I got an upbeat email from our Zimbabwe cousin, now released from his ordeal in jail and back home in Harare. He's looking forward to seeing his brother shortly for a two-week visit, but meanwhile enjoying Olympic coverage on TV. There are plans in the works for our annual UK reunion, probably in October.
It wasn't looking good for a white Christmas yesterday, with everything dripping wet and patches of grass showing on the back lawn. This morning it was postcard pretty again with flurries dusting down. Why is this important? It's very hard to face the dismal green and brown of a popular holiday supposedly all about families being together when family members are absent. When nature helps out with a pretty scene, it's easier to imagine Christmases past, full of snowsuits, wet mitts and hot chocolate. May you all be with the ones you love, at least in memory, this week!
Here's a great corporate card perfect for a work break today or to ease into time off this afternoon. It's a collection of videos from the past year. You'll recognize some if you frequent YouTube. Except for the one called Thriller, which is just weird, all are worth your time. Cheers!
I made time to do Christmas cards this year, not as many as I could, but way more than last year when we were still digging out essentials from moving boxes. I like the old-fashioned feel of the process, though I confess my address list is neatly digitized and set up to keep track of my progress through it with a quick click. The reward comes now when I get everyone else's cards and the inevitable Christmas letters. Most of these I love/hate. Nobody could have lives so perfect as they sound. And of course, part of the reason they are devoid of gruesome reality is that they are mass published to friends and acquaintances. On the other hand, I'm delighted to get any update on people I don't see very often. But a dear cousin has trumped all of them this year by sending us a hand-written personal Christmas letter, complete with holly sketched in the corner! The delicious irony of this is that she and I have a mostly online relationship. We have never met in person but we chat frequently by IM. To those who complain that the digital world has laid waste old-fashioned personal interaction, I say piffle!
Today was family reunion day and what a great party! We had almost 40 people from various parts of the UK and Canada (five of us from Canada) convening on the hotel near Farnham about midday. Lots of hugs and chatter, greetings and introductions, covered the milling around time before lunch. then we sat down at several large tables, with the kids at their own. Meryl and Doreen had arranged the place cards to mix things up. The meal was fine and filling and we managed to get most of the group organized for a group picture before it was over. We caught up on weddings, new babies, and individual news of all kinds. By late afternoon, we headed off to the south with Lionel and Mary to their home in Corfe Mullen, a very pleasant drive that included a short detour in the New Forest. Before dark we walked their boxer Milo along a lovely footpath past rabbit runs and horse paddocks.
I dedicate this Father's Day to my children's grandfather Francesco Chiotti. He was a lovely man, kind, generous and very much a family man. I don't know nearly enough about him and I have not attempted to fill in any details through my genealogy research, mostly because it means delving into French and Italian records. I remember a sort of elegance about him, perhaps because he had old-fashioned manners, always considerate. He welcomed me as his eldest son's wife and made me feel particularly important as the mother of his first grandchildren. I do recall his quiet delight when my eldest son was born and again when my second son arrived. When I broke the news to him that I planned to give birth to my third child at home, he was visibly distressed. I probably could have been more gentle about that. But my daughter's entry into the world was as much a celebration for him as the other two.
Here was a man who had left his Franco-Italian family for a world of adventure and pleasure as a bachelor in Shanghai before the communist takeover. When events turned ominous, he acted quickly to safeguard his new family and make a life in Canada. In his later years, he was baffled by the apparent discrepancy between his ingrained devotion to family above all and the way people actually led their lives. I feel honoured to have known him. I think my eldest son probably bears more of his imprint than the other two. There is a physical resemblance certainly, but more than that, I think they share a stubbornness that is remarkable.
My dear Auntie Marg died on Friday. She was a second mom to me when I was very young, presiding over the stable home we moved into while my own mother struggled to work and care for us as a single parent in an adopted country. It was a time of turbulence and loss and uncertainty for me, when Marg's warm kitchen was an island of safety. Not surprisingly, she became a loving friend to my mother when she most needed it, and her family and ours grew up as close as any blood relations.
You could count on Marg for calm acceptance of whatever life dished out to her, even though there was plenty to get exasperated about. She was quick to laugh, most often at the antics of her beloved life partner, Ken. Always ready with a tender word for any child, she loved family gatherings and never failed to show up to picnics and parties with her fantastic butter tarts.
Claire called this morning from Coolangatta with an update on her travels. Tomorrow is her last day at Corrumbin and she will be back in Sydney by Sunday. Then it's off again in a couple of weeks with her friend visiting from Canada to see Melbourne and a few other places. She'll take time in Alice Springs to attend a zoo conference, then finally fly out of Sydney at the end of May. She has planned to stop in California to visit a couple of friends, then finally comes home to Canada just as I am flying out to Texas. Oh, well. She has lots of friends and family to catch up with here so I'll wait my turn.
I finally heard from the birthday girl this evening. Claire called from Brisbane to tell me about her brief but career-affirming experience on a capsicum farm in Stanthorpe, a considerable distance southwest of Brisbane. She drove up from Sydney in one long trip a couple of days ago, to check into a hostel overseen by a man she described as very ill-tempered. After her ten-plus hours on the road, she crashed for the night in a room shared with six other females, to be woken for the bus at 5:30 am. She was assigned an inside job sorting peppers (considerably more attractive than outside picking them in the Queensland sun), but there she was subject to crabby women yelling at her to work faster, better, harder. She says with the whole day sorting peppers, she had lots of time to think through her career direction and her next move in OZ. No surprise that she concluded that picking, packing or doing anything to peppers was not going to be part of the plan. She stuck out another day, then packed her stuff at the hostel, broke the news to Mr. Nasty Temper (who was none too pleased -- he plays a role in organizing the pickers), made some arrangements for her next adventure and checked into a hotel.
After a night's sleep in relative luxury, she sounded buoyant. She planned to head south about an hour's drive to Coolangatta, where she will start Sunday as a volunteer at the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, a zoo she visited some weeks ago. She looks forward to some time back in the company of zoo animals, even sweeping out cages and shovelling you know what. Then she'll be set to travel a bit once her friend arrives from Canada in mid-April, before heading home at last (we hope) in June.
My computer tells me it's minus 8 degrees outside and I have no reason to doubt it. I just chatted with my daughter on the other side of the world where it was a sunny 27. She showed me (via webcam) the luscious bromeliads in the garden she was calling from. In return, I showed her the snowy wonderland that is our backyard, looking quite charming in the floodlit night.
Warm weather is definitely my preference, too, but this winter is already very different. The snow doesn't turn to horrid sludge so quickly, as it does in the city, and the mornings are quiet and fresh. When I finally found the sunflower seed stash in the garage (that is, what the mouse hadn't eaten yet), I filled a couple of feeders and made several chickadees quite delirious with excitement.
We arrived at this house at the very end of the gardening season, so things were left to naturally decline as the cold weather set in. The seed heads left standing in the garden now make graphic statements on the snow from every angle, and serve as standby snacks for the birds.
The moving plans are proceeding pretty quickly because we get the new house at the end of the month. Alas, buying a house is not one of those parts of life that is very different in the digital age. Shopping for the house was much improved because we were able to view and even tour properties on the web, but actually arranging the money and closing the deal has been a verbal, fax and in-person exercise. And even the fax part is iffy, given that we can't get a faxed signature witnessed in the usual way.
Meanwhile, we've had a brief and delightful respite from moving madness with a visit from UK cousins Lionel and Mary. They stopped in after doing a BC tour of whales and mountains and we topped off their trip with a great family dinner in Port Credit, a Canadian Gradwell/Pryor family reunion that we hope will become a tradition on this side of the pond.
I've been too busy with digital and non-digital life to post the details lately, but here's the summary. Bob and I are trading in our house for a smaller one on the outskirts of Owen Sound. As he says, it comes with hobbies. The property includes about six pheasants and their digs plus a pond full of goldfish. Oh yes, and a tractor (one of those riding mowers). The whole package was eccentric enough to really appeal to us. The house needs some fixing, but with luck it will not be a money pit, just a nice place to enjoy the Niagara Escarpment from.
I was explaining this to my neighbour (also a cancer survivor) by telling her it was part of our long-term plan that we just decided to accelerate. She said, "Who needs long term plans?" Reminded me of a quote of the day that I read recently that ended with the admonition, "Live immediately." Of course, there is no other way.
Today Bob and I have reason to celebrate -- it's our wedding anniversary. When people ask, I don't mind telling them that we met on the Internet, as it happens, exactly 10 years ago today. To be more accurate, we met on a community BBS, a now-extinct bulletin board service run by TVOntario, which is a public educational television channel. It was a meeting of minds and interests embodied in many emails that led to an actual meeting and then, well, you know how it turned out.
We both had histories, as people do, but I think we both had optimism, too, that life had possibilities we hadn't explored yet. And we were right! We've travelled to some lovely places and worked together and faced some scary stuff and there's lots more to do. Lots more to celebrate!
Bob agreed to let me post this picture of him (1988) if I mentioned that you should check out his site and, if possible, click on one of his Google ads. I told him that was pretty crass.
Just missed Father's Day, but I wanted to note the fact that fathers are very important in my genealogical researches. Since most of the women in the family lines I am hunting down changed their names on marriage, I am usually more successful tracing their families via their spouses. My family has strong maternal lines -- a lot of tough broads, you might say -- but I am grateful to the men for their contribution as well.
Recently I came across an interesting coincidence of paternities. I was viewing a microfilm of parish records from Kendal, a charming town I have actually been to in the north of England. I found an entry I expected, for the 1821 baptism of Robert, son of my great great great grandfather, Thomas Gradwell. The very next entry was for a girl baptised on the same day in the same church: Mary, daughter of William Fawcett. I haven't figured out yet if this branch of the Fawcetts is connected to the branch in my tree, but it is interesting to speculate that the families probably knew each other.
I just took a mental vacation this evening while I watched the DVD of Claire doing her bird show at Taronga Zoo last year. I was reminded of what a superb venue the zoo has for its show (overlooking Sydney Harbour) and what a great job she did handling an assortment of magnificent Australian birds. She'll be following her passion again soon, so I'll be very tempted to trek halfway around the world again if I can manage it.
I've spent lots of time in the last couple of weeks getting to know my new desktop computer, which came with the latest Mac OS, Tiger. Tiger isn't exactly new, but I'm not an early adopter. I was able to field test it with all of my work and play applications while my laptop was still standing by, just in case. Within a few days I was smitten with its wonderfulness and ready to upgrade the laptop as well. So now both of my workspaces match and even synchronize with each other with some minor effort from me. Don't you love technology when it works!
The new machine came with a skateboarding video game(!). I could barely watch the intro movie, remembering Evan's broken jaw from rollerblading a few years ago. Oddly, watching kids on bikes doesn't remind me of Noel breaking his leg. It's seeing kids in casts, or seeing doctors put the saw to a cast on a kid's leg -- that vision will never leave me. He was fine pretty quickly after the trip to the hospital, except for needing repairs to his cast, but the fear I felt watching the blade inching down to his leg to take the cast off still gives me shivers.
On the non-tech side of life, Claire and I enjoyed dinner and a play this week, now that she has evenings free. Last week she finished her hunter safety course to get her provincial hunting licence. Fear not, gentle readers, she shuns the plaid shirt and earflapped cap, but simply wants to legally go forward to learn falconry, where the bird is classified as the "firearm."
Today is a good day to spare a thought for my only known (so far) Irish ancestor, Ann Elizabeth Connley, my grandfather's grandmother. A family story says she spoke only Gaelic when she was married in 1855, at 20, in Ashted, near Birmingham, to a plumber in his mid-twenties who was already a widower. The record of her marriage shows that she couldn't write her name. She had at least 9 children in the following 16 years, losing two little girls before they were 10. By the time her two youngest sons reached their twenties, she was widowed herself and living with them.
These scant facts leave much to the imagination, even with what we know about Birmingham, booming in the 19th century into the second most populous area in Britain, thanks in large part to an influx of workers, including some from as far away as Ireland. The grim factories meant a future for the brass workers and gas fitters, chandelier makers and pearl button polishers. It could also mean homelessness and hunger if a breadwinner died. Her second youngest son died at 35, leaving his own six children with their destitute mother.
Here's to you, Ann.
It's a brand new year and I have much to celebrate. My minor medical mystery has been solved and I hope to have it dealt with via a non-surgical procedure pretty soon. It took two ultrasounds, a CT scan, several blood tests and an MRI to figure out what the problem was, but thanks to the exceptional medical team I am lucky to have access to, there is a cure in my future. Meanwhile, I have lots of interesting work to do, including a new venture that I will describe shortly in this space.
On the home front, Claire has a new one -- home, that is. She is happily making Bob's Leaside condo her own space, while she works at a temporary non-animal job at Enbridge. Her snake has migrated with her, but so far, her doggies are staying with us, except for occasional visits.
Christmas was restful, with just the right proportion of family and friends visiting. Now I feel recharged for the next adventure.
Claire is once again safely landed at home from California following her week of girl stuff as maid of honour for her dearest childhood friend, Jane. The wedding was fantastic, she says, and her visit a mad round of visiting and talking and tears and, well, you know. Pictures will apparently soon be on an internet near you, so stay tuned.
She is losing track somewhat of all the cities she's been through. The flight down took her from Buffalo through Detroit, then Salt Lake City (although at first she said Atlantic City, but I knew that was the wrong direction), and ending in Sacramento. Coming back, she enjoyed only one stopover in Minneapolis, at least, the airport thereof. This is a girl who knows how to book a cheap flight. Now if only she could get a handle on geography.
Knife
Notebook
Pipe
Hairbrush
Key
Six coins
Cards
Diary
Bible
Photos
The personal effects of Private Charles Joseph Pryor, 4th Battalion, Australian Imperial Force, were sent to my great, great grandmother, along with a pension of two pounds each fortnight, following his death in action at Gallipoli Peninsula between the sixth and ninth of August 1915. The timespan given for his death merely suggests the terrible carnage that must have faced those charged with the grim collection of bodies and wounded during and after the battles on that otherwise idyllic Aegean seashore.
He had signed up only the previous October, a fair haired, blue-eyed young man of 25, leaving several brothers and sisters, my great grandfather among them, back in south London, joining the thousands in several countries dedicated to fighting the war that was supposed to end them all.
Claire is having the most exciting life right now -- that's why most of these posts are about what she's up to. Not that I'm not busy; I've been a bit swamped with a variety of client work, from project management for elearning in financial services to information design for a major retailer.
But you want to hear about the birds, don't you? Claire continues to work at the Texas State Fair, doing whatever she is assigned to for Steve Martin's group of trainers and handlers. Her latest gig is one that is usually given to interns like herself. She had to sit among the audience pretending to be a show visitor, then volunteer when called upon for one of the show segments. What followed was a bit of stage business with her backing away in mock fear from an oncoming marabou stork, ultimately backing up right into a pond. Let's just hope someone got that on video.
Our bird girl is now reporting from the Texas State Fair in her role as avian assistant (I'm sure that's not the official title, but you get the idea). She gets to go to the top of the ferris wheel and (sometimes while it's still moving) release two birds: first, a Harris hawk, then either a tawny eagle or an augur buzzard. They make a spectacular descent to land on Steve Martin's arm in the bird show. Woohoo!
In other much more mundane news, Bob and I planted four new shrubs in the back yard to dress up the newly repainted fence. We are doing our bit toward the current boom in home improvement spending, but I see it as improving wildlife habitat. Certainly Bob did his bit for habitat relocation when he moved the woodpile from the garage to the back yard. The logs included last year's nesting sites for small furry creatures. Ah well, we are but stewards of our small patch.
Bob and I are in Owen Sound enjoying the quiet comforts of my mother's house for the weekend. Mom is still in the UK making the rounds of family visits, packing in several before her return in a few days, according to her latest email to me.
We've had a nice getaway, marred somewhat by the discovery that several things had been stolen from our property up in the Bruce Peninsula. We knew theft was always a risk, since there is no security of any kind, but still it is sad. We lost a screen tent, camp stove, lantern, and a few other small items. The good news is that there was no serious damage -- no broken windows, only a small window latch missing.
We've enjoyed the relative simplicity of being together with only two dogs as company; the other two are romping with friends and family at their favourite kennel.
My Auntie Peg died this morning in Portsmouth, England, just days before her 93rd birthday. She was too ill to attend the family reunion in her city on Saturday, but I'm sure everyone raised a glass to her, including my mother and Uncle Roy. She was the youngest and last surviving daughter of Nana, my family's matriarch, whose great age and warmth of spirit inspired the first of the annual reunions many years ago. Peg was like her mother, full of laughter and love of family, but very much her own personality, taking charge of the gatherings right down to the seating arrangements. Always a woman of style, she was gracious, witty and generous, treating me like an honoured guest each time I managed to visit. I shall miss her.
Claire just called to say she arrived safely in Dallas for her next animal adventure. This time it will be three weeks of training and preparation for the bird show at the Texas State Fair, followed by working at the fair itself for another three weeks. In bird training circles, this is the creme de la creme in North America. She will be an intern, but is housed in a shared hotel suite (with someone she knows from school), complete with kitchen facilities. Not much slack time already -- she starts work at 7:15 tomorrow morning.
Her final week at Toronto Zoo was several days in the Americas section, where she got to pat a jaguar and clean the alligator cage -- while the alligator was in it!
My mother and uncle arrived safely in the UK yesterday and hoped to see my great aunt this evening. Aunt Peg is our oldest living relative, the last of my grandmother's generation, the youngest child of our Nana, in whose honour the family holds a gathering every year in the south of England. I have learned a lot about this family through my genealogical sleuthing over the past few months, but no amount of data will replace knowing the people, seeing them smile, feeling their hugs as they greet you.
But pictures certainly help. Mom and I spent last weekend packaging her mountain of family pictures safely for storage, as her basement is about to be torn apart. We organized over 6000 photos and countless negatives -- a filing job I rather enjoyed! I thought how fortunate we are to have preserved all these, unlike many, many people in Louisiana, who have lost not just the sweet memorabilia of their lives, but their entire homes and even their loved ones.
My elusive daughter has finally come through with some pictures of birds she is helping to care for at the Toronto Zoo. These are a bataleur eagle, a turkey vulture and a saker falcon. I'll leave it to the reader to sort out which is which.
I got my birth certificate in the mail this week. I needed the long form version for Claire to use with her application for a British passport. Seeing the details of my birthplace (already known to me) inspired me to find it on the Internet, so this afternoon I called my mom on Skype and together we found the street where we lived and the street where I was actually born on Google Maps. Naturally, the street names led her to some reminiscing, so we virtually cycled around Colliers Wood and up the street she used to ride to visit my great grandmother, my grandmother and my great aunt, all in south west London. Thanks, Google!
When my Uncle Roy was here a few days ago, we talked about the cottage where my sister was born, in Keswick just north of Toronto. It was still there when he looked for it not long ago, so maybe I could find it with a little help. There are a couple of other places I want to revisit, at least virtually, as my roots quest continues. One is William Craig Drive in Toronto, where we lived when I was just starting school. The other is Acton, where I spent about five significant years as a child. I've been there a few times since but didn't recognize much. It's the kind of place that has boomed recently so a lot of the old bits have been torn down. My visual memories of it are very strong, so maybe if I go with an address to start with, I might find some bones.
Are you wondering why I bother? It's to validate my past, to acknowledge that it was real, not perfect, sure, but entirely worth celebrating because of all the people in it, many of them gone now. While I'm still here, it's my history, and that's reason enough for me.
CBC must have known I wouldn't catch the new Doctor Who because they're running it again and this time I got the first one at least. Very a propos to watch this homage to what I did many years ago with my kids, every Saturday night on TVOntario. A propos because earlier today I excavated the crawlspace in my house, finding lots of treasures from early times. Even though I've been in this house only 11 years, I found things I had moved from my previous life. Things I still can't let go of. Well, maybe I'll never let go of the things that make me smile. Like Easter grass -- I can still see the quizzical look on Noel's face when he encountered the bucket of Easter grass when I moved.
I should say a word or two about fathers, since this is their special day. I was lucky enough to have a father AND a stepfather. Recently, I had the privilege of meeting my half-sister, Yvonne. My biological father had a family after he left my mother, my sister and I. Last month, my sister and I met Yvonne, thanks to the intervention of Yvonne's stepsister, Kyonghi. We talked for hours, all eager for the information, the memories, owned by each other. Yvonne told us about our father, some stories that helped us understand this person we had ceased to know when we were very young. The essential thing I learned? That we are all real people, borne of real people, and that the most important lesson is humility -- and forgiveness,