not ready to even think about my internal clutter yet.

In front of our living room fireplace there is a lovely stone shelf which I’m sure was bare when we moved in but has hardly seen the light of day since then.  It’s the perfect place to burn candles and put miscellaneous stuff that there’s no room for anywhere else.  It’s been looking more like a junk heap than even remotely decorative lately.

 

The book suggests starting small so this is where I decided to begin.  I got rid of my bowl full of rocks because I can’t remember whatever possessed me to have a bowl full of rocks in the first place.  Then it was easy to throw away a bunch of candles that were burned down to nothing or melted into ugly puddled blobs of wax.  Things that I couldn’t imagine parting with I moved somewhere else so that it looks like I threw them out.  I’m not telling you where they magically teleported themselves, but I will admit that I made several trips to other parts of the house and only one trip to the outside garbage bin.

I’m giving myself A for effort here.  It’s still a shelf load of junk, but it’s better organized.  I read to the end of the first chapter of this very helpful book only to learn that “clearing clutter is a lifetime pursuit”.  Perhaps the author has seen my house.  I wonder if I’ll live long enough to get to the rest of it so that my home will eventually become  “a powerful catalyst for personal transformation and manifestation.”  Huh.  I foresee a lot more trips to the black-bin or Good Will, or a colossal garage sale in my future.

But I’m going to completely ignore the book de-cluttering category.  The line has to be drawn somewhere and my books are sacred.  Even this one.  The good news is – the next chapter is about cleaning, and with all the de-cluttering still to do, I might never get to that part at all.

 

Home From Home

 

Your intuition will be sharper than normal today. You could actually have one of those strange psychic experiences people sometimes report, where they “just know” something good will happen to a loved one or relative, and it later turns out to be true.

Huh.  I thought the tarot cards might have come up with something a little more profound today for sleep deprived me.  I’ve had intuitive bursts of insight before, but after the fact when I’m telling people I had a feeling about whatever has just happened, I’m sure they’re sceptical.  Either way, life unfolds as it should, whether we’re ready for it or not.

It’s never happened to me before, (although W tells me it happens to him all the time) but this trip every West Jet flight was delayed.  We were late getting to Calgary, late arriving in London, and then our return 1:30 London to Winnipeg flight was cancelled and we had to wait until eight o’clock to leave for home, taking a different route.  This plane was also delayed by about twenty minutes.  Another stop in Calgary (but no plane change) and finally we landed in Edmonton close to midnight local time.  Wait for luggage, catch shuttle bus to parking lot, drive home, fall into bed around 3 a.m. Ontario time.  It was only 1 a.m. here, so we should have been able to trick our heads into thinking it wasn’t that bad.  I was too tired to think at all.

The physical tired is easy enough to deal with.  It’s the emotional exhaustion that will be a little harder to shake.  But all things considered it was a good trip.  Good-byes are hard.  Leaving is never easy.

 

Just Jazzy 16

 

Grandma’s Brothers/Letters Home

My Grandma Scott lost all of her younger brothers, (Jake, Herb, Carl, Walter, Iden and Jack), from the youngest to the oldest, one by one.  (My dad made a kind of not so funny joke about it once, that they passed on in order of importance, leaving grandma – the most important of them all – to be the last one standing).  Jake died as a young boy from illness or accident and Herb did not return from the war.   I don’t remember much about the other four,  since they seemed to belong to a generation so far removed from my own.  In amongst my latest ‘treasures’ are two letters from two of these brothers who served in the first world war.

The one on the left is from Iden, also on the left in the picture above (with Jack and Walter?)  who returned to Canada and his family and lived a long life.  The one on the right is from Herb, who never came home.

Willey Camp, June 2, 1918. 

Dear Sister – Well it is some time since I wrote to you so I will try and give you a bit of our doings here.  You will have to excuse me writing with a lead pencil but there is no pen or ink in this writing room and of course I would never think of buying them.  Often wished I had a fountain pen but that is out of my reach too.  It takes a regular financier to make ends meet from one day till another here.  I spend it all on eats.  We get very fair grub considering where we are, but of course there is nothing like having a few extra cookies or a piece of what they call pie (a lot of crust with a wee bit of jam or something of the sort on it).  The cookies are a lot like the wheat meal cookies that mother often makes only not half so good.  But we are glad to get something to chew at if for nothing more than to pass the time.  Say, I have been chumming with Willie Dobson quite a bit.  But he went to France last night.  He is a fine fellow.  Took quite an active interest in the church work that goes on here.  He also attended the college that they have here where they take up all kinds of work, all kinds of languages, and even agriculture.  I was sorry to see him go, as he was a fine fellow to chum with.  I had a letter from Jack Clazie a few days ago and also from Art Parr.  I guess you will know more about how the war is going than we do, as the English papers are not so full of it as ours are. 

Well, this is Sunday again and you don’t know how much I wish I were going to church with you today.  If the Saints back there only realized the privileges that they have they would not miss many meetings, I’ll tell you.  I know I did not go as I should have, but I now see my mistake.  If only I could have realized it, how much better it would have been.  As it is, I go by myself and study a lesson from both Quarterlies and by the way I never got any new ones, either, but I do the best I can.  I have just attended the Bible Class that they hold in one of the Y.M.C.A.’s.  They sing quite a few of the hymns that are in our hymnal and oh, how it makes me think of home.  Well, how is everything going back there?  I guess Margaret is getting to be quite a little girl now.  Say, do you know I have not had any good mail from back home for about two weeks except a couple of letters from May.  I often looked for the Times but never got it, but I guess that is the luck of a soldier.  Well, I guess that unless something turns up, I shall soon have to go to France.  Very likely in a week or two.  So I hope that you will pray for me.  Tell Father and Mother not to worry.  I know it is hard and that if Pa and I could have understood each other better it would have been better for me.  But whatever you do, don’t forget church above everything and if it is the Lord’s will He can protect me here as well as there.   – Your Brother Herb.

If there was further correspondence from Herb it has since gone missing.  This letter may well have been the last one my grandma got from him.  By the creases and the folds and the faded pencil I can tell it’s been well read.  I wonder what else Herb might have thought to say if he knew his letter would be saved for a hundred years? 

…on the train somewhere, Sunday, July 28, 1918. 

Mr. & Mrs. W.J. Scott, Port Elgin Ont.  I am trying to write this as the train is going – we are still going East – are just running into a small place named St. Clet.  Am not sure where it is but believe it is in Quebec.  It has been very level country for awhile back and some fine places but early this morning it was some poor country that we passed through.  The talk at present is that we are going to sail from Montreal and that we are to get our letters off as soon as possible but no one seems to know for certain where we are going.  The kids come up to the train whenever it stops and take the cards and letters the boys have to mail.  We are being well looked after and are getting as good if not better meals than we did in London.  Had porridge, oatmeal, potatoes and scrambled eggs and bread and butter for breakfast, and coffee.  We had supper before we left London last evening and had another on the train;  then about bed time they came through with a box of oranges and we each got one.  So they are looking after us pretty good.  I am not particularly struck with the country we are going through.  The farms are narrow and long and a lot of the land is rather low.  Some of the crops are heavy and are going down and some are very light.  Say, did you send those papers?  I did not get them but was up to the orderly room to see if they came just before I left.  You ought to see the girls shake hands with us at some of the places we stopped at, and old women too, and the cheering we got.  They just now came through with a basket of Duchess apples, and they are sour and green, but I guess they are good for us.  If I get time I will send more word home before I sail.  I am feeling fine I guess.  This is all for this time, we are crossing some large river, I believe it is the St. Lawrence, very beautiful.  Good bye.  Iden.  P.S.  Just passing MacDonnell College – very fine sights, like O.A.C. at Guelph.

Iden and Herb Leeder, 1918

This is how I remember my “old” great uncles, Grandma’s brothers in the 1950′s.  Jack and Walter on the left, Iden and Carl on the right. (In the middle is her husband, my Grandpa Scott, and lurking in the background, a son-in-law, my Uncle George.)   I was five or six when this picture was taken so to me they were all quite ancient and thus relatively insignificant in my sheltered little life.  It took growing a tad ancient myself to get to know a little bit about them and to appreciate who they were.