Family Meals: Rituals and Traditions

When I was growing up, my mother always prepared a big meal for a  one-o'clock Sunday dinner — a roast of some sort, usually beef, less often pork or lamb. As a treat for my British-born father, the roast beef would occasionally be accompanied by Yorkshire pudding. There would always be at least two different kinds of vegetables, as well as potatoes that had been added to the roast pan and were served brown and crispy on the outside. We could also expect a dessert of pie or trifle. Tarts and cake were reserved for our evening tea. My mother would have spent all Saturday afternoon baking, while she listened to the radio broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera Company from New York.

The only downside to that fabulous meal would be the scene of devastation in the kitchen, the mountain of dirty dishes that awaited my teen-aged sister and me. The Yorkshire puddings alone had resulted in blackened muffin tins, encrusted with baked-on food. These were the days before no-stick cookware. And the roast pan? I learned quickly that if I complained enough I might just hear, "Just leave it to soak, dear."

My parents would take their coffee to the living room to relax, while my sister and I would battle it out over who would wash and who would dry. We were forbidden from flicking wet towels at each other — tea towels were kept clean and never flung over the shoulder to pick up hair or worse (gasp) dandruff. I do remember getting in a few swipes with the dish-mop, though. Our dad, by this time, would have retreated into his garden.

Mom finally settled on a system where the one who did the drying waited until the dishes had been washed, stacked in the rack, and laid out on clean tea towels on the counter before entering the room.

Sunday dinners were served in the dining room, the table set with a table cloth and napkins. There were plenty of rules when it came to eating in that household. No elbows on the table, no pushing peas onto your fork with your fingers, no feet on the rungs of the chair.

I admire my mother for sticking to the tradition of the Sunday family dinner where everyone sat down at the table together. We didn't always make it easy for her. I also appreciate that our parents taught the five of us proper table manners, how to set a formal dinner table, and how to handle a knife and fork.

We all make our own rituals and, good or bad, the formal Sunday dinner disappeared fairly early in my own household. Along with a few of the rules, although not the table manners.

The most valuable lesson I learned at my parents' table was the importance of family regularly sitting down together to share a meal and conversation. Whatever day of the week it happens to be.

Do you have particular traditions when it comes to meals at your house? Are they harder to uphold as your children get older?

Looking Back at Past Summer Jobs

School Days

In next to no time school will be out for the summer and many teenagers will be looking for work. College and university students have been out there already for weeks. I hope all those willing to work, especially those who are depending on summer employment to help pay for their education, will find their ideal job.

Looking back, I think our own two boys were fortunate. They were never in a position of having to look for a summer job because of our family's landscaping business. Like their father and uncles before them, anyone with a strong back and a willingness to work in the dirt, the heat, and occasionally the rain, could get on. Both our sons, and a number of their friends besides, spent their summers hauling heavy rolls of sod onto the truck at the farm and then off again at the job site. "A dollar a day and all the grass you can eat," my husband used to quip.

Like many girls, I started my own summer job experience, eons ago, babysitting and selling greeting cards. Pretty lame, considering that some teens were heading away to work — for very good money — picking tobacco in Tillsonburg. They'd return just before school resumed, sporting spectacular tans, fingernails stained from the tobacco plants, and with a new-found maturity that set them apart from the rest of us, something gained from being away from home for a whole season.

We lived in Toronto when I was in grade 10, and one summer I got a job in the gift-wrapping department of the Robert Simpson Co. at their big downtown store. It didn't hurt that my uncle was the manager of the china department there. That job experience led to my being hired to wrap gifts at Christmas time at the exclusive Creed's Furriers. That experience itself is worthy of another blog at another time.

After moving to small town Ontario, I worked one summer and again at Christmas at Chainway, a sort of low-budget Woolworth's. I was paid 42 cents an hour. But I loved it. It was staffed by kids not much older than I was, and it had a bulk candy counter where sampling did not appear to be frowned on.

My final high school summers were spent as a playground supervisor. That job appealed to my "inner teacher." I loved planning each day's activities to include quiet and active games, trips to other playgrounds, and especially lots of messy "arts and crafts."

What were some of your most memorable summer jobs? Did any of them enable you to learn skills you still find useful today?

I can still wrap an attractive present, and I can tie a round-turn-two-half-hitches knot with one hand. In fact, I have to admit I'm a little sorry those handy gift bags we buy today have made the art of gift wrapping obsolete.

Till next time.



photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/vblibrary/8466485544/">Enokson</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a>

How Do You Stand On Standing Ovations?

Edward Tudor, the prince, meets Tom Canty, the pauper and street urchin.

On Sunday I went to see our granddaughter in The Prince and The Pauper, a production of the drama class at her high school, where she is in the arts program. She's also a member of the concert band . . . proud Grandma here . . . but that's a topic for a future blog.

The play was wonderful, full of energy. I'd forgotten all but the basic plot of Mark Twain's classic story of switching identities. The dialogue was at times poignant and then, very funny. Both audience and players were obviously enjoying themselves, and the young actors delivered their lines without a hitch. Granddaughter's role was a small one; she is only in her first year of the program, a "minor niner." There'll be bigger roles to come for her.

The set was perfect, and the period costumes were amazing, both street urchins and royal courtiers. In fact, the royal crown and King Henry's jewels looked quite authentic.

All in all, it was a fun production, and the cast got a well-deserved standing ovation after the final curtain. And why not? I don't go along with the theatre purists who insist that standing ovations should be reserved for the likes of the late Pavarotti or the Broadway cast of . . .  (you fill in the blanks here). Do you agree?

Why do we choke up with emotion at delivering a Standing O? I think it's because we feel the love, and that audience at the school, many of whom were parents and grandparents, was bursting with pride and love for those young drama students.

Bravo! I say
                 

Small World

Three years ago I wrote a biography of Laura Secord. Currently, I am working on Molly Brant's story. Again and again I am struck by the same cast of characters that appear in the lives of both these women.

It shouldn't surprise me, I guess.

Both biographies are about Canadian women whose lifetimes overlapped by twenty-one years.  It's inevitable that the same figures in British, American, and Canadian government would turn up in both. Governor Guy Carleton and John Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant-governor of the province of Upper Canada, for example.

But there are also a handful of other notables who cross story-lines between Molly Brant and Laura Secord — the Mohawk Chief John Norton, half Cherokee, half Scot; the ill-fated British General John Burgoyne; and William Johnson Kerr, Molly's grandson who fought in the War of 1812, the war in which both Laura and her husband performed acts of courage.

Molly Brant died in 1796, one year after twenty-one-year old Laura Ingersoll and her family arrived in Upper Canada, but Molly's younger brother, Joseph Brant, appears in both biographies. Richard Cartwright was a Loyalist living in Cataraqui as was Molly. Coincidentally, Cartwright married the sister-in-law of Laura Secord. I had discovered him when I wrote Laura's story, and then there he was, a prominent business man in Molly's world.

It's interesting to encounter historical figures who wander in and out of both stories. It's a small world. And in those early days of the province, even smaller.

Till next time.

Triggering Memory

A rushing river, between North Bay and Petawawa.

Watercress and Walking

A freshet runs from the woods and through a culvert under the trail where I walk. Tender young weeds wave in the current on the other side.They trigger a memory. Another walk, this one with my father. We stand looking at a stream that runs under the sidewalk. My father has come here on purpose, to gather watercress for his sandwich.

I hadn't thought of that scene in decades. Or watercress either, for that matter. Funny how that happens, isn't it? When your mind is cleared of all the other dreck, something triggers a memory. A scene, perhaps, for a story. This is one reason why I like to walk.

Around here, spring is the best time for walking on the trail that I prefer. There's a cool breeze off the Bay and the sun is giving off some real warmth. It's been a long, hard winter. Now that the ice and snow have gone, little streams of water are everywhere. The ditches on both sides of the trail are full. Here the bushes are just starting to bud out, and the willows wear greenish-yellow haloes.

 There are sounds all around. A robin rustles through the dry stalks at the edge of forest looking for nesting materials. A killdeer warns of my approach. From the distance comes the sound of a train whistle, the clatter of the crew up on the highway, busy filling potholes. Down at the edge of the water a man is using a power washer on his boat, and someone else revs up a chain saw. Everywhere broken tree limbs tell of the ice storm and high winds.

But the Bay is fairly calm this morning and the swans have returned, puffy white clouds on the blue water, imitating the sky.

The muse returns.

A Reading from Laura Secord, Heroine of the War of 1812.

At the close of a course on DIY Web Design at the Quinte West Library, Peggy provided a reading from her book. This little video was a "made-in-class" effort, put together following the final session of DIY Web Design, conducted by Jacques Surveyer. It's far from perfect, but it was done on the spur of the moment, with no previous preparation. Sure, it would have benefited from something other than overhead florescent lights, maybe a cosier background — a comfy chair next to an end table sporting a vase of flowers, perhaps — rather than a blank wall. But it is an example of what is possible once you master a few techniques in designing a website.

Letters from Readers

Letters from students at a Winnipeg school.

It's been a few years since I've received fan mail from students who are reading my books. 

Back in the days when I wrote novels for the middle grades, I was fortunate to have three of them nominated for the Silver Birch Award. Students participating in the program would often write to the authors whose books they were reading to say they were going to vote for their book as the favourite. 

Sky Lake Summer was the first of these books for me, and in those days before email, the letters would come in big brown envelopes sent by the schools. The Path Through the Trees was the last. 

Last week I received letters from a grade 5–6 class in a Winnipeg School. They had been reading two of my books in class. Treasure at Turtle Lake and The Deep End Gang.  

I am grateful to Scholastic Canada Ltd. for including these books in one of their literacy packages,  Moving Up with Literacy Place (4 to 6), which means they're still being read in the schools. 

I love the honesty of kids of this age. If there are parts of the book they don't like, they tell you. You can usually spot the letters where the teacher has given a little coaching. Who was their favourite character, and why? What inspired the author to write this book?

Several of the letters in this recent batch are hand illustrated, sometimes using themes from the story. I appreciate the extra time spent in producing these.

Like all my "fan" mail. I will keep these missives and treasure them always. And now I must get busy and answer each one.