Beginnings and Endings by Nancy M Bell

It's that time of year again. Another old year is almost over and a new one set to begin. Christmas is almost upon us and this year I find myself reflecting on years gone by. My own children are grown with children of their own and yet I still feel like a kid myself sometimes. This year is a bit of a milestone. I turn sixty on December 20th. It doesn't seem possible, but there it is, the numbers don't lie. I thought I'd share a bit of Christmas history with you and take a walk down memory lane, full of candy canes and snowmen.

Our Christmas Eve was always a variatiohn of the same theme. My parents would pack up my sister and myself and later my brother and set off in the car to visit my dad's sisters who lived in various parts of Toronto and the outlying area. Aunt Ola and Uncle Bunny lived near Whitevale, Ontario on a farm with the most amazing white farm house. The floors were always polished mirror bright and I loved the huge kitchen. We'd play hand off our gifts and receive the ones to go under our tree when we got home. Then it was off to Aunt Joy and Uncle Norm's and a houseful of cousins in Mississauga. There was always lots to do at Auntie Joy's, games to play and outside fun. The food was always great and my cousins had all the latest games and toys to play with. Presents were exchanged we were off again.
Aunt Gloria and Uncle Tommy used to live in Caladar, near North Bay when we were really young and we visited them on New Year's Day, but later they moved into New Toronto not far from Aunt Loral and Uncle Bob. We added them to our Christmas Eve jaunt. Dad's other sister, Aunt Irma lived near Ottawa so we saw them less frequently.
My grandparents used to winter with Aunt Gloria so we got to see them as well. Grandma and Grandpa Rafter owned a store on a lake near Norland, Ontario and spent the summers there, but when the weather turned they would come to Toronto and stay with my aunt.
Aunt Loral had a small house, but the coolest tree topper. It was multi-coloured and rotated like a disco ball, although this was long before disco balls were the norm. There were a million of those little Wade figurines out of the Red Rose Tea boxes lined up on the slim ledge of the door frames in her kitchen.

Photo taken in Banff Alberta

When we were young we lived in a two bedroom house with my mom's parents. Grandma and Grandpa Pritchard made the dining room into their bedroom, my older sister had one bedroom and my sister and I slept in bunkbeds in my parent's room. One Christmas Eve we were just getting home and as Dad parked the car in the drive who should we see coming down the neighbour's drive? SANTA CLAUS!!! We were both pretty young because my little brother wasn't born yet, so we were maybe 5 and 6 years old. We screamed and raced out of the car, up the step and leaped into bed with our coats and boots still on. Both of us refused to get up or take anything off for fear Santa would show up and not leave us any presents. True story.

Okay enough reminiscing. The faces at the table have changed over the years, as young ones are added older ones pass on. But at Christmas everyone, past and present, are with us as we celebrate the joy of the season.

The third book in A Longview Romance series is now available in paperback and as an added bonus the novella A Longview Christmas in included. Peace, Joy and Happiness be yours.

Remembrance of Christmas Past - Who Took The Chocolate Ornaments

We all have Christmas memories and I was thinking about some I remember from the past years is when the ornaments disappeared from the tree. The tale begins with Robespierre, not the French cleric, but a Maine Coon cat with strange tastes.


I found these wonderful ornaments. Wrapped in colorful foils, shaped like bells and ornaments. Wouldn't they look wonderful on the tree. I bought them, took them home, hid them from the children. When the children were tucked tight in their beds, my husband and I decorated the tree. The cat stayed in the family room. He seemed to be asleep.


Once this was completed and the presents were under the tree and the stockings hung on the bottom of their beds, I felt my job was done. Robespierre still slept, curled on the hearth. My husband and I went to bed.


Imagine our shocked expressions in the morning when we saw bits of foil with a little chocolate on the floor and some of the shredded ornaments still on the tree. There sat Robespierre looking a bit like the Cheshire cat. I know chocolate isn't good for cats and worried. The cat seemed to have no problems. There were times when he thought of himself as a human.


The children missed tasting the chocolate ornaments and learned one lesson. When they had chocolate milk or some chocolate flavored cereal, they had to guard the glass or bowl. Robespierre always sat and stared waiting for a spill or an absence.


Next year perhaps I'll share another memory.

Time and the unfolding unkindness of body parts

The Twisted Climb

There was a time, not very long ago, when my body parts scoffed at age. Pah! Who's getting old? Not me!

And then I began to hear a sound. Muffled but steady. At first, I couldn't tell what it was. But over time my hearing became wiser (I like to say), and, in direct contrast to my eyes focusing only if the object was at the end of my extended arm, I got it. The sound, that is. The source of that clicking sound.

Now I'm not talking about regular clicking, like a clock clicks, or water drips, or the sound a bird-brained cardinal makes when he's attacking himself on the window pane. I'm talking about clicks. Body clicks. Ahh, now do you get it?

I've been fighting it for a long time - the source of the clicks. Sometimes it's from a knee joint, sometimes a toe knuckle, even the back of the neck. That neck sound is a deep, cavernous click. Makes me shiver in response. But that doesn't bother me so much. It's the clicks and clacks and tearing sounds from my shoulder that jolts me. These aren't the sounds of a young person. Nay nay. These are, um, it's hard to put into words and thus give them credence, but these sounds are from an old person.

What happened?

Wasn't it just last month when I sang my babies to sleep and wasn't it only a few weeks ago when I played ball hockey in the Provincials, and really, wasn't it just last week when I held my first grand child?

Time, thou travels much too quickly. And I respectfully request that you slow down. Because if you don't, my legs won't - can't keep pace and I'm afraid that the cricks and clicks in my body will take over my brain.

My age and time are not always friends. I'm trying to make them be friends but my body is not being nice and keeps getting in the way. My age is just a number, I tell myself. I like to repeat that to my body. Age is just a number. To that, my body looks pensively in the distance, as if willing my body to reflect the age I really, really want to be. 39 seems like a good age. Or 49.

For now, I'm going to ignore the clicks and clacks from my innards. Especially my shoulder. Yes, that I'll ignore until the sound is too loud and the pain too strong. Then, and only then, will I say 'yes' to age and yes again to Advil. Or wine.

In the spirit of Christmas, I would like to wish you all a joyous and loving season and a year of prosperity and adventure in 2017.

My first grandchild, Kealii, October 2009

Kickboxing Orange belt 2016

Shoveling 200 ft of driveway, November 2016. That's crazy.

Grateful to have age and time as my friends.
Joanie
aka J.C. Kavanagh
The Twisted Climb
A novel for teens, young adults and adults young at heart.
www.Facebook.com/J.C.Kavanagh
Amazon.com/author/jckavanagh
Twitter: @JCKavanagh1

Christmas and Non-Christians

PURCHASE FROM AMAZON

Christmas, though by definition a Christian holiday observing the birth of Jesus Christ, is surprisingly celebrated by a vast majority of non-Christians in North America as well. According to an article in the Voice of America[1], nine in ten Americans, including eighty-one percent of non-Christians, celebrate this holiday.

Several religious holidays that fall around Christmas time—Hannukah, Kwanzaa and the Winter Solstice—have their own rituals. Followers of other religions in Canada and America—Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and others—have adopted some of the basic Christmas traditions, such as having a Christmas tree in their homes.

Christmas, while being a joyful season, can sometimes be confusing to newcomers. There is always a desire to “fit in” yet, for many, the question arises as to which of the local traditions to embrace. The answer seems to be: whatever one feels comfortable with. One of the most common is the Christmas tree. A 2013 survey[2] by the Pew Research Center states that about three-fourths of Asian American Hindus and Buddhists, as well as one-third of American Jews report having a Christmas tree in their homes.

Gift giving is a part of all cultures: during Eid for Muslims or Diwali for Hindus, for example. This practice, already familiar, has become widely taken up during Christmas as well.

Christmas trees and gift-giving are easily adaptable due to their non-religious connotations. Sometimes, however, the exchange goes deeper. Christmas becomes an occasion to reach out to various communities.

“It would be typical of mosques to have a sermon on Jesus at this time of year, praising him as one of the great prophets but distinguishing Muslim belief from Christian belief,” says Ihsan Bagby,[3] an Islamic Studies professor at the University of Kentucky who researches American mosques.

In the temple I attend (I’m a Hindu) religious services are organized on Christmas day, mostly because congregants have the day off. These observances have now become a tradition. While the ceremonies are Hindu, mention is always made of Jesus Christ and his message, and it is not at all uncommon for worshippers to wish each other Merry Christmas. An aura of holiness pervades the day.

In the end, what distinguishes Christmas celebrations, in both Christian and non-Christain communities, are themes familiar to all: sacredness, family, love and friendship.

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[1] http://blogs.voanews.com/all-about-america/2015/12/23/vast-majority-of-us-non-christians-celebrate-christmas/

[2] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/12/23/christmas-also-celebrated-by-many-non-christians/

[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/17/muslim-christmas-celebrations_n_1154229.html

Chocolate and Oranges...by Sheila Claydon

No, I'm not talking about Christmas, although I certainly hope to enjoy my fair share of chocolate plus an orange or two over the festive season. Instead I am following through on  last month's blog A letter to remind us, which is about WW2 and how much we owe to everyone who lived through it.

Thanks to an conversation I had earlier today, I unexpectedly found myself thinking about my very early childhood. I was born in Southampton, England, at the very end of the war. It was, and still is, a very busy Port which, during the 1940s, was a starting point for troop ships, supply convoys and destroyers. Consequently it was regularly bombed throughout the war, and although the devastation of people's ruined lives had been cleared away long before I was old enough to be conscious of it, I can clearly remember the gaps, like missing teeth, in row upon row of houses. I remember, too, the 'wreck', a large grassy field with a huge dip in its centre that my friends and I used to slip and side down, shrieking with laughter and covering ourselves with a reddish dust, never for a moment realising our playground was the result of an exploded bomb, and that there had once been houses on our 'field.'

I didn't know either, that the wood yard opposite my grandmother's house was a yard only because a bomb had flattened all the houses that had once stood there, at the same time it had blown all the windows our of my grandmother's house. I even thought the dark cupboard under her stairs was exciting and liked to crawl inside, never knowing until much later that she and my mother, then a teenager, had spent many terrifying nights sleeping there when all the men of the house were away fighting.

I guess it is understandable that a war torn generation doesn't want to remember the horrors they have been through or talk about them to their children. Instead they need to create new memories and look forward, so my early childhood memories are mostly good ones, and among them are some real treasures. One of the best involves chocolate and oranges...which is where we came in!

Although my maternal grandfather had a terrible war sailing backwards and forwards across the Atlantic in supply convoys until his ship was eventually torpedoed, to me, as a little girl, he was neither a hero nor someone with dreadful memories. Instead he was a smiley, white-haired granddad, who put on a smart uniform every Thursday morning and went to the Port to help organize a ship's turnaround. I loved trying on his peaked cap and looking at his shiny medals, but by far the most important part of the day was when he came home. On Thursdays, instead of using his key he always knocked the door, and it was my job to open it. (I'm sure he must have unlocked it and clicked it open before he knocked because at only three or four years old I was far too small to do it by myself). Then, before he stepped into the house, I had to choose which of his pockets held a surprise. I never got it wrong...a small bar of chocolate, an orange, a banana.  The excitement is with me still and of course I was too young to realise that every pocket was a winner! Nor did I know how lucky I was to have a grandfather whose semi-retired job meant he was able to bring home such treats. I didn't know that chocolate and those oranges had travelled thousands of miles across the sea or that few other children would taste them for several more years.  

There are other memories too. One is of being sent to the shop next door to buy a bag of broken biscuits. This was much better than choosing one particular sort. Instead there was the joy of dipping into the bag and never being sure what would come out. Half a custard cream, a chipped ginger snap, or, if I was lucky, something with chocolate on it. The cakes were delicious too, despite rations being short. My grandmother always cooked from scratch and there was never enough sugar for icing, but even so I've never again tasted a Victoria sponge as good as hers.

I didn't know shelling peas was a chore either, or picking gooseberries, or pulling carrots. I thought they were just things  I did because I loved how my mother cooked them, the same as I thought going to the library every week was because I liked to read, not because there was no spare money to buy books except at Christmas or birthday.

So that's another debt I owe to my parents and grandparents, and I am sure there are many others who feel the same. I was allowed to grow up without any of their memories of those terrible years of war shadowing my childhood. To me, until I was much older, all I learned were the popular songs they had sung and the strange nicknames of the people they had once lived and worked with. And my favorite dress for a very long time was an Royal Airforce blue pinafore embroidered around the bib with bright pink chain stitch. To me it wasn't a remake of my mother's WRAF uniform skirt, it was a lovely dress, a Christmas present lovingly made...cut out by my father and sewn by my mother.

The ice-cream and the bread might have been rubbish in those early years after the war, and for years to come, but I barely noticed because I had the chocolate and the oranges as well as a whole lot of other things besides. So thank you Mum and Dad, and thank you all those other adults who made sure I and my friends had a shadow-free childhood. It's taken me until now to really understand.

Mending Jodie's Heart (pictured above) is the first book of my When Paths Meet trilogy and as well as a romance it is a story of the sacrifice and love that is needed to raise a child. Books 2 and 3 continue this theme although none of the heroines were as lucky as me. You can find them at:

Books We Love

Amazon

I  also have a website where I write an occasional blog and I can be found on facebook  and twitter