She was ............

14 years young.  During afternoon classes she would occasionally turn around and look out the window and notice that an older boy was hanging out of a window of a neighbouring building.  Attention from a boy at that age provoked something to talk about with the girlfriends.  He was a boy that did not attend High School. She had never spoken with him but she knew which family lived above the butcher shop behind the school. 
One late afternoon she was on her way up the hill through the woods towards the little 'Marien' chapel.  She liked taking Lilac there during the month of May.  She does not remember where the boy from the window crossed her path.
They walked together on the shortcut trail and talked about things now forgotten.  He asked  her if she was a virgin.  A virgin?  She did not know what he meant by that. Is he asking that because he sees her at church and church related events?  She does not remember what she answered, if anything.  He did ask a few times.  They reached a bench and sat down for a while.  He was tall and strong and the bench was hard.  When they got up he was no longer interested in the answer to the virgin question.  She never saw him at the window again nor anywhere else.  She stopped going to confession from then on but continued to
take flowers to the chapel during the summer months.
Today, 63 years later, her best friend of times long gone tells her that his name was such and such, that he took care of his sick wife for many years and that he passed away 2 years ago and that she never thought that he was such a 'Scheisskerle' (shithead).

My recent drive into town

witnessed tears, a homecoming , little boys wrestling for dad's attention and the beginning of a struggle to get back to normality. We shall see.

St. Jean Baptiste Day celebrations where taking place in all Québec towns and villages. La Fête Nationale du Québec is a very important day and is much more celebrated in this our Belle Province than Canada Day. Newspapers remind us that friction still exists between French and English population and report that some Francophone musicians are facing heat for inserting English words in their songs and that 'déserteur' is an unfair term for those who left Québec in the '70s and and and......

Then, ha ha, as I was driving through a certain area in Montreal, an overpass reminded me of Sunday afternoon outings. This is going back 50 years. We had no car then but our good friends did.  On hot and humid Sunday afternoons Greek Adonis would come over to tell us that he was taking his boys on a car ride and invited J., Pasha and I to join them.  We all lived in apartment houses without swimming pool.  Females did not go into streets wearing shorts and mini skirts did not exist as yet.  Greek Adonis drove us to an overpass from where we could look into the back yard of one of the few high rise buildings of Montreal suburbia. No, not to suggest that our families move there but to allow him and my husband to have a quick peek at the pool down below. Yes, there were females to be seen sunbathing, clad in one-piece bathing suits and with some extra luck the occasional bikini could also be spotted. How times changed.
                                                 

..........something fell apart and

I need to pack a few clothes, lipstick, meds, empty the fridge, water the inside and outside plants never mind, close all the windows, pack the car and drive drive drive.

Mini-daughter can use some help, two boys age 7 and 8 will be off school at noon today, small bakery needs to open doors as usual, some deliveries need to be made, boys want to be driven to school and be picked up at noon, 2 dogs and 2 cats need to be fed and let in and out, food needs to be cooked and served and life must go on as before when a certain male was sharing the chores. He packed his suitcase.

I was not asked for help but how could I not at least try to be of some use.           

Sainte-Adèle, Qc and Street Art Work

When Moselito is with me on his Home Weekend, we have the choice of seeing a movie in one of these two theaters in Ste.Adele, a small town next to our village. The one on the left was build in 1948 and when 4 viewing rooms were no longer sufficient the owner build a second one with 3 viewing rooms, in 1995.  All Premières of Québec-made films are shown in one of these theatres, with artists attending.
This past weekend we saw 'Sarah Prefers to Run' which was screened at the last Cannes Film Festival.  I'm a bit worried.  Either I grew an extremely thick skin recently or the movie.......?  I can't ask Moselito's opinion. He was happily watching the action, eating his chocolate bar and asking for more.
      

the                                                

                                                                   Lac Rond was a source of drinking water, ice and food through fishing, horse racing and raw boat competitions and as late as 1943 was used as a parking lot for the winter tourists of Hotel Chanteclerc.  In 1960 it needed to be decontaminated and is since used for skating, snow shoeing and walks in winter.




Painting on a wall across from where we sometimes sit after the movie.

The no longer existing Ste. Marguerite train station - Canadian Pacific.

Now the tourists take a plane and fly to far away places. Coming up North is no longer the in thing.  My friends N. and V. from Montreal came up here for their honeymoon, more than 60 years ago. By train. Today a three-lane highway takes us down by car in 50 minutes.

 



On the left Séraphin, the village miser of  the novel 'Un Homme et son Péché' written by  St. Adèlois writer Claude Henri Grignon in 1933, on the right.
When we arrived in Montreal in1956 Séraphin was a very successful TV-series and re-runs continue to be shown to this date.










Les 'Draveurs' were considered the elite corps of forestry workers.
The word 'drave' derives from 'to drive', conduire les billots.
 

So, it was a bat!

 

 

It was a hot summer day.  Their mother told me that my friend R., the girl with long blond      braids as wide as three fingers of my hand, and her brother M., were out in the fields with      their dad.  I did not need to ask where the fields were.  I knew each and every one.  The       one  where the corn grew higher than us, the one were we planted the potatoes, the one where they grew the feed for the cows.  It was corn harvest time.  I walked towards the biggest tree knowing that I would find them sitting underneath it, eating delicious sandwiches of home made bread topped with home-smoked ham or home made sausage.  Father and farm hand drinking cider.                                                                                     On my way to the big tree I passed a small tree and looking at the lower branches saw something dangling there that scarred the schnook out of me. I remember how fast I looked away thinking that I saw Christ on the cross hanging upside down.  The shock of seeing that made the insides of my body tremble.  I remained puzzled for a long time and knowing that what I had seen could not be  what I thought, I never told my friend nor my family about it. 

I can't believe that it had to take 60 years before I finally found out what I had seen.  I had a hard time getting a what I thought was a bird out of my house after moving to the country and was told that it must have been a bat.  I looked bat up and had my answer.

 

I always recognized Die Fledermaus on the radio but that did not help.  

 

Why Christ on the cross which was never talked about in our family?      

 

Greece - walk to a small village

It was a long and hot walk but I only remember bits and pieces about it.  Athens 1940/1941?


I see this young girl dressed in layers of long skirts.  She was employed in our  home but I have no idea in what capacity - cooking, cleaning, babysitting - who to ask now?
What was her name, did we like her, my brother and I?
I see her hiding cognac colored glass plates under her apron and off we go to see her family in a nearby village. The plates were small and I usually saw them appear besides a tall glass of water and a jar of vanilla paste, holding a spoon.  One filled the spoon with this thick sticky paste, placed it in one's glass filled with water and then licked the paste and had a sip of water, put spoon back into glass till next 'lick & sip'.

We are walking along on top of a steep knoll.  We stop to look down.  My brother discovers a dead black dog down there, points it out to the long skirts girl and starts gathering stones. "No, no, no, you can't do that.  If a stone hits the dog a piece of his dead body will fly up and hit you".

A cemetery.  Long line of people walking behind men carrying something on which a female body was lying.  Flowers placed on each side of her head.  Wailing cries frightening me.

A field with grazing sheep and a ram chasing my brother and the long skirts girl waving her arms and making noise.

Plates falling out from under the skirt and braking.


This memory is filed in my auto-analyzation folder.  Why did I not tell mother about the girl stealing? 






                                                                 

All well again with blog and Farmer's Market

           

I was going to change my picture but have not been able to find the spot where it's done. I'm tired of looking at myself each time I make a comment. Anyway, the photo is 5 years old and I seem to have aged 20 years in the last 5 and don't want to misrepresent myself even if no one cares what I look like. 


I went to our local Farmer's market this morning. Always go to the tables where two Greek nuns from a monastery nearby sell goat cheese,  vegetables , cookies, cakes, frozen meals and more. I know the older nun, Smily, a girl in her late twenties and always have good conversations with her. The only time she did not smile is the time I asked her if they still sold candles. She wanted to know what I use them for and seemingly satisfied with my answer promised to bring me some the following week (Saturday market only). I was not to tell anybody because she does not display them on the table anymore having learned that they are being used in witchcraft around here. Today I was told that she was resting in the truck. So, I talked with her assistant. A very young girl, big blue smiling eyes. She asked me questions and I answered. Learned a lesson - NEVER  talk to a YOUNG nun about religion NEVER tell a YOUNG nun that you were baptised on a Greek Island but that you are no longer Greek Orthodox.  My friend  in Montreal who is much involved with the Greek community , not religiously but business wise, tells me that quite a few mothers were saving up for the daughter's 'prika', dowry, and are now crying because the daughter ran away to the monastery.
I bought the 'spanakopita'-Spinach/Feta/Mille Feuille pieces that I wanted and left the brainwashed child with a customer.  

Wow, I googled Greek nuns and then Images and this one was amongst the ones that came up. It is the very one nun in her late twenties, at our Val-David market, that I am talking about.