And so I did my best to behave. For instance, I stopped playing with the goldfish on Sunday morning after Mom got me dressed for the Kingdom Hall and we would leave for the drive to Prince Albert in less than ten minutes. No matter how many times the goldfish came up to the glass and begged me for kisses with his fish lips and begged me for hugs with his out stretched fins, I. Would. Not. Hug. Him. So what that he covered my front with his whole body? I was in my dress. Hugs would have to wait. He swam around the aquarium, dragging his tail. He glanced at me over his shoulder. I would not cave. And then he came right up to the glass, nose to nose, and he gave me that soulful look with his eyes. Okay - just one hug! And my mother walked in, water dripping off of me, on the floor and everywhere, the fish in my arms suddenly pretending to be dead when a moment before he was jumping for joy in my arms. The sound of my mother’s horrified voice screaming my name; “JANICE!!!!” I tried to behave.
I tried to sleep. I really did. I would lay under the blankets, between crisp white sheets that felt smooth against my skin. The cotton fabric smelled of sunshine, warm breezes and lazy, ideal days of summer. Thinking about it, I felt myself nodding off to sleep. And I was just about there when my mind shouted, “I wonder if it’ll be warm and sunny on THE EVENT day?” My eyes popped open as if they’d been held shut by springs just waiting to burst from their seams. My lids were fused to my upper eyelids and it felt like I may never have to blink again. Mom came to check on me and I admitted I was having trouble falling asleep. She laid with me. She sang to me. She told me stories and then, when her imagination drew a blank, she did the worst thing possible. She turned on the light. I had a choice, a story from “The Great Teacher” book or one from My Book of Bible Stories. I asked for one of each. She rebelled. I held my ground. I wasn’t working on behaving now, this challenge was about sleep. I’m sure if she could have found a story to teach me a lesson about what happened to little girls who didn’t sleep, she would have read that one and put it on repeat. The first story was great. I laid in her arms, she read the story, she asked questions, I answered, I yawned. The second story came out and I began to drift off to sleep. And as I did, my eyes fixated on my Mom’s face. From my vantage point, all I could see was up her nostrils and her mouth moving, upside down. It was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. I giggled. Then chuckled. The next thing I knew I was doubled over in a full belly laugh with tears running down my face. The threat of a spanking sobered me. And I lay down, next to my mother, whose arm no longer cradled me. She began reading the end of the story. I just took a peek, I swear. I didn’t mean to look but I did. And it was even funnier. I had to get up and use the bathroom. When I returned to bed, both books were firmly closed and I was told, in no uncertain terms and perhaps with a veiled threat to my life, that it was bedtime. She came to check on me about fifteen minutes later. That was the night I aced… PRETENDING to sleep.
I really like vegetables as there are so many wonderful ways to prepare and enjoy them. But there are some things I’ve learned are more of an acquired taste rather than that I actually enjoy eating them. So when ‘eating my vegetables’ was one of the conditions to attending the event I was looking forward to, vegetables on my plate suddenly very quickly disappeared. They were gone for two reasons… we had a wonderful shepherd/boxer dog named Smokey. If you told him to do something, he would do it. We didn’t have kale or okra back then but we did have artichokes and I wasn’t a huge fan of celery. Well, Smokey wasn’t either. And try as I might to force feed him by ‘slipping’ my less palatable food items to him, he simply pretended he didn’t see what I’d done. And THEN the traitor went and laid down at my little sister’s feet because she was still learning how to manage utensils. So he had a smorgasbord of choice pieces of almost chewed meat, mashed vegetables seasoned with a bit of butter and seasonings, home made bread and other delights. Our table was home made from steel and marble. There was a bit of a drop along the edge of the table that ran the whole length of it. The lip had a ‘cup’ that was perfect for temporarily holding unwanted food until it was safe to dig it out and dispose of it before the hiding place was discovered. I’ve often wondered if my parents didn’t know I’d hidden my food to be thrown out later or if they truly believed playing under the family table was one of my favourite places to be. Either way, that beloved table saved me from far more disgusting vegetable dishes than my disloyal dog ever did. To be fair, Smokey is still the dog every dog after has been compared to and, they’ve all fallen short. He WAS a really tall dog.
So I tried to practice obedience. My sister and I were talking earlier and I told her the next dog I get I‘m going to name Obedience. That way when someone comes to make a delivery and the dog is being downright obnoxious I can scold, “No, Obedience! No, Obedience!!” and the delivery person will assume I’m making a statement rather than verbally trying to discipline my dog. I think my mother might wish sometimes she’d called me “Obedience.” For the same reasons I related about using it to name my dog. To be fair, my reasons serve personal entertainment value. My mother’s reasons would fall along the side of revenge and wishing for me to have a child just like me. Well, you know how the saying goes - be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. I have two children who are a lot like me. My daughter is of an age where she is part tattle tale and part “it wasn’t me” but then her conscience gets to her and she comes back and says, “All Right! It was ME!!!” Her conscience has been gnawing away at her and I have no idea what she’s even taking about. “What was you?” I ask, mildly amused by her dramatics. “It was me,” she admits and the tension leaves her body as she reveals the truth, “I took the last of the coffee.” I look at her, flabbergasted, “There was coffee???” She agrees to help me make a fresh pot and considers that her punishment. I’m not stupid, I’m teaching her how to make a decent pot of coffee. One day the children will be old enough I can laze in bed and ask for coffee and toast. Between the four of them, they’ll know how to do it and by the time I join them, they’ll be in the middle of enjoying their own breakfasts. But then there’s one of the twins. He’s into EVERYTHING!!! He creates a diversion here so he can oversee a catastrophe over there and while that is being cleaned, he’s jumping on the bed until the mattress falls onto the floor. It takes two adults to replace the mattress and, while we do, he’s opening the back door to eat snow without any clothes on. I bring him inside, dry him off, give him warm coffee and dry clothes so he’s warming up from the inside out… I go grab Advil and water to drink it down. Return to him - I’ve been gone two minutes. Two! The coffee is spilled down his front, dripping from his face and apparently he used it to wash his hair. I look at the clock hoping we are close to nap time at 2:00pm. It’s barely 8:30 in the morning. I remember reading a passage in the book, Angela’s Ashes, where Frank McCourt describes one of the neighbourhood ladies who would go on a baking and cooking spree for a week. She knew the food would be old, mouldy, hard bits of inedible items but she was signing herself into the hospital for a well needed mental health break. I always looked down my nose at that woman. Now I so understand her motivation. I just can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t have the energy to cook and bake for a week. I did attempt to practice obedience several times. For the most part, it is the one thing I was most successful at achieving. Unless you count all those times I failed.
Speaking of failing, the last thing on the list that would allow me to be at the event I longed to attend was to do my homework. I did do my best with this task and I tried my best, even in challenging subjects such as Math. Who knew number dyslexia could throw a wrench in even the most well laid plans? I began the term intent I would earn an 80% in Math. At the end of the chapter test a few weeks later I looked at my score and shrugged it off. Pulling myself together I gave myself a pep talk like no other that ended with, “Sixty. You can totally do a sixty.” Who uses algebra anyway? By the end of May I wrote one of my last Math exams. Before I put pencil to paper, I read through the exam. I folded my hands, bowed my head and prayed, “Please God, if I’m not stupid, Please let me at least get a fifty.” I answered every question on the exam. I showed my work. I explained what I wanted the teacher to see when I showed my work. Then I questions the clarity of the exam question, “Did you want me to show the remainder because the question doesn’t ask for me to show the remainder but there IS a remainder and it’s long division so, just in case you wanted to see it - or maybe you didn’t know - I divided that number into this number and when I was done there was four left over, so the remainder is four.” When I went to teacher’s college my Mathematics professor kindly advised me to never teach past a Grade Six level. I concur. I still don’t know how I successfully taught Biology 30 and none of my learners failed when they wrote the departmental exams. That shows their hard work and tenacity rather than any skill I may have had. The other subject I struggled with so much is Phonics. Remember those children wearing shirts that read, “Hooked On Phonics Worked For Me!” I don’t know if there was an exclamation mark. I put one there anyway. Do you know why I don’t know what type of punctuation was used? Because I didn’t get a shirt - hooked on Phonics DIDN’T work for me and therefore, by not receiving said shirt, shamed me by emphasizing how completely unsuccessful I was. Looking back (tongue in cheek), I can only feel a stupendous amount of pride and a faint amount of smugness that I failed at Phonics. Since then I have earned a minor in English with my teaching degree, I have a diploma in Library Science (which I earned online) and I’m a published author. I guess Phonics wasn’t the key to my success after all. Also, encouraging children to become hooked on anything probably wasn’t a terribly good idea given the way people are struggling with addictions. There was a time in my life being hooked on something was a good thing. And now look. Phonics could be to blame.
So did I ever earn the privilege to attend that event of a lifetime that I salivated over? I don’t remember. I must have because I didn’t die - you know how dramatic some people can be… “If I can’t go and you lock me up in the basement cellar, I’ll Just DiE!!!” What I do know is there are some events happening in the near future that look both interesting and entertaining as well. I’ve posted a couple of them with this week’s column. Fireworks in Martinsville, and if you’ve never been to Pinehouse Lake the tenth annual Elder’s Gathering might interest you. For me it’s the more sentimental, faith strengthening things that have me really excited and so full of anticipation I can barely contain myself. Things like observing the Memorial of Jesus death on April 15 - in person for the first time in two years! Or being able to even return to the Kingdom Hall to worship. Zoom meetings are such a blessing but there’s nothing like seeing friends and spiritual family in the flesh. And I’m sad at the same time because some of our friends are asleep in death, and even with a Zoom funeral it’s still difficult to accept we never had the chance to say a proper goodbye. So when we meet friends again, you know it will be the biggest, longest hug ever as we joyfully say, “Hello.” But I’ll remember not to hold them hostage. And I won’t need the dance and the shoulder pat as the signal to “let go!” - that would be embarrassing for someone like me, who struggles to enjoy hugs in the first place. And the other thing I know is whatever you anticipate doing, it doesn’t need to be expensive or attention grabbing. The other day I grabbed a cinnamon bannock and my boys and I enjoyed breaking off bite sized pieces and dipping it in Saskatoon jam. It was a simple delight for all three of us. Sunday mornings we enjoy having a hot breakfast with toast and eggs, sometimes bacon baked in the oven until it’s crisped up just right. I like cutting shapes out of the toast using cookie cutters. I roll the bacon into roses and the eggs are the sunshine on the plate. Little things such as this bring anticipation and joy in unexpected ways. So I am looking forward, in the coming weeks and months, to the breaks from routine that build memories, help us be grateful for the life we have and allow us to anticipate what comes next. I hope you find many wonderful reasons to look forward too.
Have a great week, everyone.