Happy New Year

My wish to all of you dear friends is a great 2014 Year filled with love and health, with happiness and some madness and ....of course numerous challenges....which you will overcome, just enough for you to become stronger and stay fully alert.


PS: Lovely blue sky but.....minus 35. So very grateful to be sitting inside cosy and warm.

Rest in Peace Nelson Mandela

In June 1990, 4 months after his release from prison, a co-worker and I  wanted to witness Mr. Mandela's visit to Montreal.  He gave his speech on Champ-de-Mars near City Hall.
We left early for the one hour+ drive to town.  We absolutely needed to find parking near City Hall.  The lucky find was on a street along a steep grassy mound.  On top of this mound was the field behind City Hall on which they had build a podium for Mr. Mandela's appearance.   We, like hundreds of other people, climbed the mound as high as we could to be able to see Mr. Mandela as he spoke.  We could hear him but as much as we stretched our necks, we could not see him.  As we were standing there, happy to be that close but stretching to see, I felt a tap on my back.  As I turned, I faced a man.  I can't remember his face.  He was kind and strong and I got to sit on his shoulders. I was allowed to see what I could hear.  I was able to observe Mr. Mandela's conversation with us for a little while.
My notes indicate that he was saying something along the lines of the whites not being the enemy in the fight of apartheid and that we are all facing a common front against racial oppression.
                                           

Kazu came to visit

Kazuko has been working at Moselito's home away from home for 12 years now.  She is one of it's strong pillars.  Her parents still ask when she will be coming back to Japan. They don't know that she has no such intention. 

Whenever she comes to visit with me she arrives after closing the day at the Maison E. community which is 9 in the evening.  Most of the times it's a spontaneous surprise visit. She is used to find me pyjama-clad and each time she sends me an e-mail the next day thanking me for my hospitality and apologizing for having kept me up till 2 in the morning. This time she even went so far as to reserve March 2 for a visit. On that occasion we will open the TV - she wants to watch the Oscars. I love her dearly.

Here she is showing me how to take a video with my camera.

Unfortunately she was not around when I needed to be shown how to transfer the video into the blog.  It looks as if I managed. Hm, took me long enough!

They came, they played, they laughed, they argued and Oma is exhausted.

Yes, woof woof, this is the path that leads to the corral where Major is kept. 

He did not 'woof' us that the horse was in the barn.

Where are skateboard sharing rules to be found?
Sneak-a-Snack and Hungry Man were not happy with the ones I made up for them.  They prefer to wrestle over who gets to put his foot on what.

The fishing license was on hand but the boys had forgotten the rods at home.

                    





                    So, what's next?  Let's climb the pole!

           Let's remember this tree so that we can catch the bird on the way back down the mountain.

The boys are back to school.  Not to be seen again till Christmas.


  

Farmer's Market

was on my 'to do' list yesterday.  My first stop was to buy 2 heavy loaves of sesame seed coated spelt bread kneaded by strong hands at a biological co-op farm nearby.  The tall, clean looking farmer with kind words passing his beard-framed lips answered my "how many families run this co-op"  etc. questions with pleasure.  I don't know how our conversation reached the point where I said "I will if I remember".  That's when he started praising the effects of coconut oil.  It being very good for avoiding short memory lapses and even keeping Alzheimer's away.  As he asked "will you remember?" he slipped me this note

We both had a good laugh as I slipped it into the bag containing the breads.

Then, Mr. K. and I bumped into each other as we were looking at a display of mushrooms.
"Oh, the chef is checking out the mushrooms" I exclaimed. He does not know me but everybody knows him.  I remember him parading though the banquet room to a roaring applause of  us diners after a 7-course meal.                                                                    You know what I said to him? No? You'll never guess.   I cleared  my throat and said "when I left the house I told myself that if I meet a chef at the market I will ask him...and you know what, I forgot the question".  Mr. K. laughed and consoled me with "I am to be found here each Saturday".
We parted and a few tables away I stopped here

and remembered my question.  "Do you buy your garlic here at the market? Who has the best? I have a problem with garlic. I don't buy the one from Ch... but the other does not taste like garlic either.  Maybe I have a problem with my taste buds. What do you say?"
I looked for him everywhere, going back to where I came from but no Mr. K-chef was to be found.

Very disappointed I walked back to my car parked in the parking lot of a big surface food store.  I saw him from far and started waving my arms in the air as I was walking towards him.  I told him how I came to remember and put my question to him.  I think he is my age, retired now.  We 'Golden Agers'  are so nice to each other.  He thinks that all garlic sold at the market is good and suggested I never cut it into small pieces but always squeeze it open before adding it to any dish and added with a smile "if that does not work it could be your taste buds".  

The Boys

I have been kind of 'goofing off' lately doing easy on my brain things. 

When Noah, aka Sneak-a-Snack welcomed the arrival of little brother Hayden, aka Hungry Man, I went out and bought these two little journals.  The very first page asks "what is Noah/Hayden up to"  and the following pages give the answer. 
The question is always asked by me, Oma, and the answers can be from either the boys themselves or their parents or other family members or their friends.

I wish I had a drawing talent.  It would have been so easy to just draw a few lines to go with the text.  Something like a comic book but.....  

The way I planed it, I need to be around till age 90 to see their faces when these little journals are given them.  

Not sure I understand

This morning I read the heading of an article in the Guardian in reference to the British Medical Association declaring that force-feeding the  prisoners who are on hunger strike at Guatanamo  is a gross violation of medical ethics.

Why so?  Is it not done to prevent suicide?  If it is done for other reasons it is political and not medical or ?

What about medical ethics when terminally ill patients or elderly that do no longer want to live are kept alive by force-feeding through tubes and other means? 

Why are my thoughts wrapped around this article which I only read the heading of?  If I had read the article I might have found the answer to my questions and would not have had the opportunity to get this off my chest....... Mutti was 88 when she died in hospital.  For three days she had to share space with other patients and each time I sat with her she would whimper "please let me die".  When I returned on the forth day she was in a private room and no longer whimpering.  I was trying to feed her the pudding from the tray that had been brought to her when a doctor walked in and said " why are you feeding her when it only prolongs her agony".  I stopped feeding her and the trays stopped coming . Maybe the trays stopped coming first but I can't help but feeling as if I had stopped first.

Moselito

I picked him up on Friday afternoon to be with Ellena, as he says, for 10 nights.  His vacations with me are not only highlighted with X on his calendar but are also referred to  by the number of nights he sleeps over.

Today, Tuesday, he said  "10 nights sleep here".  As I answered "some nights have passed already", he replied  "Friday 10, Saturday 9, Sunday 8, Monday 7, Tuesday 6, today 6 more nights sleep here".

Amazing!  Enough to 'make' my day.

I am so grateful for such surprises and wonder as to how much more is in his brain that I/we are not aware of. 

Just saying and to explain

why I was invisible in recent days.

Wrestled with a 20pound bag of earth - the bag won - my back lost.

10 days of wrong body predictions promising a better tomorrow.  Pain killers now at work.
Date with a 'Chiro' on August 8th.

Please, not more than a HI in comments.

Lac-Megantic

Human error - equipment malfunction - lax regulations - corporate greed - whatever 

I hear voices and read text messages

          "let's go for an after work drink"
          "wait I'll give you a lift home"
          "I am on my way home-getting into the car now"
          "come over to ....bar, we are celebrating her birthday"
          "what a beautiful evening, let's go for a walk"

and I hear screams and footsteps of people that could not run fast enough.

Instant cremation

My heart goes out to the families.      

And then I was thinking

"what is it with ones blog?".  I am not sure I would have asked my daughter Pasha to set up a blog for me had I known what having one, or should I say writing one, turns out to be.

What I wanted to do is get my house in order.

All photos are in albums in chronological order starting with arrival in Canada in 1956 and ending with NOT YET.  Photos of people that my children don't know are burned and others such as of office parties and other events are weeded down to two or three of the same event.  Why burden Pasha and Besito de Luz with 'who is this' questions after I am gone. Most photos have a little story to tell. I typed it up, cut it out and inserted it below the photo. That part of 'house order' is settled.  Shots of our family life spread out on a shelf. 12 volumes long.
Then there is a thick album which I named 'Je me souviens'.  
The first section contains 2 photos of German grandma and grandpa together and many photos of grandma's 4 siblings.
Next section shows Greek grandma alone and Greek grandpa with his 3 boys, one daughter.
Next section is filled with photos taken when mom and dad were courting, 2 of my baptism on a Greek island and a handful of other shots of my brother and I in Greece and some nieces and aunts and uncles.
Next section is my life in Germany, age 6 up to the day my husband, baby Pasha and I left Germany. Lots of '1st time' memories are living here. Some are typed and inserted and some.........................now my thoughts finally return to the why of this post.
  
This blog was meant to contain little life stories that mothers tell their children.  Things that they remember but never had the chance to tell them.

I have since realized that writing a blog also means reading blogs and reading blogs means making comments and making comments means that the writer looks at the blog of the commenter and, being polite, makes a comment on the writer's blog.

I know that you follow me but have a hard time following myself. Just said Prost to myself for the second time.  A wineglass filled with Baileys, the original Irish cream.  Ya, ya, I do have the little liquor glasses that this drink is served in but they are to small to be used for what I call desert.

So, where was I?

Yes, I found R's blog and liked it and thought to myself  "let me see if I like any of the blogs she reads, I can't go wrong" and that's how I got to you L. and to you N. and to you T. and to you RR and to B.  Of course I continue reading H's blog which is kind of a ground stone of my blog reading.
I never mentioned that it sometimes takes me more time to write a two-line comment than it takes you to write a two-page post.  Why, because I chose to read challenging blogers and/or blogers who inform me about subjects that have woken my curiosity.  I now feel that I am playing in a league into which I don't belong. But, I got hooked on you all, on your kindness especially, and don't want to let go.

So much about blogging.  

While writing this I realize that NO, I am not super organized, I AM controlling and the other thing I noticed, actually it rubbed itself in as I was writing, is the fact that I/we do not have a single picture of Mom and Dad together.  I know that they were married. I saw it written on their divorce papers.

PS I wrote this last evening. Just justifying time of drink.

One more time

did I have to tell the life story of Moselito, last week.

He has been a bit more anxious and stressed as usual lately.   The care givers at Maison E., a community founded in 1982 , invited me to talk about Moselito to a group of 15 people gathered in the living room of Maison C.  Caregivers, new volunteers and the leaders of music therapy, pottery workshop, weavery and farm wanted  to learn more about Moselito in order to see how they could help to bring him back to his usual rather easy to handle self.
Pictures of events and former coworkers were spread out on a table, covering 31 years of his life in the community.  All thoughts were concentrated on Moselito.
I began with my pregnancy- heavy cramps, kicking and boxing as if he were looking for a way out.  Very happy in his crib but unhappy if placed on the floor to crawl or to sit and play. Needed security of the small crib area.                                                                              Montreal Children's Hospital were the first to mention the word 'Autism'. Fine Motor Therapy was suggested to teach him to play and interact with other children. I enrolled him.  3 times a week I dropped him off at therapy, his sister at school and myself into the office and three times a week I had to run to the car park, drive to therapy, pick him up and drive him to babysitter and then drive myself back to the office, all in one hour (my lunch hour). Speeding at 125km an hour on three lane highway is still haunting me. Autism specialists at 3-day convention had Moselito on stage and over the microphone I was informed that they had a  very intelligent child in front of them.   At age 7, we (his father and I) registered him in a private school which served special needs students. Until school registration I used the 'I' because that is how it was done (mother did best).  
Divorce.                                                                                                                           School suggested home speech therapy.  I accepted to do it, was given a lesson as to how, the school came to tape first lesson and last lesson video and were happy about the results. Music therapy after school became also available and Moselito attended.
In the mornings I drove 1.25 hrs in all directions dropping one child here, the other there and myself somewhere else and in the evenings it was the same  with pick ups except that it took longer.
I did not know much about autism. How to, what not to and what to do.
There were all kind of incidents with M.
M. in the back of the car, no seat belts way back then, me driving on three-lane highway and him jumping at me from back seat and him banging his head on mine and biting my neck - M. sitting on passenger side, me turning left on one lane road and door on his side opening wide - and more of such. I always kept my cool and managed to calm him down.
As my strength and patience started to wear out and knowing that I would eventually not be able to continue like that (I was 47then) and  not wanting to burden his siblings with the responsibility of taking care of their brother, I decided to place him.  Needless to say that it was a heartbreaking decision.
This was 31 years ago. The Maison E. center had just been founded and has since grown from 3 to 22 'villagers' in need of special care and about 30 caregivers who share 5 residences. Moselito's home away from home is paradise to him and to Ellena, as he calls me.  
Although I am not ready to check out, I can die in peace because of this place so close to my heart.




This is Maison C., the home which Moselito shares with 5 other villagers in need of special care, houseparents and coworkers.

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.  


         

What now???????

Looked at Preview of my last post and was not able to edit anything. Could not make paragraphs and other changes to set up. The Font, Size and other options were gone and are still gone now as I am typing this. What the schnuk is going on? It's very hot here, I have swollen feet, couple of black flies are pestering me and now this on top of all else. Just realized that I have been up for 16 hours. That should not affect the look of my posting page though. Good night.