HURRICANE for Mother's Day

Mum and cousin Sheila

"To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power..." - Maya Angelou

Dad, Grandma Isabella

My mother was definitely a force to be reckoned with. She could bake 8 loaves of bread  , varnish the floor, do the taxes, and  scare away salesmen, all at the same time. My father adored her.

My grandparents lived with them for quite a few years. I never met my grandmother. I barely knew my grandfather. He liked the tv I remember that.

 I heard my mother was quite the hurricane . I remember snippets of my grandfather. A very   very elderly man, who liked to watch  sports on the new tv. I would stand and stare at the images on the screen. He would bang his cane on the set ,when his favourite team didn't win. My mother brought him hot toddy's in the winter. Hot tea in summer.

My father bought the tv when I was three.  We had two channels. One for sports. One that seemed to have nothing but soap operas. My parents would gather around the set with grandfather , and they would watch a bit of each. My mother would serve her homemade bread slathered with butter and jam, with hot tea.

On summer days, after  watching the soap operas, my parents would get gussied up and go walking up and down Government Street. Just so they'd get their picture taken by a local photographer. My mother told me she splurged and saved for new hats for those walks.

My mother missed those times, after my father died a few years later. 

Some afternoons, when my grandmother was still alive, they would sit outside. The  dog from next door,  Bess, would come over  and sit with them.My grandmother was blind by this point but she loved to stroke her fur. She loved dogs. And Bess loved her.

My mother  was pretty good at taking them for outings. She would come home from working long hours, make dinner for everyone and then take her parents for a walk. After my grandmother died, she would walk with my grandfather. He  walked slower  in those days....

When company came, my mother got this idea they could sit on the front steps. Watch the world pass by. In later years, she told me it was like her own Walton's mountain.

 She fed them buttered bread with home made jam. Hot tea. They sat out on the steps. The dog from next door would come to visit. And the world would toddle by. And my mother would relax.

At times there were walks in the park. The swans would get greedy and snap at their fingers.

Making sure there was always a photo op. My mother chose her clothes carefully. 

And in those last years she strove make sure everything ran like it always had.She had looked after her parents . Now she looked after my dad.

After my grandparents died, the tv gained  three channels.THREE. The third channel sported movies. We would stay up late watching some murder mystery into the midnight hour.  She  would slice up fresh, soft white bread and cover it with butter and jam, like always. We'd munch away while the movie played to sign off.

We did not always get along. Such different personalities we were. She had a huge heart , which she never let most people see. But it was there. She once told me  that she was  weary of always doing the right thing, or doing what was expected. But in the end it was what was needed.  And she felt needed. It was important to her to be needed.

And she was. So needed. She had a funny side. She had a hurricane side. We all  happened to be in her whirlwind....

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel..." -Maya Angelou

Mum and her best friend Kay

 Photographs 2021

MOTHER's DAY 1937

Isabella and Robert Shiels

 Mother's Day letter to my mother, living in Victoria,  in 1937.  The original letters are fascinating. My grandmother's script scrawls across the pages, writing about a Measles epidemic in Saskatchewan and all the locals she knew. My mother said grandmother  believed she could cure it single handed with blistering mustard plasters.......(I'd like to see her take on our current virus. Bet she'd give it a good go....)

May 1937. Dear Nessie:

"Rain everywhere, but around this district . But it still comes in time.  I guess Edda and you had quite a nice time. It was nice for her, anyway.

    

    Just as I started to write this I got one of my turkeys poisoned with formaline wheat. I had 3 set on 49 eggs, so one is gone, and eggs spoiled. Blanch Ferraby is off with her sister to the old country and I met Blanche Wilke at Ferrabys on Tuesday. Went to spend the afternnons to get my curtains run up. I bought the same material as the front windows, changing them to bedroom and North window.   

Bill, Isobel, Nessie ( mum) Bill

                                                Isabella Glen Robert Shiels

 Blanche  was blowing on about Mrs. Bunker and Mrs. Smith, being absent and Mrs. B had shown her all over. Oh Hell,I said, Nessie is all.Electric and all kinds of lovely furniture. She has been subbing for Jean Muirhead, until they got another teacher . A Friend of the Family….Principal of Scotts. Got her a school, or room, rather, 23 children, 8 grades at $800. A salary she deserves. She did a lot for Keddleston , even starting a girl guides. They got a Miss Griffin from Regina. 

 The measles has taken it s last person. A. Thompson. It did not miss a house that had got it. Left behind weak eyes and 5 that I know of had ear operations. Doctor Gillis’ boy had 2 mastoids. Niel Wilkie , two of Art Beals’ kids and quite a few more, but with the last two warm days I think the worst is over.

Robert Shiels

 Dad is back to his old self and has been on the land the last two weeks with 6 horses, so you can judge from that. I blistered him with mustard , just as I did Stuart, and it has cleared out the Bronchitis, I think.

    

     The men have all the wheat in now, and burning for oats, but won’t sow for some time.Helen Tomlinson lost out in the finals of the Amateurs, the best singer, but her voice was not suitable for radio. They must have had quite a time choosing, as they cried out her name. Too bad.

 Had a long letter from J. Irwin, he is working and work is plenty over there, but the weather has been wet and more wet.

   

      I am sending you Mac and also one of the Boyce and his Ma. Where is you snap shots ( eh?). Harry has got a new Bug he is renting. Hargraves , 14 acre and group to keep a cow and 100hens and 2 pigs, raise 400 bushel of grain to feed them, and be Independent.The grass is just showing, and the cattle have to be fed yet.

Nessie's basketball team. Mum on far left.

 Oh yes, Freddy has bought the Hotel, and giving a dance to tonight, with the Beach Orchestra. I think Silsby is renting Ferraby’s and Harris’ had to rent his to Guy McConnell, as he had only 3 hornses. Oh, again Herb and Aggie have moved into Irwins, and rented their own to F. Goolatt, as no others would take it. 

 Mac works with Willie all forenoon, then sleeps all noon. He is the whole cheese to see his little legs dancing around the cows and horses. To make them go is to laugh, but he takes a great kick out of it. Now, he is chasing the 10 little pigs , but I have two red ones and when I let them out, and they just shoulder aside. They say: No thanks. What are you getting 50 chicks for, Norman, and us this week. Oh, I forgot to tell you was at Regina two weeks ago, and had a fine time…skinned my heels with new shoes and sendt your money to the Victoria Bank ( $105). Please let me know if you got it all right. Going up to Keddleston, tonight, taking Stuart up to the Davee Hall.

     Fred Lydall will sell his pool tables to Fred Goolatt, I think, for the Hotel, so am glad. Must stop as I have the kitchen to clean up, yet, and it looks like rain. Has Champ got $300 as honary Relief? Does he still talk about building the Hotel, and I hope his Ontario one has not caught in the flood.

                                Must stop…Love to Davy and Nessie.

                      From all, including Mother."

 Photographs from 1930's Bethune, Sasktchewan. 

Mother's Day 2017

"My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant to be your own person, to be independent." -Ruth Bader Ginsburg

 My Mother, Nessie, married my dad, Davey, Nov 21 1936. She made a simple satin dress bound at the neck with binding, and net veil with orange blossoms. I found that dress, all tattered and worn, in an old trunk. But  I still have that silk net ribbon that kept her flowers together. Most of it survived the years.  I used it in a quilt that incorporated items  from that era. Lace doilies, Grouse foot claw for a kilt ( it belonged to my grandfather)

 A portion of a crochet tablecloth that I made with my mother. Hours of lace work. It never did become a tablecloth. But it became part or a wall quilt of antiques, including the net lace ribbon from her bridal bouquet, some 80 years later, in 2016.

My dad died in 1967. My mother in 1988. Both on the same day: March 26, some 21 years apart. They adored each other. He always reminded me of Desi Arnaz. Years after he died, my mother and I would watch I Love Lucy reruns. And every time she would mention that my dad looked like Desi.  I thought he did too.

 My mother grew up in Bethune, Saskatchewan.

 With  her parents: Isabella Glen and Robert Shiels.

 In a simple cabin,                                       And her greatest friends on the basketball team.

And two brothers  and a sister, dogs, horses, hay, snow,  and open spaces to roam.  Horses to ride bareback. Long Lake to swim in and  summers of picnics and basketball and helping her mother put up preserves. But she didn't want to stay on the farm.


In  1936 she married my dad. They went for a cruise on the "Nora" as a honeymoon. My dad worked for the CPR. Mum loved ships. It was such a change from the prairies.


                                                         Then there was the Wallis Windsor dress she made. She loved to sew. Could sew stitches around  anyone. Made the Wallis Windsor dress without a pattern. Out of soft blue satin.She passed it down to me one year.

 And driving. She loved to drive.

 Especially coming home to the farm in the 30's and 40's.

 In the snow . To spend Christmas with the family. And stand in the freezing cold to take snaps.

 Years later, in the 50's my mother and father brought Isabella and Robert Shiels to live in Victoria. My dad would set up a spot for my blind grandmother to sit and enjoy the outdoors. He would read poetry to her in the shade of the trees.A dog always by her side. Her rocking chair still exists. Upstairs. The edges worn from her hands. I wouldn't have it any other way.

 Many times there were fashionable walks  on government street and Easter Bonnet parades every year. They had not much money, but somehow they managed to make ends meet.My mother taught me how to make things work.

 Family gatherings became different in the 50's. Instead of going to the farm, seen over  by mum's brother now, there were small parties at 1425 Fairfield, with a simple tree  draped  with a few strands of tinsel, balls of gold and elves peeking out from the tree branches.

Over the years I have been able to find some of these vintage elves. They remind me of my mother  and my father. They would  carefully place each little pixie inside the xmas tree , every year, and tell me they were looking for their way home through the forest by following xmas tree lights. After my dad died, mum continued the tradition. 

 My mother loved to have her picture taken in fields of flowers. She was very shy, for the most part, but adored a photo with the daffodils. Every spring, she would bring dad to Beacon Hill Park, and plunk herself down with the daffodils.  This is one of my favourite photos.

 She was not a world traveller. Her world consisted of Saskatchewan, and Victoria . She had  two elderly parents to look after and a job . But they did manage road trips into the mountains. Dressed to the nines, of course, for every trip.

 And years later, at our house at 1425 Fairfield. Victoria,B.C., the daffodils still grew and flourished long after my grandparents passed on. That Christmas mum and dad adopted me. It must have been quite the xmas present. My father died some 7 years later.  I had 7 years with him and that was just about right, even though it was not long enough. Every mother's day, as I got older,  I would give mum  daffodils in  a pot with a home made card, and she would think that was the best gift of all. It alwyas reminded her of those happy days when they would sit in the daffodils on the hills .
"My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it." Mark Twain