Remembering Mom and Dad

 

This past week would have been Mom and Dad's 71st wedding anniversary. They were married on August 30th, 1952. While many families make a regular practice of visiting their loved ones'  gravesites, I've never found much comfort there. It's not a familiar place, a place they spent time. 

Fortunately, our family had the opportunity to donate a bench in their honour at Champlain Park, across the street from their house, where they lived for over 60 years. That neighbourhood, that park, the nearby Ottawa River - that is where I feel their presence. 

So, on some of the special occasions,  some of us in the family decorate their bench. It is our way of celebrating them. On their anniversary this week, I tied on a photo from their wedding day and a poem I wrote for their 30th anniversary. There are still many "old time" residents of Champlain Park who remember Mom and Dad, but many more newcomers, who will not recognize their names on the bench. This way they'll learn a little bit about them. We were so lucky, to have them, for so long!

Only five minutes of fear

 It's been a summer of extreme weather. All around the world and across Canada, people have experienced drought, extreme heat, typhoons, floods, tornadoes and wildfires with their resulting smoke. Here in Ottawa we have mostly been lucky. We started off the summer with wildfire smoke and extreme heat but that all subsided into a fairly usual summer.

Except for the storms. Last Thursday, August 3rd, a tornado touched down in the southern section of Ottawa. It's the the thirrd time that has happened here this summer. We are getting used to alerts on our phones, warning us of damaging thunderstorms and/or tornados. Click here to read Bruce Deachman's piece in the Ottawa Citizen. 

On Friday July 28th, I was driving near the Experimental Farm, about ten minutes from our house, when a violent thunderstorm hit. I couldn't see where I was going so I pulled over and waited it out, as hail pounded the car. For those few minutes I was scared, as I wondered how long it would last and what else might happen. 

When it subsided I slowly drove home, to avoid the gigantic puddles on many streets. It turned out that I had stopped in an area that was not that hard hit, compared to our neighbourhood. The hail where I stopped my car was not large enough to leave any marks. However, any cars that were parked in our neighbourhood were left with dimpled roofs. The hail here was golf ball sized! One of the unexpected outcomes was our damaged screens. The sideways hail was so strong that the screens on the west side of our house now have holes. The flashing on our roof is dimpled. Homeowners with older windows found some to be cracked or broken. 

As I spoke to my husband and others who were home at the time of the storm, they all said the same thing. They were scared. They thought all their windows were going to break. After it all stopped we surveyed the damage and got to work, raking the leaves and branches. It seemed like fall when you drove around, with so many folks out raking, in the middle of summer. (And then there was the totally annoying sound of leaf blowers, at all hours. How I hate those things ! ) We were lucky. We didn't lose any trees around us.

                                          Strange to be raking in the middle of summer !

And so, we got off relatively unscathed. We have 5 small screens to repair but that's nothing compared to the catastrophic weather events happening all over. If we were scared for five minutes, what is it like for those caught in a flash flood, or in wildfires ? What it is like to go to bed, with your bags packed, knowing that you might suddenly have to evacuate your home?

The 5 minutes of trauma here is nothing compared to what so many experience every day in war torn countries. In Niger now, in Syria, in Ukraine...how do those people go about their daily lives, knowing that everything could be violently destroyed at any moment? 

As I write this, it's a sunny morning and the cicadas are singing. to tell me that it's going to be a hot day, a day to go for a swim perhaps. And so we go about our ordinary lives, spending summer time with family and friends, while evidence of climate change hovers around us. 

Other neighborhoods had it worse than us.

What to do? We all need to do what we can, to be kinder to the earth. We need to encourage our children, grandchildren, and our governments to pursue policies and practices to reduce climate change. And, whenever possible, we need to offer support to those caught in the middle of natural disasters and war. Their ongoing pain is so much worse than what we have experienced here. 

                                        Hail, still on the ground, two hours later.

Happy Pride !

 Thank goodness for the young people in our lives! Whether they are our children, nieces, nephews or grandchildren, our relationships with them help to keep us current. One of the areas that we have been helped with, is our familiarity with LGBTQ2+ issues. 

A few years ago, Norah's family, who lives in Toronto, gave us a rainbow flag. We often fly flags so that was appropriate but this flag was not one we would have bought ourselves. "Why does this rainbow flag look different?" we asked. "Grandma",  our grandchild answered, somewhat impatiently. "It's not a rainbow flag, This is a pride progress flag." This updated flag is meant to include more marginalized communities. 

So we have flown our flag during June for the past three years. In Toronto, many businesses and homes fly similar flags. In Ottawa, not so much. We haven't seen another flag like ours in our neighbourhood. I wondered what our neighbors thought. How does it make them feel? Do they appreciate us flying this flag? Do they think it's strange for us to fly it? 

As time has gone by, and I have listened to more media reports about how this community is being treated, I have felt more strongly about how important it is, to show solidarity with them. In a time with so many more pressing issues to worry about (climate change, the war in Ukraine etc.) why are people wasting their time and energy targeting a group of people for no good reason? 

And then, out of the blue, a couple of weeks ago, a friend in the neighbourhood thanked me for flying the flag. It means a lot to him and his partner. I was touched that he mentioned it and told him we are happy to fly it. This community, made up of our neighbors, our friends and our family members, need to know that we support them, especially now.

Last weekend we were in Toronto. On Saturday, the day before the Pride parade, we drove to the train station and then decided to walk around. We went to the wonderful St. Lawrence Market, then walked around Church St. which was blocked off for Pride weekend. After that, we ended up at the old Maple Leaf Gardens building, which now houses a large Loblaws on the ground floor. 

Everywhere we went, we encountered people in a happy mood. It was like being at a Christmas parade but instead of hearing "Merry Christmas" we kept hearing "Happy Pride ! " We bumped into a couple of Norah's friends from her high school days here in Ottawa.  It was good to see them and all the other families out for a stroll, in a celebratory mood. I was impressed with all the creative slogans and displays at various businesses. You can call it mere marketing but it worked for me. Having these businesses put their money into supporting Pride events should help to make us realize that all of us, regardless of our backgrounds, are all part of humanity. We all deserve happiness, safety, comfort and love in our lives. Visible signs and symbols really do matter.

Along Church Street

The lobby of the Royal York Hotel

Rainbow pizza at Loblaws

Bubly display

 

Bakery counter at Loblaws

                                           My favorite sign of the day !

Mother's Day, Service and the Coronation

As we celebrate Mother's Day and soon,  Father's Day, I think of my parents, but that is not unusual. Their expressions, their lessons, their care, is with me always.  If they were still with us, I would have watched the Coronation with them last weekend. Dad would have found it long and Charles' wardrobe changes ridiculous. Mom would have enjoyed the ceremony, especially the hymns. She would have been angry with Meghan and Harry.  However, I think they both would have appreciated the sermon, with its emphasis on service. 

When I awoke last Saturday morning,  I turned on the radio, expecting  CBC's usual Saturday morning show. Instead, I found myself listening to the sermon being delivered at the Coronation, by the Archbishop of Canterbury. 

"Service is love in action. We see active love in our care for the most vulnerable, the way we nurture and encourage the young, in the conservation of the natural world. We have seen those priorities in the life of duty lived by our King."

I was struck by his emphasis on the idea of service to others - that the King's role was to serve and that we, as well, were asked to serve. 

"Each of us is called by God to serve. Whatever that looks like in our own lives, each of us can choose God’s way today."

Later that morning, as we watched the Coronation, I took out this very special mug. 

My mother was in hospital on the Queen's Coronation Day, having recently given birth to me. On Coronation Day she received this mug, so it always makes me think of her and the start of her role as mother. There are no words to describe how well she served the six of us, as our devoted mother. As well, she served her church and community in many ways. She was always serving someone. 

Dad, as well, was a wonderful parent. Reminders of him are throughout our home, as he worked on it a lot.  Last weekend we got busy washing windows and putting in screens. One of our screens has seen better days. The metal framing is now wobbly and I was perturbed to see that the plastic lining that holds the mesh in place, had come out. 

I really didn't feel like dealing with it, but memories of Dad flooded back. I went downstairs and fetched a screwdriver. Dad was, among many other titles, our repair guy. He could fix just about anything and we relied on him a lot. At one point he taught me how to use a screwdriver to repair a screen. And so I did.

There is a sense of satisfaction that comes with fixing something - a feeling that Dad must have experienced a lot. I felt pleased with myself and my little job. Teaching screen repair is only one of so many lessons Dad taught us. Maybe the bigger lesson here is not to throw things out, but to fix them. Again, as with Mom, I could never list all the ways that Dad used his many talents, to take care of his family and others. 

My grandmother used to say, "Give every devil their due." And so, regardless of what a person might think about the validity of the monarchy today, I think many might appreciate that the idea of service was a theme of Coronation weekend. Last Monday was a Bank Holiday in the U.K. It was called "The Big Help Out"  -  a day of national volunteering. Chris Brown, on CBC's The National , said that The Royals encouraged people to spend part of their holiday helping out in their communities. There were over 50 000 volunteering events planned across the U.K. The idea was to inspire more people to serve their communities, in whatever ways possible. Click here to see his report. 

And so, as I think of my parents, I think of their example, of their service to others. As the  Archbishop of Canterbury declared last weekend,  service is love in action.  

Happily, we escaped the heavy snows of Ottawa for three weeks. We drove to Florida and really enjoyed our family time there. On the way home we visited Washington for the first time. Our two days in Washington were the same days that President Biden was in Ottawa. Along the way we met so many really friendly, helpful people. I wrote about them, in this  piece, which appears in The Ottawa Citizen. Click here to read it. 

The Virginia Welcome Centre, where Katrina helped me contact the restaurant

At the Lincoln Memorial

Cherry trees along the Tidal Basin

Inside the National Gallery

                                                 The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial

                                          Cherry trees.  Me, with the famous purse