THE BEST $250 EVER SPENT

"How beautiful your light shines when you let yourself love and be loved. You burn as bright as the sun...." -L.B. Simmons

She was a creature of the night. So I believed. She would stay up ironing, till the  wee hours of the morning. She  loved to watch late night movies . Or late night Glen Campbell concerts. But she especially loved Rambo movies. All in black and white on an 18 inch screen.They were spell binding.  

I could hear the rat a tat tat of gunfire coming from the tv screen.  If I peaked in at the door I could see my mother scrunched up to the set, a cup of tea in hand.

 Our set was old. Only half of the screen worked. The other half was a bunch of black wavy lines. So Rambo  was  a disembodied head.  But my mother loved the movies, just the same.

Night after night my mother  sat by the old tv.  Little by little the screen disappeared. You could only see Rambo’s eyes and top of his head.  Then eventually the tv just stopped . 

For months that tv sat in the corner. My mother missed her Rambo movies. I read a lot of books. 

She still ironed into the wee hours, but now she turned up the radio  to the light opera channel. She couldn’t sing a note. But she tried. She sang along with all of the songs. She so dearly wanted to be a singer. She’d warble away into the night. She told me once she always wanted music lessons. She gave all the lessons to me. And she still sang.

It used to drive me nuts. So out of tune. But it was actually beautiful. She sang with abandon and with purpose. She sang from her heart while she listened along with the radio. I never appreciated it till years later.

Unfortunately, the tv set being broken meant that I had extra chores to do. While my mother sat by the radio and sang. Morning. Noon and Night. 

She was retired by now and she’d found her voice, I guess. She sang mostly songs from Gilbert and Sullivan. Her favourite was the one that went “ I am the captain of the Pinafore…”. She’d sing that over and over . Then she’d switch to the Mikado. Days of it. Nights of it.

Then the radio broke. YAY.

But then there was no radio and no tv.  No Rambo. No Gilbert and Sullivan. What to do….

A sale  on televisions came about at the local department store.  $250 for a 22 inch set.  My mother took out her envelope where she stored her money.  She counted out  the bills. Carefully. She left enough to get groceries that weekend. 

It was a midnight madness sale at the store.  We toodled down with the car at ten pm. Chose a tv. A COLOUR tv. With a long cord and no antenna.  This one came with a channel changer. My mother wasn’t too sure what that was. The newest technology.  The tv man  plopped the box into our car. We toodled home. 

Somehow we shuffled it  up the back steps into the kitchen.  The old tv was currently sitting in the corner as a shoe rack. I hoped it didn’t mind the new tv taking it’s old place.  We plugged it in. 

Poof. Magic. Rambo was on channel six.  In COLOUR. We just sat there and took in the fact that Rambo had legs.

That tv had four channels.  It was a new experience for us. For months to come. 

I thought my mother’s singing  in the night was over. But no.

In the wee hours, I heard her singing  along with Glen Campbell on the tv. He had a show.  She was out of tune. Her rhythm was off. But she sang from her heart. It was probably the best $250  ever spent…..

Photographs 2022
 

AND FALL....

And Fall   by R. Raphe

Away from  the streetwise world

In puddles and  quantities like crystals

of rain......much rain

Leaves dry and wither

Sun beats down

Then much rain.......a cacophony of sounds and scents

Spider webs glisten

as they catch what moisture they can

they turn into diamonds

And the leaves ........ They have no will of their own.

The sun dies behind clouds

And spiders wait for their webs to dry

For there is much rain. And the earth sleeps with bated breath.

Photographs 2022

 

MILES

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep, and I have miles to go before I sleep...." -Robert Frost

Summer was over. Fall set in. Nights were chilly and damp with the hint of  Christmas yet to come. Candles burned in the house. My mother gathered fruitcake fixings and hummed  Good King Wenceslas.

It was only September.

I had a new friend. Her name was Paula.  She played flute. Sort of.  She’d had six  lessons. She knew two songs.

Her mother made her pretty dresses with bows and ribbons in her blonde hair.

I usually wore corduroys and t shirts, my long hair tied up in pigtails.

One Saturday, my mother was busy arranging raisins for fruitcake. The dark ones had their own pile. The light ones another.

Paula and I decided to go up the back hill , to the little mountain behind the house. We’d been talking about it for days.

My mother waved at us absently “have a good time.” She was busy cataloguing candied peel.

I grabbed my violin, Paula  brought her flute , and we high tailed it to the little mountain. It was just after noon.

The grass, saturated with early morning dew, squelched and snapped at our feet. 

We also brought powdered Tang, so our fingers would turn orange, jujubes and crackers. In case we got hungry. 

It was muddy going. Trees and brush tore at our arms. We slogged up a trail we had marked out over the summer. 

We reached the top. A parking lot. The mountain  of rocks, dirt and scrub Broom  lay in front of us. Surrounded by a few houses.  The view was what we came for.

The sky opened up above the trees. Some of them turning  colours already. We were on top of the world.

It was a great lookout. It was our place.

We played pirates for while, standing on the deck of a huge pirate ship. We battled our imaginary foes and won. Of course.

Then we  had a sword fight. Paula with her flute, and I with my violin bow. 

We could see forever. For miles from that rocky hill. Right to the seaside beyond the graveyard.  

Sky met sea in a chorus of grey . We played ghost ship…..where we were ghosts, sailing into the  silver beyond.

Then we decided to pretend we were an orchestra. Paula with her flute and I with my violin. 

We played “Twinkle Twinkle” little star and ” Go tell Aunt Rhoda” about a zillion times. Those were Paula’s.

It took a while till  we noticed the  two police officers  climbing up the hill. Someone had called them, I  suppose.

They  gave us a ride back to my house. They insisted.

My mother had all of the Christmas fruit out on the counter and table. She even found a small fruitcake  in the freezer and was taste testing it when we were brought home.

She could have been mad. Instead she sat us down and offered us Snickerdoodle cookies she made while we were out. 

We ate Snickerdoodles till our cheeks were full.  Then we played “Twinkle” and “Go tell Aunt Rhoda” , for my mother while she counted raisins.

We never went back to the mountain. In a short time it was built up, and our lookout was gone. We never again saw across the treetops for miles and miles to the sea. But I could  imagine it  in my mind’s eye, and feel the  pirate ship beneath my feet…..

 Photographs 2022