An Unwanted Gift

It was the Christmas I was eight years old.

It was coming up on two years since my Grandma had passed away suddenly and unexpectedly from a brain aneurism. My Grandpa was in the midst of being treated for prostate cancer and suffering from his continual affliction of early-onset rheumatoid arthritis. In my memory, Grandpa was never well, but he was particularly unwell that Christmas. 

 

The Peters family had gathered at my aunt and uncle's newly constructed home that year. As was still the custom in our family then, before the gifts were distributed, the grandchildren were all required to perform some Christmas item for the grandparents – a line from their Sunday School Christmas program or a Christmas carol on their instrument of choice. This, of course, made me terribly nervous, but I dutifully recited my verse. I recall my much more sophisticated 16-year-old cousin, Myrna, chose to play an ambitious piece on the piano, dramatic and loud. To my eight year old mind, she was being very inconsiderate, performing such a piece for my Grandpa who I was sure had a pounding headache. Why else would he have had to lie down later?

And then! The most anticipated time of all – the gift exchange!

First, the cousin gifts were exchanged. This particular year, my gift came from Renee – a huge Barbie poster to colour where all the black outlines and negative spaces were a black fuzzy velvet material. It came with its own set of four markers. This was very exciting but I was looking forward to my gift from Grandpa; the gift from grandparents was always bigger and more valuable. What would it be this year?

And then, there it was.

The gift wasn't even wrapped.

Grandpa simply handed me a shiny, yellow wooden baseball bat.

I was confused; this was my Christmas gift?

I was devastated; this was my Christmas gift.

But I hated baseball. I already knew I was no good at baseball and never would be.

I wanted to cry. But I couldn't, not with all my aunts and uncles watching me. I couldn't cry in front of Grandpa and hurt his feelings. It wasn't his fault he didn't know what to get a girl without Grandma there to help him.

So I struggled mightily and kept the tears in, but my disappointment must have been evident.

The candy bags, filled mostly with peanuts, were handed out, the paper wrapping collected, the aunts went to the kitchen to get supper ready, and my Grandpa found a dark back room to rest in. The uncles stayed visiting in the living room, the cousins went off to play with their new toys, and I looked at my bat.

What was I going to do with this gift, this gift that I didn't really want? Even at eight I could appreciate the trouble Grandpa had gone to to procure gifts for all his grandchildren on his own. He didn't know I hated baseball. But he had cared enough about me to give me a gift. And probably like all “old” people, he liked baseball and figured this was a great gift.

I don't know that I would have been able to verbalize any of my ruminations that day, but I picked up my new yellow bat and started carrying it around, using it rather like a cane. I didn't love baseball, but I did love my Grandpa and this is what he, a man of very few words, had given me to tell me he loved me.

As I hobbled into the kitchen with my bat, an aunt commented from across the counter, “It looks like Donna has made peace with her gift.”

* * *

That yellow bat served me well. I never did develop a love or skill for baseball, but I always used that bat in family baseball games, even after my younger brothers advanced to aluminium bats. It was light and yet substantial enough to connect with a ball to send it flying, theoretically at least, anyway!

I have kept that bat all these years and in even more recent years, I have used it to teach my kids to play baseball, much to my incredulity. I have turned out to be a better baseball teacher than player. All three of my kids seem to have good success hitting balls with that bat. It is no longer shiny, it is no longer yellow, but it is still both light yet substantial, and it always reminds me of my Grandpa and his gift of love.

The past six months of my life, I have been struggling with a “gift” from God. A gift that was not on my wish list, that I specifically did not want. But here it is in my life. I am ashamed of my ingratitude and resistance, but there it is: a gift that is a burden. I may well not develop a love or a skill for this gift, but I do want to develop an appreciation for the demonstration of God's love that I believe, somewhere buried deep, this gift is, and I want to become a better recipient for the lessons this gift is sure to teach me if I am open enough. I want to make peace with my gift.

Every good and perfect gift is from above,

coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights,

who does not change like shifting shadows.

James 1:17

Á Montréal

After a week back home, I think my legs have finally recovered from walking in Montreal. Walking 15 miles on country road in one day had nothing on walking for miles on concrete for 4 days straight! You'd get into shape pretty fast in Montreal – at least where we were.

Everything that could go well on our vacation did.

The train was fabulous. It felt like being rocked gently in giant maternal arms AND I could read on the train. I cannot, under normal circumstances, read in a moving vehicle without getting motion sick. So this was delightful. And they do, in fact, call “All Aboard” in that iconic sing-songy voice when you need to get back on the train. In the two days we were on the train, we were allowed to get off for fresh air for about 15 minutes twice (not a great ride if you were a smoker). You definitely don't take the train to get there faster, or even cheaper, but it was surely a great experience. I would promote the notion of getting a sleeping berth solely on the basis of its absence on our trip, but we all managed to get a certain amount of shut-eye. 

 

Our train was a little late getting into Toronto where we were to catch a connecting train to Montreal, which we missed. Even glitches turned into adventures. VIA gave us free meal tickets and we had a little extra time to go check out the outside of the CN Tower.

The commuter train from Toronto to Montreal was considerably faster as was the taxi ride from the train station to the apartment we rented through AirB&B. Montreal was great. I had been there in the winter about 9 years ago and I always knew I would love to come back in the summer. My high-school and rusty college level French got me considerably farther than I expected, even to the point of having a small chit-chatty conversation with the baker at the Patissérie where I bought croissants and pains au chocolat for breakfast every morning. 

We did a lot of walking. We took a taxi from the train station at the beginning and to the airport at the end, and once over Mount Royal and we took the Métro (subway) from the Biodôme to Old Montreal, but the rest of the time we walked. The kids were real troupers, with a minimum of complaining. At the end of one very long day of walking, and of verbal notification of growing discomfort, I asked my oldest, who hadn't complained at all whether his feet didn't hurt. “Well, yes,” he said, “but I choose not to acknowledge them.” He was in his glory the whole time we were there and was calculating how many years to go until he could move there (a minimum of 6 years, in case anyone was wondering). If we had been hiking on a trail in the bush somewhere he may have been more quick to acknowledge them!

My husband and my oldest were hoping for some interesting food and food experiences while we were in Montreal and in that department there was success. There were no bugs and especially no mosquitos in Montreal! so all the restaurants had garage door-style windows in the front of their shops that were open to the summer air. I loved that.  We even tried fois-gras!  My middle son got a big kick out of ordering the Vladimir poutine at the Frites Alors! restaurant.

 

We walked to Old Montreal several times, we walked to the port of Montreal and saw a cruise ship leave the docks, we walked up Mount Royal and down Mount Royal on the other side to St. Joseph's Oratory, we walked to the Biodôme at Olympic Park (which contains five various ecosystems with plants and animals), we walked to restaurants and shops, we walked to visit my sister-in-law and her partner at their home and his place of work at Place des Arts, we walked to parks while waiting for other members of the family to wake up, I walked to collect breakfast from the Fruiterie and the Patisserie, we walked to churches and up interesting streets and down wrong ones. We walked so much that our little corner of the city was becoming almost familiar.

And then we flew back. The kids loved it. They loved take off and landing, they loved looking out the window and getting snacks, they loved watching the screen that said how high and fast we were flying. My oldest managed to set off the metal detector with metal toggles on his sweater and got sent to the x-ray machine. I asked him if he had been afraid. “No,” he said. “I knew I hadn't done anything wrong.” I was not so fond of the landing myself (considering my propensity for motion sickness), but I made it to solid ground without any drama so I was thankful for that.

In fact, I was thankful for the whole experience. We made wonderful family memories, had a wide variety of new experiences, and were inspired. What more could you ask from a family holiday?

All Aboard and Bon Voyage!

Tomorrow our family leaves for Montreal, VIA train!

This prospect is very exciting for all of us: my husband is looking forward to getting somewhere without having to drive the whole way (his co-driver tends to want to fall asleep while driving) and while being able to stand up and walk around; my oldest son has been waiting all his life to visit a big city; my youngest two are satisfied with just being excited about everything.

For me, travelling by train is a dream come true. It all started one day more than 30 years ago....

I was in Mrs. Donnelly's grade 3/4 class with the chalkboards on wheels for walls. Each day started with a Mad Minute math test and show and tell followed by a story. We were still young enough for show and tell in those days. I had written off show and tell for myself in kindergarten already after I brought my favorite doll and no one asked me any questions about her, but I still loved to hear about my classmates things and life events.

This particular day was very memorable in my mind. Wayne Friesen brought a puppet that day, the kind where the puppet's arms and legs can be velcroed around your neck and waist and you stick your whole arm in it to make it seem almost alive. I had never seen such a puppet and his was Garfield. I had no idea who Garfield was. Then Wayne informed us that Garfield's best friend was Odie (what a name!?!) and his favorite food was lasagne (I had never heard of lasagne before and had no idea what that was either). Hearing about so many things that I didn't know about in such a short time was quite overwhelming. I started reading Garfield comics shortly after this initial encounter. Thank you, Wayne, for introducing me to such an esteemed character!

And then the story time. Mrs. Donnelly told Wayne to put Garfield back in his school bag and pulled out the book she had chosen to read. It was called “All Aboard: Across Canada by Train.” It was the account of a young woman who travelled across Canada by train, if you can imagine! She told about the different cities that she stopped at and the interesting people she met. I was completed entranced! What a romantic idea! (although that's probably not the word I used at the time). I knew I had to travel by train sometime in my life.

I have very few other memories from Grade 3, but that morning stuck out as a shining beacon in my little life. To learn of Garfield and have a dream born in the first 15 minutes of the school day was life altering.

It took more than 30 years for the dream to become a reality, but tomorrow is the day! I have three kids who are having a hard time falling asleep tonight and a suitcase calling out to be packed.

Bon voyage á nous! Montréal, ici nous venons! (Does that work in French?)

Check back two years from now to see if my Grade 5 dream of travelling to Italy will also come true!

El camino a casa: A Photo Essay



I've read more than my fair share of books about walking journeys, about people who've walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain, the Pacific Crest Trail in America, the Pennine Way in England, about some guy who took his fridge walking around Ireland - yes, really!*  Doing a long walking trail is not really in the cards for me right now, but I do love to walk.  So, in planning my summer earlier, when I realized that all my kids would be at camp on the same week, I decided I would create my own walking experience, what I am dubbing "El camino a casa" - the walk to home.  I determined that I would walk from my own home where I currently live to the home where I grew up, where my parents still live.  That is what I did yesterday.

 

I intended to wake up at the crack of dawn so I could do most of my walking in the cool of the day, but instead, my husband's alarm woke me at 6:45 AM.  The sun was already well in the sky, but I grabbed my backpack, well, actually my son's backpack that I borrowed without asking (since he wasn't around to ask), and headed out.  Here is the story of my 15 mile walk.    

 



 

My current home that I share with my husband and three kids where I started from at 7:20.

 

 

This photo is taken from the point where I usually stop and head back home on my daily walk, about 1 mile from our red brick house here.

 

 

My in-laws live about 3 miles from our home.  This is close to where I once picked Saskatoon berries with my mother-in-law and where I decided it was not worth my while to engage in such activity anymore.  Margaret had about 4 full pails of berries picked in the two hours we were out there and I was still struggling to fill my first.  Since then I have just bought saskatoons at the u-picks around here!

 

One of my favorite flowers is now in bloom - brown-eyed Susans.  They always make me think of my grandma.

 

 

 

This is about 4 miles from home.  I have just climbed the hill and am looking back on the edge of what used to be the basin of ancient Lake Agassiz.

 

 

Walking up into the hills and the trees felt like coming home.  The sounds of birds and insects and leaves rustling,  the pungent woodsy smell of the forest, the coolness of the shade and the play of light in the trees - this I love. 

 

 

Around mile 5, an hour and a half after I started out, I sat down to rest and write in my journal.

 

 

Proof that this was once the beach of an ancient lake - sand, and lots of it.  The holes in the sand are birds nests - I'm not sure what kind of bird it is. 

 

 

It was the perfect summer day - clear blue sky, white puffy clouds, lush green of the grass and trees and yellow canola and sunshine.  I was grateful for a gentle summer breeze.

 

 

Another of my favorite flowers - wild roses.  This was close to mile 10 where I again sat down to rest and write.  I had imagined initially that I would do a lot of thinking and processing while I was walking, but what I found was that my mind was full just absorbing my surroundings - the sights, the smells, the sounds.  I didn't have time for anything else.  And that was such a blessing;  it was almost like compulsory and blissful mindfulness.

 

 

I didn't encounter much traffic while I was walking except for about two or three miles before I reached the old Rosehill one-room country school-house.  There I had manure-hauling trucks passing me every few minutes which was less than pleasant for a number of reasons.  So I was glad when I reached the school, just past where the trucks were turning off.  When my siblings and I were younger, we would ride our bikes the 3 miles to this school in the summer for DVBS.  Those were great memories.

 

 

Almost there!  This is my favorite tree at the "end" of the lane.  When I was a kid, it would serve as a store or a school or some other important destination in my imaginary adventures.

 

 

 

I arrived at my parent's home 5 hours after I started out.  Evidently I walked 3 miles per hour.  You walk differently when you're in it for the long haul, I found.  Some slower and steadier.  I was glad I had such a wonderful destination and I knew the route and could easily gauge my progress.  I loved it.  I loved walking.  I loved arriving.  I was happy someone fed me lunch and drove me home. 

 

 

*Walking books I've read:

 

What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim by Jane Christmas  (Camino de Santiago)

Walking Home:  A Poet's Journey by Simon Armitage (Pennine Way)

Wild:  From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed (Pacific Crest Trail)

Round Ireland with a Fridge by Tony Hawks