About January

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Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

[My brain is still thawing out from last week’s weather. So I dug up another throwback for y’all from 20 years ago when there was a drought, ergo – NO SNOW. And quarantine? Yeah, I just didn’t know.]

You sure can tell it’s January. January is a month that starts off with a big bang and quickly fizzles away into nondescript-ness. Its only merit is the holiday that occurs on the first of the month leaving nothing to look forward to. Unless you celebrate Ukrainian Christmas, but it’s too bad for you if it falls in the middle of the week. Arriving to work late (or the day after) with that excuse in hand will get you the same scrutiny from your boss as “my dog ate my homework”. The calendars in my house only herald such events as Classes Resume at the beginning of the month and Australia Day at the end. For the latter, I suppose we could spend the day singing the chorus of Six White Boomers (the chorus is all we know and only two lines of it) and watching all our taped episodes of The Crocodile Hunter.

And then there’s the weather, the hot topic of small talk everywhere. By this time winter has lost all its novelty. The mercury in the thermometer appears badly out of shape, as it can’t seem to bench-press anything above a negative number. And getting the kids ready to get out the door in their multi-layered outfits loses a lot of appeal after the first two hundred times. Plus their lack of memory (first snow pants, then boots) is astonishing. After all, they’ve had two hundred times to practice. And I won’t even mention anything about zippers not built to last more than two hundred zips.

I waffle between whether I think more snow would be a good idea. There are certain advantages to an absence of snow. My sidewalk has been virtually maintenance free since even the least amount of frozen precipitation has Gil out the door to shovel the snow. The novelty of this hasn’t even had a chance to wear off, since there have been so few snow-removal opportunities for him. And pushing a loaded shopping cart back to my van is certainly easier when you’re not working against a day’s snowfall.

On the other hand, since it IS winter, I figure we might as well have some snow to go along with the frost on our windshields and the chill on our noses. Plus sending the kids out to play in the frozen grass just doesn’t hold the same appeal as a big downy blanket to curl up in. (Anyone with a snowmobile is sadly nodding their head in agreement right now.) Not to mention the desperate need for moisture. My eldest son is even recounting the good old days to his younger brothers, which in his memory is the year Grandpa was able to pile up the snow in the yard into a kid-sized mountain with the front-end loader.

And well, what would January be without the flu and the common cold? My kids have managed to space out their illnesses well enough that the ice cream pails only get about a day’s rest between sick sessions. That means we’ve been in quarantine. Although, it might only be three or four days since we’ve been out, it seems like a lot longer. And kids have such an incredible way of masking their sickness until some critical moment. Like when the van is running and you’re getting the kids ready to go out the door (first snow pants, then boots).  That’s usually when someone yells, “I need a pail!” and you set an Olympic record (one which involves speed and hurdles) either getting the pail to the kid or the kid to the toilet, depending on which course of action you chose in that split second.

I suppose in that light, you can’t really call January a boring month. These domestic challenges of getting that zipper to work just one more time and keeping the kids occupied indoors are what keep me going. And anyways, I shouldn’t complain. January IS one of my twelve favorite months!

About Vocabulary

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Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

Bamboozled. Flabbergasted. Discombobulated. Shenanagins. Lollygag. Malarkey. Kerfuffle. Brouhaha. Nincompoop. Skedaddle. Pumpernickel.

About three months ago my eldest son sent me a meme titled “some of the best words literally ever”, with the suggestion that they might come in handy for my blog. He sent my thoughts cattywampus as I took on his challenge and elbowed them in one (and once two) at a time. I had seen all of them before and generally knew what they meant, except for today’s word: I mistook cattywampus for a noun. After all, it sounds like some kind of trouble a Dr. Suess character would get into.

Vocabulary, along with Spelling (or Gnilleps, the more challenging backwards version from the board game Cranium), are some of my favorite things. Is that nerdy? I ask myself (also answering myself by unconsciously nodding my head). Well, yes, in fact it’s SUPERnerdy. But I choose to emphasize the SUPER. I mean, we all want to have a superpower, right? So what’s wrong with wanting to know All The Words? Maybe it’s not as handy as invisibility or shooting spiderwebs out of your wrists, but it’s the one I want to work on. Because no superhero was born in a day.

As much as I have aspired at times to read the dictionary cover to cover, I have never got past “aardvark” because reading the dictionary is actually (spoiler alert) Pretty Boring. I mean, the first page is a whole column of the different meanings and uses for the letter “A”. Who knew? (Well, Mr. Merriam and Mr. Webster, for two.) As handy as a dictionary is, or its online counterpart, it doesn’t serve well as a textbook.

So how do we increase our wordpower? The old Reader’s Digest quiz had it partly right: read an unfamilar word in a sentence and take a guess. Because the answer to that question is another of my favorites: Read, Read, Read. While entertaining my 7-year old niece this week (or rather, she was entertaining me), she read aloud for a few chapters from one of the classic Dav Pilkey books about Dog Man – the same Dav Pilkey who purveys Captain Underpants. (Is that the right use of the word purvey? I’m not totally sure. I’m just gonna go with it.) In this seemingly innocuous book for those in the 6+ set, Navy sometimes consulted me, sometimes barreled ahead and correctly pronounced such words as: obnoxious, consequences, humiliation and – my favorite – dopamine responders.

It reminded me of how I used to read everything as a kid, how I have sometimes consulted, sometimes barreled ahead without looking up a weird word because the story was just too darn good. Eventually, if you read and encounter sisyphean or solipsistic, perspicacious or pugillistic enough times, you’ll actually figure out what they mean. Or you’ll look it up. Or you’ll pick up an easier book – like Dog Man – where the known to unknown ratio is a little more palatable. But still challenging – and a darn good story.

About the In-Between Time

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Photo by Moritz Knöringer on Unsplash

Anytime my weather app informs me of temperatures in the -40 degrees Celcius range, three things immediately come to mind: 1. Gross. 2 Why do we even live here? and 3. I ain’t going anywhere. Well, not if I can help it. With a car safely ensconced in the garage, I know it will probably start if it has to, unlike all the poor, angry vehicles hiding under their snow blankets like hibernating bears. They just want to be left alone until the spring.

Of course, not everyone has the luxury of time off in the in-between of Christmas and New Year’s. Work still happens – especially emergencies like busted water pipes and furnace breakdowns and cars that need to be boosted. But during the Christmas season – at least in non-Omicron variant times – we sometimes need to PARTY even if the temperature registers stupid.

When I was a kid, the in-between time stretched all the way to January 7 which was Ukrainian Christmas or maybe even the 14th, the Eastern calendar’s New Year’s Day equivalent. At least once a year, during that time, there was always a family party to go to. Most often, I remember it at my grandparents’ house – my Baba and Gigi’s. For most of the year they lived in a few rooms in what was the old post office in Derwent, but for family get-togethers we overflowed into the large back room lined with couches and chairs. But the family get-together also cirulated from year to year: I remember at least one party at the homes of each of my mom’s five sisters and one brother.

My mom and my aunties all potlucked a turkey roaster full of something – cabbage rolls, meatballs, cheese stuffed crepes – and loaded it onto the table in the middle of all the sofas and chairs. Us kids always went last but we never minded because once we had our plates full of our favorites, we got to sit around the kids table and talk turkey, away from the pesky adults. It was a chance to compare what we got for Christmas and show off new Christmas clothing but most of all, we just loved to hang out together, laughing and sharing stories. After dessert, which was left out for the rest of the night – score! – we found every house’s hiding spots and board games, we practiced swear words with each other and tried each other’s new jewelry and Bonnie Bell Lip Smackers.

I don’t remember how cold it was outside because we were inside – safe, warm, very full and happy. I do remember at the end of one of those nights exiting the house into a blizzard and my Uncle John blazing the trail for us in his four-wheel drive Bronco. The Chevy Impala would never have made it otherwise. It was probably pretty nerve wracking for Dad the driver and Mom the worrier, but I was probably asleep in the back seat, oblivious until someone carried me into the house and dumped me in my bed. What a life!

The in-between is a time to stay home if you can or to go if you must and hopefully the weather won’t get you down either way. Let your memories warm you. And may you make new ones that are just as good or better to keep going you all the new year.

About What’s Good

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Photo by Valentin Petkov on Unsplash

Yesterday I had a good 3-hour pre-Christmas phonecall with one of my dearest friends. She’s the kind of friend where we don’t need to talk every day or every week or even every month, but when we do, the three hours feels like ten minutes. I count it a good good blessing to have friends like that.

Three hours on the phone does give you a lot of time to discuss what’s new and also, as good friends will do, rehash what is old. Especially since we are getting old or – at least – old-er. We talked about how we are celebrating our respective Christmases – what’s the same and what’s different from the usual: her mom is in Mexico, mine is in heaven. Her grandchildren will be with her ex-son-in-law, I haven’t got any (yet). We both get to spend most of it with our best friends (our husbands), but there are other things that are different because the one thing you can count on is change.

And then, maybe around hour two, when we had pretty much solved the problems of the world – according to us – she quoted something she heard from Oprah that had stuck with her, something like: enjoy what’s good while it lasts, because it won’t last forever. And – know that what’s bad also won’t last forever.

It’s the kind of wisdom that at first blush, sounds icky, like a parent admonishing a child: Be THANKFUL, dammit! But then, the wise-ness seeps in, especially if you’re not a toddler or a teenager, because growing older teaches us the hard and the good way that this piece of advice is TRUE.

Do I wish that my mom, gone these seven years now, was here so we could enjoy another one of her special Christmas Eves? Or that, for heaven’s sake, we could go back to proceeding as normal without masks and admonitions, that Covid and all its iterations would just skedaddle already? Or even that it might warm up to oh – minus 5? – so that my front door would shut properly again and my kids don’t have to worry about their cars starting?

Well, sure. But in the grand scheme of things, I wouldn’t know such goodness if I hadn’t already witnessed it for myself, in all its smallness and bigness.

Here’s wishing that your ten minutes of goodness this Christmas feels like three hours – and even more.

About Not Giving Christmas Presents

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Sitting in a hair salon yesterday, I overheard a conversation from the next chair. The patron was telling his stylist that he and his wife don’t exchange gifts anymore at Christmas – that they just didn’t see the point of it. He said he didn’t like the shopping and, I suspect, the subsequent wrapping and quite possibly, the not-knowing if the gift will be “a good one” or “a bad one”. This was an agreement that was made amicably between the both of them.

He said that instead they chose to go somewhere or do something together, no wrapping necessary, just packing. And he also said his Christmas lights had been up and on since the warm snap in early November. So, not bah, humbug at all. Obviously, he and his wife were keeping Christmas in their own way.

About the gift-giving, the stylist said that she thought that Christmas presents were only fun for little kids, anyways. Hmm, I wondered: What about all those people who still are children in their hearts? What if your loved one really does want the flourish of paper and bows and maybe a new little thing that would not show up any other time of year?

And what about the givers? What if you really love to give other people presents? In the minimalist/environmentalist atmosphere we live in, is this wrong?

One of my first favorite stories about Christmas was O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi. It’s an old enough tale that I can spoil it: in the story, a newlywed couple, desperately in love, finds themselves destitute at Christmas. The husband decides to sell his prized heirloom watch in order to buy some beautiful combs for his bride’s long lovely tresses. The wife cuts said long tresses, sells them and buys the husband a chain for his watch. It’s Christmas giving at its sacrificial best.

Of course, as a young girl I always thought that the wife got the better gift – after all, her hair would grow back and she could use the combs. But the story wasn’t really about the hair, the combs, the watch or the chain. It was about the giving something away that mattered to you so that you could make someone else happy. Even if the gift made no sense in the end, it really was the thought that counted.

But thoughts are hard to wrap. Sometimes they need to be conveyed in gift bags and boxes – or sometimes, suitcases. Gifts don’t need to be extravagant, and the suitcase doesn’t have to travel far either, to mark the occasion, to show someone else that you love them – with a bow on top.

About Dressing for the Occasion

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It’s nice, but is it warm? [Photo by Vladimir Yelizarov on Unsplash]

I don’t know what the kids are doing these days, but when I was going to school, dressing for winter wasn’t about being warm. It was totally about being cool.

For some reason, the wearing of winter coats, hats and – heaven forbid! – BOOTS was absolute malarkey when I was a teenager. Of course, my mother in her eminent sense, never let me leave the house without looking like I was warm enough to stand at the end of the driveway in freezing weather to wait for the school bus. But that didn’t mean I didn’t doff my toque as soon as the bus came into sight. I mean, who wants to spend a single minute in junior high with hat hair? Not Thirteen-Year-Old Me!

The coolest kids (and some of the cutest – I’m not saying the smartest) managed to look like they weren’t freezing their arses off while still wearing their summer jean jackets and hightop runners, hands shoved down into their jeans pockets like they were auditioning for an S. E. Hinton movie. I don’t think I ever managed to achieved Total Cool Status – I wore a scarf and mitts everyday – but I do remember sneaking out of the house in sneakers, not boots. And winding up with wet socks and cold feet – how dumb is that?

I’m a lot older now and – it goes without saying – MUCH COOLER. Or is it warmer? I start wearing my toque in early fall and my boots with the first snowflake. I have even been known to turn on the seat heater in my car on a chilly day in summer because I am OVER with being cold. I do think dressing for the weather isn’t such a faux pas anymore. Then again, I don’t really know what’s in style anymore. It’s too hard to keep up with the Jones, or the teenagers, or whoever rules the fashion roost.

In anticipation of the winter season, my personal shopper (that would be my husband, Rick) picked out a SUPER WARM, EXTRA LONG new coat for me. I have never had such a warm coat before and apparently being warm means spending a little bit of money – this coat is what they call an “investment purchase”. When the temperature dipped recently, I wore it for the first time and realized that it not only takes a bit of money to stay warm, but also time. It took me about five minutes to zip myself in! But when it was on, I was warm as toast. Hot toast, fresh out of the toaster, that is.

Of course, it matters to me that my new coat looks nice as well – I did try on a few the day that I bought it, until we found “The One”. But if it’s minus 20 and I’m feeling toasty, I completely forget what I look like anyways. But I do know that this coat would look ridiculous with running shoes. And that’s a good thing.

About Putting up the Christmas Tree

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Although I would probably never entertain not having a Christmas tree as part of my December seasonal decor, the chore of putting it up every year is something I do not get excited about. However, like a good workout or sometimes church, I may not be anxious to do it but am usually happy once it’s done.

I do love a Christmas tree, even those of the Charlie Brown genre, but I really lollygag at putting it up. Perhaps it’s the residual argument memories about getting the lights just right or dealing with burnt out bulbs or (yikes!) serial string lights. But that problem has been solved – we now have a pre-lit artificial tree. Yes, we did the live tree thing for awhile. The smell is nice – well until your olfactory senses get used to it and you just don’t notice it anymore. A trip to a flower shop in December or a conifer-scented candle work just as well to satisfy that pine-y craving.

And then there’s the whole watering-the-tree-while-lying-on-your-stomach-and-getting-water-everywhere-but-in-the-tree-stand thing. I’m loathe to buy one of those new-fangled waterers that eliminate such a problem because it’s just something else I have to store unused for eleven months. Now, there’s no buying-and-hauling of said tree in 20 below weather (because it’s always 20 below when we go to acquire a real tree) and the subsequent 2-hour vacuuming session to clean out my car of tree debris. The car does smell nice afterward, but like the conifer-candle, an old-fashioned Little Tree air freshener does the trick without clogging up your vacuum hose.

For our first Christmas together, Rick and I did have a real tree. We were on a pretty tight budget but had decided to squander $20 on a cut tree from Superstore. We brought it home to our apartment – blissfully unaware that real trees were probably against the rules, a fire hazard – and unwrapped it to find out a quarter of our tree was missing. We should have only paid $15. No matter, we turned that part to the wall and decorated the heck out of “the good side”. And then we left for two weeks. When we returned – now wised up to the fact that the tree was in fact verboten – we had to adios that tree without anyone noticing. Rick quickly hauled the tree down the long hallway to the back of the building while I followed with the vacuum to eliminate the tell-tale trail.

It’s a fun memory, along with the those of unpacking decorations one by one and handing them to the boys to hang up – and then later rearranging them – on the many trees we’ve had over the years. One year – again on a tight budget – our second-hand artificial tree simply did not work anymore and so we made do with a tiny clothes-hanger-and-tinsel tree. Santa still came. And the decorations themselves – a pineapple from Hawaii, a covered bridge from Vermont, the clothespin soldiers the boys made – they evoke their own stories.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever get past procrastinating at putting up the tree. But it’s non-negotiable, so it will get done. And, once up, it will be enjoyed.

About Plan A and a Half

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It was a dark and….well, it was just a dark night in November. Which isn’t surprising anytime after 5 pm once Daylight Savings Time ends. Rick and I were on our way on to Edmonton, heading up to my first in-person Oilers hockey game of the season, of the past two years almost, because you know: COVID. We knew we were probably not going to get there in time for the first period, but that was okay. Life happens.

And then, we hit a deer.

Or, more accurately, the deer hit us. I’m pretty sure we had the right of way, but then again, TELL THAT TO THE DEER. Initially, I thought that we missed “the” deer but then as per usual, this guy was not travelling alone. I barely had time to be flabbergasted before “second deer” made first contact.

And second contact, and then probably third. I dunno, it all happened pretty fast, y’know? Rick did some excellent maneuvering to minimize damage to both deer and car. You can infer all you want about speed limits – which Rick likes to think of as speed suggestions – but really, speed wasn’t the issue. The ISSUE was a couple of dang deer deciding to play chicken on Highway 16.

So many idioms to mess with: Why did the deer cross the road? Was the grass tastier on the other side? Was this where the rutter hits the road?

We got off pretty lucky. We assessed the car at the side of the road first and then deemed it safe to drive to the Innisfree truck stop so we could further inspect it under the bright lights of the gas station. And after pulling a few random pieces of plastic off my poor car – which some nincompoop at Ford named AN ESCAPE (talk about misleading advertising) – we decided to proceed with Plan A. The car was pretty beat up on the drivers’ side, the front headlight looked like alien eyes on a fourth grader’s art project and one of the doors made a gunshot sound when you opened it. But you know, still driveable.

PLUS: we had a hockey game to get to. The car got us to our destination in time for the second period and surprisingly neither Rick nor I was all that shook up with the evening’s events thus far. Well, until Connor McDavid scored another one of his ridiculous goals. That’s enough to get your heart rate going.

I think he was going faster than the deer. Just sayin.

About the Best Laid Plans

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Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash

This last Tuesday was moving day for my son Simon. The night before we stayed up late packing up all the dregs of his life for the past couple years where he has been living so that he could move into a new place. The heavy lifters were coming, the truck and trailer were available and the crockpot of hot dogs that would be the reward at the end of the day were waiting in the fridge to get plugged in in the morning.

And then, the snow came.

No, let me re-phrase that: the blizzard swept in and laid waste to all of our best-laid plans.

When I woke up that morning and looked out the window, my first thought was: YUCK. The second thought was: I wonder if Simon would be okay with me ditching him today? (Well, not really, but I certainly wasn’t excited about moving in a snowstorm.)

And then the voice of reason kicked in via a flurry of texts from my husband Rick, Simon’s concerned dad, who was already on the slow road to work that morning. Basically, the message was: Abort! Abort! And, so to speak, we did. At least, we scrapped Plan A. The heavy lifters were relieved to be relieved and instead, Simon and I made several slow trips with my car to go pick up the keys, meet with the internet guy and move the most important things that could fit in the car: the bed (thank you, IKEA for facilitating take-apart beds), the television and, of course, the crock-pot of hot dogs.

If you think about it, things rarely go According to Plan. As I look back, I’m almost surprised at where life has tossed me. Sometimes, I’ve nailed the 3-point landing, other times I’ve completely muffed it. Usually the messes happen when I resist the change of plans, whether I just decide to ignore the weather and carry-on indiscriminately or if I choose a less-than-sunny disposition.

Not that it’s easy to always put on a happy face. Simon and his girlfriend/new-roommate were sorely disappointed first thing in the morning when they realized that things would not be progressing the way we had all hoped. But at the end of the day, while eating our hot dog supper, the smiles abounded because everyone arrived after all, in the good and proper time. And I was happy to leave them to set up house and home and make a plan for my next day.

Which would most likely change when I got there.

About Inheritance & Climbing Trees

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I’m an amateur genealogist. It’s important for me to keep up a family tree and I’ve even dug in a little into my roots (within the limits of the free trial period) on one or two of those sprawling online ancestry sites. It has struck me odd that a person would create a “tree” to show their “roots”. But it’s not really the same kind of tree. And perhaps a better way to look at it is that you are climbing up the tree to get a better look at things. Isolated facts mean nothing, usually, but from a bird’s eye view you can see a lot more.

I realize that when one starts poking around in the past, there’s always the potential of discovering something new – or even – secret. This very thing happened to writer Dani Shapiro after unceremoniously sending away for a DNA test when her husband suggested they take advantage of a BOGO offer. Shapiro thought she knew everything about her family – heck, she even wrote a memoir about her father and had done tons of family research. But then lo and behold, the results returned via email one day and left her completely discombobulated: her story was not what she thought it was and she had the DNA to prove it. She tells that story in her book Inheritance. Since then, she has created a podcast called Family Secrets, where many MANY other people divulge their secrets, also revealed by DNA tests, or by some other fate that led them to question their own status quo.

So, a couple of months ago, I sent away my own DNA sample. It’s as simple as spitting in a tube – and paying a “nominal” fee. I really wasn’t expecting any book deals out of my results and, sure enough, I had paid to find out that I know – as Ken Jeong of The Masked Singer would put it – EXACTLY WHO I AM. No surprises, no secrets. In fact, the results pinpointed the two exact origins of both my father’s and my mother’s families in Poland and Ukraine respectively.

The particular genealogy sites I perused this past year had very little to offer me, first because only a couple other distant family members have surrendered their DNA – at least to those particular sites – so there’s no benefit to be gained from cross referencing. Secondly, since I don’t speak or read the languages very well, I can’t glean any info from the historical records from that part of the world. (That being said, I haven’t tried very hard yet, either.)

What I do have is geography – which actually determines a lot. I mean if my ancestors had not both moved to Canada – Alberta-Derwent (or thereabouts), my parents would never have met and – well, you can follow the bouncing ball. In the “old country” they would have lived about 4 hours apart – in today’s standards of car and highway – and probably would never have traversed either the geographical or cultural boundaries at the time. Plus – they didn’t have any dating apps, so…yeah.

It’s not only geography that determines what kind of trees can grow, but also what kind of family trees.