Tag Archives: Memoir

Beautiful Things I Taught My Daughters…

08 Monday Jul 2013

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Voss typewriter by James Currie

© James Currie

Sometimes I wonder if what I taught my daughters over the years will adequately prepare them for going out into the world on their own.

This last weekend I made a list of some of the things I taught them (it made me feel better):

1. How to draw a face, mix colors, carve soap, blow bubbles, make a wish, and chalk a hopscotch board on the sidewalk.

2. How to ride a bike, drive a car and motorboat, sail a Laser, paddle a canoe, ride a horse, skate, toboggan, throw a ball, and use a tennis racquet.

3. How to write a thank you note, compose a poem, keep a journal, make a speech, say hello in five languages, read a map, and wrap a gift.

4. How to snuggle up with blankets to watch movies on the sofa, sing Broadway songs, play the piano and guitar, tap dance and waltz around the living room.

5. How to bake and decorate a cake, make a French pie crust, mega chocolate chip cookies, maple fudge, and butter tarts.

6. How to needlepoint a pillow, knit a scarf, sew a quilt, and draft a pattern.

7. How to spot constellations and satellites in the night sky and look for the green flash just before the sun sets.

8. How to use a hammer, screwdriver, saw, drill, and car jack.

9. How to use a camera, computer, iron, glue gun, vacuum cleaner, mixer, coffee machine, and hair flattener.

10. How to apply sunscreen, foundation, eye shadow, mascara, lipstick, and nail polish.

11. How to do CPR, dress a wound, and prepare for an emergency.

12. How to make a bed, clean a floor, paint a room, and refinish small pieces of furniture.

13. How to wash the car, use duct tape, cut grass, plant bulbs, and make a flower arrangement.

14. How to make a budget, use coupons, recycle and upcycle, and roll change.

15. How to keep their word, obey the law, vote, volunteer, continually learn and discover, work, and pray.

Try making a list yourself – your child or children could help!

Train Yard…

06 Sunday Feb 2011

Posted by in Design, Photography, Reflections, Travel

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© Joan Currie

No man can be ideally successful until he has found his place. Like a locomotive he is strong on the track, but weak anywhere else. – Orison Swett Mardone

I love to travel by train! My favorite train ride was during the summer after grade ten when I traveled with my best girlfriend from Calgary to Vancouver through the Canadian Rockies. We both fell hopelessly in love with a handsome university student who boarded the train in Revelstoke and spent more time looking at him than the glorious scenery all around us.

© Joan Currie

© Joan Currie

© Joan Currie

Skipping Stones…

31 Monday Jan 2011

Posted by in Photography, Reflections

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© Joan Currie

I don’t know if I can do this alone
Oh after all our sweet love is flown
I’ve been a running
I’ve been skipping like a stone
And I don’t know if I
I  can do this all alone.
Amos Lee (Skipping Stone)

I have finally mastered the art of skipping stones. I used to think that the secret lay in the selection of the perfect flat stone (and perhaps the speed the stone is thrown), but I have come to discover that it is the angle of release that matters – the optimal angle that keeps the stone rotating in and out of the water several times before finally sinking below the surface.

It turns out, as well, that the stones do not have to be perfectly flat to be considered good skippers. Combing the beaches and shorelines for the best-shaped stones all these years has been for naught.

It is interesting that a tiny adjustment in technique was all that was required to achieve skipping success, and I wondered if I might apply the same principle to other, more important, areas of my life. It may make all the difference.

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.

Being prepared…

07 Friday Jan 2011

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© Joan Currie

Be Prepared: The Motto of the Boy Scouts of America

My grandmother loved to tell the story of the television set blowing up after being hit by lightning because she neglected to shut the windows during an electrical storm. Other relatives followed up with really gruesome tales of friends or distant cousins charred beyond recognition from being hit by lightning on the eighteenth green, out sailing, or up on the roof.

In addition to lightning, nearly every natural disaster since time began has happened to someone my family knew intimately. After sharing all the grizzly details of the poor unsuspecting victim’s demise, someone would conclude with, “That’s a corker,” and move on to the next person they knew who had bought the farm.

My relatives’ acceptance of the maws of death appearing at any moment sparked my interest in risk management. I pack a small emergency kit whenever I set out into the wilds and although I have never had occasion to use it, I take it all the same as the best laid plans in hiking, like life, can go awry.

Resolutions Revisited…

01 Saturday Jan 2011

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© Lauren DiMarco

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing.
Abraham Lincoln

In the 1980s we bought most of our electronics, jewelry, and toys from a catalog showroom store. We liked the idea of having the opportunity to preview and test out the merchandise before making a selection and, as a result, were always satisfied with our purchases.

On this first day of 2011, I am reviewing my resolutions for the year. I wish there were some way to test-drive some of the action items, as I did in that retail store, before investing the time, energy, and money necessary to make them happen. Several of my big ideas are fraught with considerable risk and I need to figure out how to manage that element. If after careful evaluation, I decide to embrace the projects full on, then the possibility exists that, by this time next year, one or two of them may have come to fruition!

Model – Lauren DiMarco

Angels…

18 Saturday Dec 2010

Posted by in Art, Fashion, Photography, Reflections

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© Gabriela Camerotti - http://www.gabrielacamerotti.com

O welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope,
Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings!
John Milton (Comus)

I remember fashioning angel wings from wire and tulle fabric, and decorating them with soft down feathers, and gold and silver glitter for my daughters’ Christmas pageants in elementary school.

Thanksgiving Day…

25 Thursday Nov 2010

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© Joan Currie

Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action.

W.J. Cameron

At dawn on Thanksgiving I set out on a road trip to pick up my eldest daughter so that she could join us for our family dinner. Although I was not particularly enthusiastic about doing the six hour drive, as I wanted to stay home to prepare food for our big dinner, I decided to make the best of it.

As it turned out, there was hardly any traffic, the scenery in the morning light was breathtaking, and I was captivated by a CD that I had wanted to hear for some time. The return drive gave my daughter and me a rare opportunity for uninterrupted dialog about her life plans and sharing humorous travel tales. To top it off, when we arrived home, her sisters had prepared the entire feast by themselves and all we had to do was sit down and enjoy it. All in all, despite my initial apprehensions, it turned out to be one of my very best Thanksgivings!

Gift of Time…

20 Saturday Nov 2010

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L at MtnV

© Moja Ma’at

Because I would not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
Emily Dickinson

I remember sitting at my bedroom desk trying to analyze a poem for a ninth grade English class. As I gazed outside the window for inspiration, I saw that dusk had painted the sky a brilliant conch shell pink and a pale lavender blanket of snow cloaked the ground, save for a grove of birch trees whose silhouette looked like tall paper dolls pressed together in conversation.

At that moment I had the terrifying realization that death would come calling one day. I tried to grapple with the notion that I would not continue in my mind and body for eternity. My view of the world changed on that mid-November afternoon at the tender age of thirteen. Even though I was doomed to see things through the glass darkly as it were, from that day forth, what I did behold was with passion, amazement, and wonder.

At middle age, almost against my will, I have revisited that landscape of my youth. I am grateful for another opportunity to consider my mortality and make choices that will enhance my life as I begin a new chapter.

Time is the most valuable, but diminishing, asset I have. I am now very careful about with whom I give and receive the gift of time. I do not engage in personal relationships that are not joyful, loving, or satisfying and I aspire to have at least one positive experience each and every day.

You, too, can give yourself the gift of time – it is never too late to make a change!

L - MtnV2

© Moja Ma’at

Model – Lauren DiMarco

Mitzpah…

15 Monday Nov 2010

Posted by in Fashion, Photography, Reflections, Writing

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© Antonio Genovia

Making love? It’s a communion with a woman. The bed is a holy table. There I find passion and purification. – Omar Sharif

Over the weekend I watched the TV mini series, The Far Pavilions, staring Ben Cross, Amy Irving, and Omar Sharif. Based on Mary Margaret Kaye’s 1978 novel of the same name, this epic romance was set in India during the British Raj or rule.

Early on in the story, the protagonist, Aston Pelham-Martyn (aka Ashok), received a gift of a mother-of-pearl charm from his childhood friend, Anjuli, a half-caste princess. Because he had nothing to offer her, he broke the trinket in half and gave her back a piece of it, promising to return one day and thus making it whole again.

The scene sparked the memory that I, too, had received half of an amulet many years ago. I rushed to my jewelry box and tucked away in a tiny velvet pouch was my part of a silver Mitzpah medallion. I could discern some of the words from Genesis on the back of it, “The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from the other.”

Receiving a Mitzpah in college was akin to a pre-engagement promise. There was an expectation that although we might go our separate ways for a time, we would one day be together again and so would the two pieces of our Mitzpah.

Unlike the characters in The Far Pavilions who, despite one obstacle after the other, succeeded in reuniting, our paths never crossed again. For me, the new-found Mitzpah now serves as a touchstone for many wonderful memories from years gone by.

My half of the Mitzpah.

Models – Lauren DiMarco & Oleg Galagan