Baked Beans

Since I last posted a blog, much has happend in my life. My darling Mother, Inge, died in June in her 92nd year. She had been ailing since Easter when she contracted double pneumonia and eventually had to be put into a nursing home as she was in need of 24/7 care. My husband and I had arranged last Fall to attend the wedding of my niece, Louisa, at the family home on the 29th May this year. We had arranged with my sister (Mother of the bride) to be responsible for picking Mum up from the nursing home and bringing her to the family home where the wedding reception was to be held in a large marquee. Despite her inability to walk and some discomfort from swelling in her legs, Mum had a wonderful evening - staying until after 11p.m. when the loud music began and she could no longer stay awake. She chatted with all her family and all her friends, and drank a few glasses of champagne. Although she was in a wheel chair, she took part in the celebrations just like everyone else. When it was time to take her back to the nursing home, she was pensive...and eventually said to my husband and I in the car ..."Well, now that the wedding is over, I have done all I wanted to do". We did not read anything into that statement, but we should have. Five days later, she died, but not before her grand-daughter, my daughter Andrea, flew over from Vancouver and was rushed to her bedside. Mum was waiting for her, and she knew she was there. That was her last day on this earth, and at 10:15p.m. that night, she died. She had all her family around her, and she had waited for the exact moment when she had fulfilled her wishes - to be at her grand-daughter's wedding, to see her daughter and grand-daughter from Canada, and to have all her family around her.

A wedding and a funeral within 10 days is a lot to (a) organise and (b) experience. Our family gathered its energies together and put all its talents and experience into play and there was a wonderful Celebration of Life Service in our local church for Mum (Nin to her family). After all was over, and everyone had gone home, I wandered into Mum's cottage for some quiet time, to think and to grieve. I wandered through her rooms, picking up little things that she had always kept in certain places, and looking at what she had left the last time she had been there at Easter. I opened her cupboards and checked what was in them - the last cupboard being her supply of tinned food. As I stared into the cupboard at the 6 tins of mini Heinz Baked Beans (one portion each) -- it hit me. Mum was gone, and she would never eat those beans she had bought on her last shopping trip. Somehow, those Baked Beans were the saddest thing I had ever seen, and they were what made me finally realize the finality of her death.

Getting your shoes mended

The other day, my husband was looking at a pair of very worn and very favourite shoes. The soles were worn and so were the heels. They were a leather pair he had had for a long time, and he did not want to throw them away, but the dilemma was...where does one go these days to get shoes re-soled and heeled? Along with many other crafts and trades, the shoemaker or shoe-mender has gone the way of the Dodo. We started chatting about all the other things that have disappeared in everyday life and remembering some of the craftsmen and artisans who used to be found in almost every small town.

Growing up in England, I clearly remember my Mother taking me shopping for groceries and going into individual shops for each item on the list. The green-grocer (where you could buy cooked beetroot), the butcher, with sawdust on the floor and where the butcher wore the familiar "pork-pie" hat and white apron, the bakery with its wonderful smells and amazing variety of loaves and pastries, the grocery shop, with its bumpy floor and interesting smells of cooked hams and dry goods and where the clerk weighed the goods on an old-fashioned scale with weights and added the bill up on a piece of paper and a pencil taken from behind his ear. Then there was my favourite place, the Sweet Shoppe! This place was a dreamworld for children - a huge oak counter, behind which were shelves and shelves lined with bottles of multi-coloured sweets and candies of every conceivable variety and flavour. I have seen shops like this one in Canada - there is a wonderful one in Huntsville, Ontario, where I used to have my cottage and they sold English Sweets, like Peppermint Humbugs, Pontefract Cakes (licorice), Lemon Drops, Mars Bars, Cadbury Chocolate Bars, and many others. I had to pass the Sweet Shoppe on my way home from school in England, and I always saved my pennies just so that I could stop in and buy one special thing to pop in my mouth to keep me going on the rest of the walk home.

In most small towns in the UK there would always be a shoemaker, a tailor (who did small and large sewing jobs to order) a friendly ironmonger who stocked all manner of tools, nails, buckets, work knives, rope, and other things a home owner might need for odd jobs inside or out. I loved these shops with their smell of tarred rope and the heavy wood floors and barrels of nails and "grommets".

Of course, today, we have replaced all these individuals with the ubiquitous Supermarket and Home Depot, and "one-stop shopping". I appreciate the need for these in our fast-paced world, where most households have two working parents and shopping is done on the way home from work, and I would be the first to embrace "one stop shopping" if I were in their shoes, however it is sad to see some of the trades and crafts disappear with the advent of the new Box Centres, where no one knows your name, your family or your occupation, and where you cannot watch things being made or repaired. I was always so fascinated when I visited the shoemaker with my Mother or Father and watched as the shoes were fitted onto the last and the nails were driven into the soles or heels. The smell of leather permeated the shop and the shoemaker's apron was dark and shiny leather from many years of use, his fingernails darkened by the tannins in the leather he worked on every day, and his beady eyes behind round glasses always twinkling at me as I peered over his counter at the rows of shoes waiting to be claimed. Remembering shoes and childhood, there was the excitement every school year when my parents took both my sister and I out to the nearest large town (Worthing) to buy new shoes. My Father believed in leather soled shoes which laced up - and I longed so for slip-ons - but he was adamant. First, the shoe salesman or lady would stand us on an X-Ray machine, where we could look down from above at the X-rays of our feet below and see if the shoes we had on were a good fit. The sight of those skeletal feet was always etched in my mind as a child. Next, the salesperson would take out a big ruler-like contraption, with a sliding part on it and we would put each foot in turn onto the ruler and they would measure our size. Then, we would walk around and around the shop testing the shoes to see if they were comfortable. Nobody asked us if we liked them - BUT - they lasted a whole year, and that was my Father's methodology. Good memories!

A totaly unique school experience

When I was seven years old, my parents, my sister, my grandmother and I moved from our London, England, suburban home to the County of Sussex, on the South coast of England. For my sister and I this was the greatest adventure we had ever had in our short lives. She was only four years old at the time. My Father had bought an older home in the small town of Arundel, Sussex, which had a huge back garden backing onto an old oak forest. To us children, it was heaven!

Arundel is a spectacular Sussex town. It sits atop a hill with the River Arun snaking around the flat water meadows below. The river ends its journey at Littlehampton, on the Solent, the strip of the English Channel which lies between the Isle of Wight and the mainland. After cutting through the Downs (high hills which separate the coastal plains of Sussex and Hampshire from the Weald - where London is situated), the River Arun meanders in serpentine fashion through water meadows and bucolic fields, inhabited by white swans and the occasional boater. It is above these picturesque meadows, that Arundel Castle arises over the top of the town - majestic and impregnable. The Castle is the ancestral home of the Dukes of Norfolk, the highest ranking duke in England, the Earl Marshall of England, and the only Catholic person to hold such a high rank in a country where the Church of England -(the Queen is the head of that Church) - rules supreme.

Arundel had two preparatory schools to choose from. One was the Church of England School (attendance was free) and the other was a Catholic school run by a Servite Order of Nuns, who lived in the castle grounds and did so at the discretion and pleasure of the Duke of Norfolk, who had four daughters needing an education and allowed these teaching nuns to live free of charge on his property in exchange for them teaching his daughters up to high school age. In order to make this a financially viable situation, the Duke allowed paying students to attend this school with his daughters and it became a recognized and legitimate preparatory school - for a fee. In his infinite wisdom, my Father decided that the best education he could give my sister and I, was at this school and so, after settling into our new home, I started at St.Wilfred's Priory Convent School at Arundel Castle in September of that year.

The experiences of attending that school are as clear today as they were when I first set foot in those castellated grounds! One entered the quadrangle via two huge gates, with great iron handles and iron studs. The buildings surrounding the quadrangle were only 3 stories high, but every window looked like a church window and the top of the buildings were all castellated. Our classroom was a large room with many windows on one side, and we only had gaslight to study by! Even in 1950 that seemed out of date! Our teacher - for all grades in one room - was Sister Paul, and she was very strict and quite stern. In my first week, I learned quickly who the Dukes's daughers were - of the four daughters, only two were still in prep. school - Lady Sarah, and Lady Jane. Lady Sarah was 2 years my senior and Lady Jane was 2 years my junior, but we all were friends and got along just like any other children of that age. In fact, I was once invited by Lady Jane, for tea at the castle! We played in the quadrangle at break time and did skipping games, hide-and-seek, tag and all the other games that young children play. The greatest thrill for me was when it was time once a week for the gym class. I was very athletic, and excelled at both track and field, and gym. Since the convent school had no room for a gymnasium, we were taken across the beautiful grounds to the castle itself, and we did our gymnastics in the Baron's Hall. This was an absolutely huge room with two massive fireplaces which a grown man could stand up in, and a balcony for musicians at one end. At the other end was a dais were, presumably, the Duke and Duchess could hold court from their throne chairs. I always remember the smell of that hall - polished wood, woodsmoke from the fireplaces, and a certain smell which came from the tapestries hanging on the walls, from the huge suits of armour standing in the corners and from the age of the place itself. To be there, just us small children and our gymnnastics teacher and his wife playing the piano, was almost surreal, but when you are only seven years old, you take it all in stride and it becomes a routine, like anything else.

Last year, when my Mother turned 90, my daughter Andrea and her eldest daughter, Sophie, travelled to the UK to spend a very special time with my Mother for the birthday. My sister very thoughtfully, took them to see the school where she and I spent our first years of education. It must have been quite a shock to my daugher, who had been raised in a Canadian environment, with new and modern schools with all facilities, to see where I had gone to school! The memories were shared by my sister - the lunches which the nuns prepared for us which were - and are to this day - pretty bad memories....so much so that my sister and I were among others who used a handy window to dispose of those lunches we could not tolerate! This was a valuable and memorable piece of the jigsaw for my daugher and I am sure that she will never forget that visit.

For me, as I watch my eldest grand-daughter entering the school system - she begins Grade One in September - it stirs up my memories of my first years of school, however, mine were definitely a totally unique school experience.

A Woman's glory

When I was about 5 years old, and in my first year of school, my Father decided to cut off my long, beautiful hair because I gave my Mother such a hard time every morning when she brushed it out and put it into plaits, or pigtails. He felt that it was unfair to my Mother to put her through this every day, and so he took the kitchen scissors, and cut off each of my pigtails. Then he "straightened" the ends off into a basic "bob" and told me that I could brush my own hair in the mornings now!

Neither my Mother nor I have ever forgotten this episode - traumatic as it was to both of us, and so I can sympathise with my daughter, who arrived at her daughter's kindergarten yesterday to find that a friendof Sophie's had cut off the whole of one side of her hair - down to 2 inches long. After the initial shock and horror at this assault upon her child, my daughter whisked Sophie to her hairdresser and asked her to salvage what she could of her daughter's hair. The end result, from the pictures I have seen on the computer, are quite beautiful, but it does not lessen the feeling Andrea and Chris must have of being violated by the actions of this 6 year-old child upon their daughter.

The lessons our children learn as they grow up and move out into the world, are hard enough. As parents, we try so hard to protect each of our children from the hard knocks and disappointments to which they will be exposed, and really nothing prepares us for this kind of event. Luckily, Sophie is resilient and will bounce back, better than ever, and just as beautiful, both inside and out. Her parents, however, will not forget kindergarten in April of 2009.

More observations around the pool

I find it fascinating that cultural differences cause such consternation amongst Americans. What I mean by that, is that people from all different cultures in our world now travel widely, and when they bring their particular culture (let's say, for argument's sake German culture), they bring with them their own set of behaviours and cultural traits. Whether or not these behaviours cause affront or delight, depends upon how different the people are from the inhabitants of the country they are visiting.

The other day at the pool here in Florida, some new arrivals appeared poolside. They were immediately "tagged" as Europeans by the locals, because he was wearing a Speedo-type swimsuit, which all the American ladies professed immediately to be disgusted by. The wife was wearing a bikini - and because she was over 50, this also gave cause to comments by the locals. However, the piece de resistance was that when this nice German man (for so he was), finished his swim, he went back to his chaise longue, sat down on his towel, and with his back turned to the pool, stripped off his swimsuit and donned a dry one. Well, you would have thought that he had run naked around the pool from the reactions of the other people there! Everyone (except the other Europeans) was horrified and believe it or not, the next morning, the management company was asked to go out and "sanitize" the chair the poor German man was using! The management was also asked to speak to this man and warn him that he could not change his swimsuit in the open but must go to the mens' washroom.

Now, I am not a prude, and I so was not shocked at his swimsuit because those kinds of swimsuits for men were all I ever saw in England when I was growing up and went to the beach with my parents or friends. The only proviso I would add here is that - perhaps - the German gentleman could have put on a robe when he took off his swimsuit just in case there were children around at the time. (There were no children there as it turned out). But the reaction of the Americans was overboard to my mind. Their culture is certainly not devoid of its share of prurient material, either on TV or anywhere else, but another country's mode of dress shocks their tender feelings!

Another topic of great interest to the pool crowd came from a German-Swiss couple who stayed for 2 weeks. They arrived at the pool every day with long, white bathrobes on and large, brimmed hats. They were tall, slim and very proper. They never sat in the sun, and rarely swam. The local pool crowd was fascinated by their "style" and talked about them continually. It brought home to me the fact that most Americans (and particulary Floridians) have not travelled anywhere outside either their state or their country, and so when they see people from different cultures they are amazed at the differences, and cannot understand why these people are not more "American"!

All I can say is thank goodness I came from a culture where "Vive la difference" was the cornerstone of your thinking, and individuality, uniqueness and non-conformism flourished.

Legacy of Conscience

Inspired by my daughter and son-in-law, who spent a weekend away on Long Beach, Vancouver Island, and were dismayed at the amount of plastic they found all over the beaches there, dutifully picking up three buckets full the stuff before leaving the beach, I realized that we all need to do our "eco duty" more often.

I have learned that travelling the world is a great teacher - culturally, historically, and informationally. Some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world are in the third world countries, and yet those countries are some of the worst offenders of strewing garbage everywhere and polluting the environment with carbon emissions. My train journey through the Carpathian Mountains to the Ukraine nearly 5 years ago was an eye-opener in more ways than one. The streams and rivers were clogged with plastic bags hanging from the shrubs and trees along the banks, strewn on the banks and caught up on rocks in the water. The garbage piles along the train tracks were proof that there was no garbage pickup in most towns and villages and that folks just burned their rubbish or tossed it where it could not be seen from the town. The air pollution in places like Tunisia, Mexico City and parts of Eastern Europe were horrific - great banks of yellowish-grey smog lying over the towns. I equated that kind of pollution with industrial first world cities like Detroit and Hamilton...not so. The Third World is actually a great culprit of pollution world-wide - i.e. the slash burning in the forests of Indonesia pulluting the mainland of China, the nuclear accidents in Russia sending clouds of radioactive gases across Northern Europe. On the other side of the coin, I was amazed at the clean air and the impeccably tidy landscapes in New Zealand - one of the most environmentally aware countries I have ever been in. New Zealanders treasure their environment and make sure that it stays that way by instituting stringent rules about imports of any kind which might affect their natural environment in any way.
If our next generation is taught to understand what a precious legacy we all have inherited, and how fragile it is, perhaps we may look forward to a future for them and their children's children which is brighter and cleaner than ours is today. Just picking up the plastic from the beaches is a great start!

Finding your roots

At about age 50, I started to be intrigued with my family and their ancestors. I wanted to know where I came from. I therefore started investigating and researching my family background as much as I could with what resources I had at my fingertips. My Father, a font of wisdom, had died in l992 and so therefore I could not use him as my resource. My Mother knew a little bit about my Father's side of the family, but I needed to do some more work on my own to find out what I could about his family. My Mother had already given me as much as she knew about her lineage and ancestors, and so I then began what turned out to be a 10 year mission to try and meet all the living relatives on my Father's side and to travel to their homes (wherever in the world that took me) and also to visit my Grandfather's gravesite in Northern France.

The first "mission" was to travel to the small town of Arras in Northern France, near the Belgian border, where my Grandfather was buried. He had been killed in l9l8 during the First World War at the Battle of Arras, and buried in a very small cemetary in the middle of a farmer's field. Through the National War Graves Commission, I was able to find out the cemetary name - Aubignby - and directions. It was difficult to find the exact grave, and without realizing it, I could have found the book with plots and names at the front gate, but being too keen to find my Grandfather and plant the flowers on his grave, I overlooked that! Eventually, I stood before the grave, with its plain and simple cross with his details enscribed thereon. Beside him, was - ironically - a Canadian - about the same age - 33 years old. The emotions were multiple - here lay a Grandfather I never met, never knew, but felt a connection to. He was my Father's Father - someone my Father himself did not remember, but who had left letters and photographs which made him live in our memories as a real and vital person. I planted my white Crysanthemum on his grave, and wrote a message to him on the card saying that I was his grand-daughter and I wish I had known him, and then I took some photographs. It was a haunting and deeply emotional experience, but a satisfying one too. I am so glad that I went.
During the following years, I looked up all my Father's living relatives, and one by one, I connected with them. Some were in New Zealand, to which Doug and I travelled 2 years ago. We met them all and found them to be lovely people, who were so delighted and thrilled that I had made that journey to see them. My Father's cousin, Margot, was still alive and approaching her 90th birthday at the time. She had been a special favourite of my Father's - they had played together as young children and been very close. Then her Mother, recently widowed, had taken her young family of four off to New Zealand to start a new life. They never returned except on holidays from time to time, but my Father always spoke of Margot and how much he missed her. She and I had a wonderful meeting, bonding together over photographs of the family and telling each other stories from our memories of my Father. She gave me some important photos of the family during the early years before she had left England, and I treasure these. Her four children were all there in North Island New Zealand, and apart from her only son, Terry, I was able to meet up with the three daughters, Pat, Jill and Wendy, and have a great time with all of them.
On that same trip "down under" I also looked up my own first cousin, Meriel, the daugher of my Father's only brother. She had married an Australian and was living in Canberra. We visited she and her husband on their farm outside Canberra and again, spent many hours talking about our family and the connections. Then we went to Sydney, and met her only natural daughter (she adopted 3 children from Sri Lanka) Sophie and husband, Andre, and again, had a wonderful time together and a great visit. She is now expecting their first child in September. Another relative to visit one day!
Last year, on a visit to see my Mother, I looked up yet another of my Father's relations - one of the other cousins who used to play together with Margot. She is now 93, still driving her new BMW, still living completely alone, and still with "all her marbles". What an amazing group of women these relatives turned out to be. Long lived, vibrant, interesting, and fun! I hope I have inherited some of those genes. Mary and I got along famously, and her daughter, Marney and son David were also introduced to me. I had not seen them since I was aboaut 7 years old when they came down to see my Father for a visit.
The following week, I arranged to meet my second cousin, Thomas Wyatt (the structural engineer of bridges from a previous blog) - his wife, and my first cousin, Meriel, at a pub in the lovely little town of Arundel, where my family used to live before moving out to the big house near Chichester in l959. Thomas, his wife Eileen, and Meriel and her husband, Lance, all met for a pub lunch, and the requisite photographs. Once again, I realized the importance of connecting with one's roots. It was so rewarding to sit together and look at each person around the table and realize that they were connected through my Father, by blood and ancestry.
I believe that I have now met up with almost all of the relatives on my Father's side. I was not able to connect with Thomas and Eileen's daughter, Marie-Claire, but I have met her in my life, and so I did not feel that I had failed to close the circle.
With a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, I returned to Canada and set about putting together some notes and papers for my children and their families, so that when they eventually reach the point where they, too, feel the need to "find their roots" they will have something to start with and may not need to take 10 years or more to accomplish it!