Category Archives: Relationships

Ten Beautiful Things My Father Taught Me…

19 Sunday Jun 2011

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Fish hooks3

© Joan Currie – My Father’s Tackle Box

Growing up, my father spent every Father’s Day weekend fishing in the wilds of northern Quebec, but he would return just in time for Sunday dinner with his quota of rainbow trout!

Here is what he taught me during my formative years:

1.  How to catch and release a fish.
2.  How to win at cribbage and ping pong.
3.  How to play golf and badminton, throw horseshoes and a football, jump waves, fly a kite, waterski, pitch a tent, and paddle a canoe.
4. How to work a drill, lawn mover, outboard motor, telescope, water pump, and drive a car.
5. How to paint a room, stain a dock, and polish shoes.
6. How to spot the Big and Little Dippers, Venus, Jupiter, shooting stars, and satellites in the night sky.
7. How to live one day at a time and not trouble, trouble.
8. How to be a Renaissance man/woman and have a passion for lifelong learning that included classical music, art history, astronomy, pottery, gardening, foreign languages, and travel to distant lands.
9. How to enjoy the company of good friends, give a speech, tell a joke, shake a hand, tie a Windsor knot, break an apple in half with your hands, balance a checkbook, cut a deck of cards, and use a yo-yo.
10. The value of hard work, exercise, volunteerism, and going to church.

Thanks, Dad! Happy Father’s Day!

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Ten Beautiful Things My Mother Taught Me

The Artful Engineer…

18 Monday Apr 2011

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EngineerM

© Joan Currie

Practical ends are achieved through the application of scientific principles. 

When I asked an engineer how his remote control worked, just before Masterpiece Theatre last evening, all I wanted to know was how to turn the device on. His eyes lit up when he sensed that what I really wanted to know was every excruciating detail about the principles of operation – mechanical, electrical, and infrared.

Feigning interest, I made the mistake of nodding my head and this he took as a go ahead for a further in depth discussion about material science – plastics and metals strength, fatigue factors, and wear characteristics. To really drive home his points, he decided to disassemble the remote control to expose and speak to the major components of each subsystem contained therein.

As he addressed assembly time, I asked if perhaps he could show me the series of steps necessary to put the device back together so that I might watch my show. Unfortunately, he detected an opportunity to improve on the design of one of the many pieces now arranged in a geometric grid on the coffee table before us and disappeared into his workroom to obtain just the right tool for the job.

I never did find out how the remote control worked but did learn wherein his passions lay.

Faded Rose…

14 Monday Mar 2011

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© Joan Currie – Faded Rose

Comme à cette fleur, la vieillesse
Fera ternir votre beauté.

For length of days will tarnish it
Like roses that were loveliest.

Pierre de Ronsard – Mignonne, allons voir

This rose marks the end of a relationship  –  one that began in the blush of young love.

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On Recognizing Love

Zip Line ( Return of the Jedi, revisited)…

13 Sunday Feb 2011

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© Joan Currie

Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting. – Goethe

Despite my fear of heights, I accepted an invitation to go on a zip line adventure in the redwoods near Santa Cruz this afternoon. The risk manager in me checked out the two-point contact support (two parallel zip lines) and I was reassured by the fact that I would be tethered to a line at all times, especially on the (very) small platforms in the forest (one 150′ high).

The tour included 6 zip lines, each different in length (one 440 ‘ long) and speed, and two sky bridges. To be honest, each time I readied to leave the platform the thought did cross my mind that I might plunge to my death, but to my amazement, I pushed off just the same!

Now, here is the best part – remember the forest scenes in the Star Wars Episode  VI: Return of the Jedi? The experience was a combination of the Ewoks’ forest platform homes on the moon Endor and the flying scooter-like experience of weaving in and out of the trees. The zip line also makes a buzzing sound akin to a scooter motor. (According to Wikipedia, the Ewoks are named after the Miwok, a Native American tribe, indigenous to the redwood forest!)

© Joan Currie

This is a view of the ropes challenge course right beside the zip line course – notice the size of the circular landing platform. The zip line travels from platform to platform and the only tricky part was figuring out how to brake effectively when coming in for a landing. The two guides, each stationed at a platform (one to launch and one to catch) were terrific!

All in all, it was a very intense but thrilling experience!

First Kiss…

04 Friday Feb 2011

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© William Cardoza

I have found men who didn’t know how to kiss. I have always found time to teach them. – Mae West

The kids in my old neighborhood were mad about kissing! I am not sure whether this was due to a proximity to the 49th parallel, a noxious substance in the drinking water, or an abnormally high level of red dye in our bloodstreams from ingesting copious amounts of Jello, lollipops, and popsicles. Whatever the reason, nearly every game that we played, from flag to tag to hide-and-seek, had some kissing component connected with it.

The boy next door, two years older than I, was the dreamiest boy on the planet. He attracted not only girls but also boys to play in his backyard. It was he who conceived and organized all the games with a complicated set of regulations that always ruled in his favor and gave him the license to kiss any and every girl he pleased.

I would like to report that my heart throb neighbor was the one who had planted the first kiss on my lips. He had so much practice, that I am sure he had perfected the art of kissing to a “T.” Unfortunately, one of his protégées tackled me in a round of tag and pressed his lips against mine before I could resist. Since then, every time I see a slimy earthworm lying on the sidewalk after a rain, I am reminded of that first kiss.

Model – Lauren DiMarco

Bitten by a Beautiful Bug…

25 Tuesday Jan 2011

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© Joan Currie - Newly found photo of my grandfather.

Isn’t it strange that princes and kings
And clowns who caper in stardust rings,
And common people, like you and me
Are builders for eternity?
R. L. Sharpe

About two years ago I was bitten by the genealogy bug. It left me with an incurable desire to add more and more branches to my family tree.

One of the best things about having this condition is that I will never be bored at family functions again. Every relative is a potential gold mine of information. For instance, I might discover that my great aunt has saved every Christmas letter and card she ever received, my uncle possesses the immigration records and passenger lists of our transplanted European ancestors, and my second cousin once removed has a collection of wedding photographs along with my grandmother’s wedding dress in her cedar chest that she had not looked at in over forty years.

After six months of searching on the internet and in archival libraries; I traced both my maternal and half of my paternal family trees back to the early 1600s, reconnected with relatives all over North America, and discovered new relations in Europe.

Days before last Christmas, a cousin, with whom I had not talked in over fifteen years, telephoned me to say that she had found our grandmother’s bible. Within its pages were three items; my grandmother’s marriage certificate, a letter my cousin had written to her, and a postcard that I had sent to her many years ago.

I was moved to tears by the news. The confirmation that my grandmother had, indeed, a special place for me in her heart meant the world to me and I thanked my cousin for possibly the best Christmas present I have ever received!

When the postcard arrived in the mail, I placed it in a silver frame alongside a photograph of my grandmother, and it rests for now on my bedside table.

Holiday Cocktail Parties…

19 Sunday Dec 2010

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© Edward Jahn

At every party there are two kinds of people – those who want to go home and those who don’t.  The trouble is, they are usually married to each other.
Ann Landers

My cousin has mastered the art of working a room. Two hours into a cocktail party, he has connected with everyone there and forged several new and possibly lasting friendships. I, on the other hand, typically engage in two or three meaningful conversations and then am ready to bolt, unless there is dancing – and in that case, I am good for the duration.

Model – Lauren DiMarco

Sense of Smell…

25 Saturday Sep 2010

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© Eleven Orchids Photography

The sense of smell can be extraordinarily evocative, bringing back pictures as sharp as photographs of scenes that had left the conscious mind.

I visited my maternal grandfather only a couple of times, but during each stay he smoked White Owl cigars. Since his passing over thirty years ago, every time I smell a cigar I am instantly transported back to those few, special moments I had alone with him. The most memorable one was when he taught me how to draw a five-pointed star. I traced his pencil lines following his simple directions: across town, downtown, uptown, downtown, and back home again.

Morning Snuggle…

07 Tuesday Sep 2010

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Morning Snuggle

© Pia Ulin

Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs,
when you surrender, you stretch out like the world.

Cuerpo de mujer, blancas colinas, muslos blancos,
te pareces al mundo en tu actitud de entrega.

Pablo Neruda

One of the things I loved most about being married was snuggling in bed wrapped in the arms of my beloved in the early hours of the morning.  It was during those precious moments under warm layers of an eiderdown and cotton sheets, with our bodies intertwined as one, that we shared our innermost thoughts, hopes, and dreams.

Forsaking all others, we talked in hushed tones and tenderly stroked each other’s heads and soft spots until dawn’s first light.  I savored and luxuriated in those moments of reverie and touch before we would reluctantly break away to begin the morning routine.  Building a few minutes of intimacy and pleasure into the start of the day can make all the difference to a relationship and the quality of your life.  You may come to treasure and yearn for more of those tender times, too.

© Tom Shannon

Engaging in Life…

06 Monday Sep 2010

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© Jesper Brandt

Sometimes we have love and sometimes we lose love. Sometimes love can hurt terribly like a deep wound. In our world we have lots of ups and down, pleasures and pains. But that’s life and we learn to accept the bad with the good. Without the bad times we wouldn’t appreciate the good times. Life is precious and I cherish ever single moment. – Sailor Moon

A newly married woman I know worried that her husband was going to leave her because there was so much drama in her life. Family and friends were constantly asking for her help with serious issues and there seemed to be no end in sight to the bad tidings.

It turned out that she did not have to fret for one moment about her husband’s commitment to the marriage. It was her way of engaging in the messiness of life and not turning away from helping others – getting her hands dirty as it were, that he adored and loved about her most. He knew also that if the time were to come when he needed help, she would be right there at his side.

Consider a mosaic: shards of glass, stone or tile are set together in such a way as to form an image. If all the pieces are white – no picture is evident. Add a few fragments of light yellow or beige and perhaps the beginning of an image appears. But add some black and glittery gold to the work and now you start to have definition from the contrast between the light and the dark. Further, when you add shards from the entire color palette, a vision emerges that has depth, intensity, and profundity. We have only one chance to create the image that is our life. It can be shallow or it can have depth. The choice is ours!

© Jesper Brandt