Thoughts on Mother's Day

It's Mothers Day, and so I've been sending love and gratitude to my own dear mother, and thinking about all she did for me. Perhaps the greatest and most valuable gift was that she empowered me to become the person I'm meant to be. (Okay, okay, I'm still working on it!) My question to myself this morning was: How did she do that?

First of all, there was never a hint of an attitude that seems to have been around in North America. I mean, the 'who do you think you are?' kind of thing.

My mother gave me options and opportunities. This doesn't mean she enrolled me in as many activities as could be crammed into my week. No. Rather, she paid attention to my inclinations on an intuitive level. So, even tho she had to go to work in order to pay for them, she gave me dance lessons - ballet and Spanish. Piano lessons, even though I was a bit of a dunce there. A private education in a religious environment (i.e., a girls' school run by Anglican sisters, but with a staff also of lay teachers) because of my love of learning. And of course, plenty of books to read.

But truly, she didn't force anything that didn't 'fit'. Working from a place of trust (a great empowerment of its own) she allowed my brother and me to find and follow our paths in life, and respected our choices.

She provided an aesthetic environment in our home and a garden filled with trees and flowers where I could play, dream and dance to my heart's content.

Recently, at a visit to a book club where I was invited to talk about and discuss my novel 'Cape Town', one of the women asked me an interesting question. This was: did you have a sheltered childhood? The first answer that sprang to mind was 'no', simply because I was allowed quite a large measure of independence. But the world was a very different place in those days, and my answer could well have been 'yes'. For example, news of wars and/or natural disasters, the latest horror story, wasn't disseminated quickly and widely as it is today. So in that way I was sheltered. And I'm grateful for it.

Lastly, once I expressed a definite direction I wanted to go in, I benefitted from a large amount of level-headed encouragement.

Thanks, Ma.

The granola mistake

If you met me, the likelihood is that you wouldn't immediately realize I'm very granola. That is, I mostly only wear natural fibres, I live green as far as I possibly can, and eat organic foods (better yet, bio-dynamic). Years ago my aunt gave me a recipe for homemade granola, and although adapted somewhat, I use it all the time. How it goes is this, I bake the mixture of rolled oats, sunflower seed oil, syrup and honey in the oven, usually in the evening when I'm not busy with writing.

I leave the mixture to cool overnight. In the morning, my husband puts the rest together: raisins, sunflower seeds, chopped nuts and, usually, flax seed. However, he was a bit sleepy the other day and instead of the latter, he added a handful of poppy seeds. These I'd asked him to buy, having the intention of baking a poppy seed cake.

Well, I didn't know he'd made that mistake. After eating breakfast, I felt decidedly weird, a little disoriented, and my head ached. Same thing the next day. When I complained to my husband, he smiled and 'fessed up.

Seems like opium isn't a good thing for me to ingest. But we had this full bottle of granola on our hands, and we like/need to be frugal. What to do? Seeing as my husband wasn't affected in the least, he's offered to finish that lot. And last night, I made myself a new batch. Whew!

A wail of a day

So here was yesterday's plan:

Morning:

Get up early to take my husband to the train station. He'd travel almost four hours to Toronto, catch the train up to Richmond Hill where he'd have a meeting at the Rudolf Steiner Centre. He's one of the people who does Waldorf Distance Learning for prospective teacher training students.

Afternoon:

Fetch grandson from kindergarten, usually a forty minute drive away. Take him home and stay with the family for dinner. Promised is a roast, seeing as my husband is not eating red meat at the moment, being on a health diet. Also, haven't seen the family for a while, so it's a double jammy: delicious meal, and time with loved ones.

Evening:

10 p.m. Pick up husband at the train station.

Right. So I delivered him at 7.35 a.m., which gave him about five minutes to spare.  Soon after nine, the phone rings. It's the woman who co-ordinates the Distance Learning Program. "Is he there?"
"No, he's on the train."
"Oh noooo," she wailed. "The venue is closed. Our meeting is cancelled."

I emailed him, phoned his cell, had to leave a message. Half an hour later, he calls back to say he's aware of the situation, "but if I'd looked at my emails five minutes earlier, I'd have been able to get off at Kingston."

Unfortunately, the train was an express. So he spent eight hours travelling, with a short stop in between for a bite of lunch. A healthy one... or as healthy as you can find in a Food Court!

Meantime, snow had been falling steadily since 8 a.m. My son calls. "I have four-wheel drive. Better that I do the pick up. But you're still invited for dinner."

Hope springs eternal, as we know.

But.... come 4.30 I've seen and heard what a mess the roads are. How slippery. Not a good idea to drive an unnecessary 25 kilometres. So the dinner plans were cancelled and I had to find something to cook for myself.

The good news is, I managed to pick up my husband at 6.50 p.m., only five minutes late because of the slow-moving traffic, and only sliding on those slippery roads about a dozen times.

Whew!