Pen and Paper Mama

April 29, 2011

“I really don’t want you to go on the clay cliffs.  The paths are so narrow.  What if you fall and slide down?”  Mom responded to our eager request to go hiking.

“But, mom, you climbed all over the clay cliffs when you were growing up.  You’ve told us so many stories.  And besides, we know where to go, ’cause we’ve gone on them with you and dad before.  We’re not little kids anymore.  I’m eight years old!”  I announced proudly.

“Children.  Not kids.  Kids are little goats.  And “cause” is not a word.  If you’re old enough to go on the cliffs alone, then you’re old enough to speak properly,” Mom replied.  Then she smiled.  “Well, I guess you can go without adults this time.  But stay close by.  Be careful.  And only go where we’ve taken you before.”

“Hooray!” my year-and-a-half younger brother and I shouted.  And with that we dashed out the door and across the big wrap-around porch of our grandparents’ house. 

With another “Be careful!  Don’t run!”  warning echoing from behind us, we slowed down a bit and then came to a sliding halt under the big old walnut tree.  Grandpa and Uncle were leaning over the engine of the old car.  Just as we were about to join them, they stepped back, and Grandpa reached up and pulled down the hood. 

Then he walked around to the driver’s door and climbed in.  Uncle was still at the front of the car.  This was the reason we had taken a detour from our hiking plans.  Uncle had a crank bar in his hand, and now he leaned down and slid it into a hole under the front of the car.  He started turning the bar, and after a few turns, the motor started to splutter and then caught.  Uncle ran around to the passenger door and jumped in.  And off they drove, around the U-shaped driveway that circled the walnut tree, and then down the dirt road beside the house toward the barn, leaving a trail of dust behind them.

How exciting to see a car started in such an old-fashioned way.  This was just one of the many reasons we loved to spend time with our grandparents.  It was like stepping back in time.  Old-fashioned car, wood stove, coal delivered for the big coal furnace in the basement, the dark old barn that smelled like skunks, Grandpa sharpening the kitchen knives on the cement steps, helping Grandma shuck peas for supper. 

But today’s big excitement was finally being allowed to hike the clay cliffs by ourselves.  Grandpa and Grandma lived in West Summerland, right across from the old hospital where I had been born on my parents’ summer holidays.  Now we took a quick look up and down steep Sully Road and then scampered across.  We ran across the hospital lawns, until we came to the edge of the steep clay cliffs.

Unlike the irrigated lawns behind us, the clay cliffs were barren but for the scruffy sage bushes and small clumps of stiff grasses that grew wild in this arid climate.  Peering over the edge, we gazed down down down to where the narrow highway wound its way through the bottom of the gully.  We skirted along the top edge of the cliffs, looking for the start of the narrow path, no more than a foot wide, that clung to the cliffside, gradually heading in serpentine fashion down toward Okanagan Lake and our beloved Rotary beach far below.

Finding the path, my brother shouted, “Come on! Let’s go!”  I hung back for a moment, suddenly a little nervous.  But then I took a deep breath, and started down the path.  As we descended, birds swooped over our heads.  It looked as if they would smash into the cliffside, but at the last moment, a little dip or lift, a folding of wings, and they would touch lightly down on the edges of small dark holes, and then disappear inside.  Small peeps welcomed them to their nests. 

Here and there, initials were carved into the cliffs.  Some were fresh and clear; others were worn away almost to the point of disappearing completely, witness to past generations of young lovers. 

I recalled watching my dad one day not long ago carving initials into another cliff, part way between Summerland and Penticton.  There had been initials there already, a bit worn from years of sun, wind and rain.  They had originally said “MM + HW.”  MM were my mom’s maiden initials: Marjorie Mott.  HW were the initials of one of her many admirers in the past, for mom was pretty and friendly – and very popular with the young men. My mom had teasingly pointed out the initials to my dad after they got engaged – and he had quickly climbed the cliff to remedy the situation.  He carved a line across the top of the H, and another across the bottom of the H – and now it read “MM + BW” : Marjorie Mott and Bill Wright.  Much better.  Mom thought it was pretty funny.  But after a few years the “B” bars had faded, so dad reclimbed the cliff, with us along this second time, and dug them again – deeper and more permanently this time.

About halfway down toward the lake, our path forked.  The right hand fork lead on down to the lake, where the beautiful clear blue waters Of Okanagan Lake beckoned.  I pictured the docks stretching out into the water.  I imagined the sand sliding between my toes and the freshness of the water cooling my skin, which by now was already becoming dusty and dry. 

Reluctantly, though, I turned and took the left fork, which led upwards back toward the top of the cliff.  We had in the past gone all the way down to the lake with mom on this trail, and had had a wonderful swim before gratefully accepting a car ride back up to the house.  But we were alone this time. Mom had told us not to go too far, or be gone too long, and I was an obedient child.   

Going downhill had been easy, but trudging up this steep path with dust swirling up from our feet and rubbing blisters between our flip-flop clad toes, was not quite so much fun.  The famous Okanagan sun was pouring its rays down on us from the clear skies, and by the time we reached the top, my hair was clinging damply to my forehead and neck.

We gratefully stepped into the shade of the fruit trees in the orchard at the top of the cliff, and flung ourselves down into the long soft green grass.  Looking around, we saw that not far away sprinklers were whirring cool sprays of water over a large garden, and out onto the dirt road beside it.  We joyfully jumped to our feet, and ran down the tractor path and through the sprinkler.  It felt wonderful!  Cooled down now, we followed the track out to Sully Road, down the steep hill from our Grandparents’ house. 

Heading back up the hill, we passed another big old Victorian style house, somewhat similar to Grandpa and Grandma’s.  Out on the porch, the Miss Banks sisters were sitting in the shade having afternoon tea.  They waved to us, and we waved back.  “Tell your mother to bring you down to have tea with us soon,” one of them called out.  I smiled.  These little white-haired ladies had been my mom’s school teachers when she was my age long long ago.  Every now and again we would go and visit them, and they would serve us tea and cake and homemade lemonade.  I always looked forward to these visits, because even though I was a little girl, they served me cake on their best china, and the lemonade in an elegant glass with chunks of ice and slivers of lemon.  It made me feel very grown up indeed.

Walking slowly now, too tired to run any longer, we arrived back at our grandparents’ home.  Mom was sitting on a blanket in the shade of the walnut tree, with my baby brother toddling around in the grass.  Dad was sitting on an old chaise up on the ivy-covered porch, reading the newspaper.  And there was Grandma sitting on the front steps of the porch, with the lap of her wrap-around apron full of peas fresh picked from the garden.  She had a big bowl beside her.  Forgetting our tiredness, we ran across the front yard, and sat down one on each side of her, eager to help shuck the peas.  She smiled at us, then looked a bit frowningly at our dirty hands, faces, and clothes.  We knew what that meant.  “I’ll wait for you,” she promised, “but you’ll need a bath first.”

Mom picked up our little brother and took our hands.  We kicked off our flip flops by the door, and headed inside.  Up the tall narrow staircase to the second floor we skipped.  We ran after mom into the bathroom to watch her fill the big old-fashioned claw foot tub with water.  We pushed the stool up beside the tub, and clambered up and in.  Mom plopped our little brother in with us, and we started splashing and scrubbing.  So much more fun than our ordinary modern tub at home.  Quickly we scrubbed off the dirt, then climbed out of the tub, dried off, and dressed in clean clothes.  The peas were waiting!

April 29 2011

Growing up in the sunny Okanagan Valley, and especially having grandparents who owned an orchard in beautiful Summerland BC, canning fruit was naturally a part of my childhood and youth.

We canned fruit at our home in Rutland, of course.  Each season began with cherries in late June or early July, and progressed through apricots, peaches, plums, pears, sometimes berries or  crabapples, plus tomatoes and other vegetables from our garden as well.  As the oldest daughter, I early on became mom’s number one helper.  I really didn’t mind helping with the canning, except for the peaches.  After they had been blanched they would be dumped into a large sink full of cold water, and it would be my job to remove the skins before we cut them up.  By the end of that job, my skin would be red and incredibly itchy.  I remember complaining mightily, but mom just laughed; it was part of the process.

By the end of the fall harvest, our “cool room” shelves would be filled with dozens and dozens of jars of fruit.  The cool room was constructed in one corner of the basement, and featured an open, sand-filled area at one end of the floor for storage of root vegetables, with cement walls all around the room to keep it cool, a small air shaft to the outside, and of course all those shelves.

We had fruit for dessert almost every day all winter.  The peaches were considered a “treat” and usually came out only on special occasions.  The cherries, which we had in abundance because of Grandpa’s orchard, were our everyday dessert; I never tired of counting the cherries in my bowl: “tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief.”  For some reason, much to my chagrin I almost always ended up with the poor man, or even beggarman or thief.  Dad almost always ended up with merchant or chief, and I thought it quite unfair.  Apricots and pears were mom’s favorites, so we had them quite often too.  Some years we canned plums, as we had two plum trees in our yard, but other years us kids would strip the trees for neighborhood “plum wars” before mom got a chance to can them. 

We also sometimes did canning at Grandma’s house, especially when they lived in the big old Victorian house in the orchard. At cherry picking season, friends and relatives gathered from near and far, and the cousins got to sleep in bunkbeds out on the big wrap-around porch, which was very exciting.  Grandma and Grandpa had a wood stove, and we liked to watch Grandpa chop the wood and get the fire going.  Usually when canning was happening at our grandparents’ house, since there were lots of aunts and uncles and cousins around, us kids mostly got out of helping with the canning as there were enough women to fill up the kitchen.

But my most exciting canning memory was when we’d go to do our canning at the Summerland community cannery.  I suppose it may have been a commercial cannery at one time; certainly there were huge old commercial-sized vats and stoves.  Many families would gather there at the same time, and everyone would work together.  Cherries would be brought into the cannery in huge bins rather than the smaller boxes or pails of cherries we’d can at home. 

The men would be there to do the heavy lifting and to heat up the big stoves.  The smaller children would have a wonderful time playing together outside.  I was still pretty young in the community cannery days, but I was old enough, perhaps six or seven years old, to be expected to take a turn helping the women out a bit by sorting the cherries and loading them into jars.  In my memory, the vats and stoves were huge, and the long room was like an enormous barn, with dark distant ceilings, and full of steam and loud clattering noises along with friendly laughter and chatting. 

I am not certain but I think that at the cannery we mostly canned in jars, yet I think that we may also have canned in tins.  I have memories of tinned fruit in the cool room, which I thought was far fancier than the fruit in jars.  And after some old canneries closed down, I remember that for years we had piles of left-over fruit tin labels at home that we used for scrap note-paper.

Years later, after I had grown up, I moved to Haida Gwaii, and was astonished to discover that folks also home-canned deer meat and fish and other sea foods.  I had taken my water-canning equipment with me, which came in handy to can the many wonderful wild berries on the islands, but I soon had to invest in a pressure canner in order to put up the meat, fish and seafood.

Nowadays it seems that canning, like a lot of other old-time skills, is fading from the picture for many folks.  Seems like a shame, not only because it was a good way to economically preserve summer’s bounty for the long cold winter months, but also because canning, like so many other old-time skills, is best done together as a family and as a community.  And when we lose those kinds of communal events, we are losing so much of what is vital in life. 

Anyone want to get together and can this summer?

April 28 2011

Quilting Bee at Mrs. Moore’s House

The sun sifted through the thick curtains that hung over the narrow horizontal windows tucked under the eaves of the square lean-to room attached to the back of Mrs. Moore’s small two-storey home just off the highway in small-town Summerland.  The deep orangey hue of the filtered sunlight mingled with brighter beams from the single bulb hanging from the center of the ceiling.  The room contained only one large piece of furniture, an old-fashioned quilting frame exactly in the center of the space. Both room and frame were the same shape, and it seemed to the small girl that quite possibly the lean-to had been constructed to house the frame. 

To this day, some 40 plus years later, each time I drive past on the highway I cannot help but gaze once again at the small house, sitting there like a forgotten artifact from the past.  In my memories, it sits tall and alive in a large yard, filled with friends and family, and surrounded by gardens and peaceful orchards.  Today though, it seems smaller, shabbier, lonely and almost lost in a maze of gas stations and fast-food restaurants and modern carbon-copy subdivision homes near a noisy, busy intersection. I am always amazed it has managed to survive the changes of time.

A quilt-in-production is stretched tightly across the frame.  Around the large frame are at least a dozen or more rather worn wooden spindle-backed kitchen chairs. On each chair sits a woman dressed in a simple cotton house-dress. It is summer and the dresses are light pastel colors, mostly sprinkled with tiny flower designs.  Some of the women wear complementary straw hats, also crowned with tiny flowers and and circled with navy ribbons.  The room is filled with a gentle hum of voices chatting amiably. Heads of hair, white, gray, brown, auburn, blond, wrapped in gossamer-thin hair netting, lean over busy hands stretched out across the quilt.  Fingers nimbly guide gently curved needles that pull thread over-and-under, over-and-under.  Beneath, the opposite hand of each pair presses gently up against the quilt, providing just the right amount of tension to allow the curves and curlicues of the hand-quilted design to flow perfectly over the surface.

Between two of the women, one my Grandma and the other my Mommy, I perch on a tall stool, watching the women, mesmerized.  Across the table, a couple of teenage girls stand.  They lick the ends of long pieces of thread, squinting as they push the thread through the needle eyes, and then slowly and carefully add their own over-and-under over-and-under stitches to the design.  The women stop their own stitching for a moment, push back their chairs, sit up straight and tall, and stretch cramped fingers, as two women come in through the corner door from the kitchen, carrying trays.  One tray holds a large teapot, a delicious looking cake, and cream and sugar.  The other holds dainty teacups and dessert plates, decorated in flowery designs that almost exactly match the hats and dresses.  As the ladies sip their tea, they watch the teenage girls do their stitching, nodding and smiling approvingly, and offering gentle tid-bits of advice.  I watch the “big girls” admiringly.

“Would you like to try?” one of the ladies asks me.  I drop my eyes, a little embarrassed, but the other women chime in, “Yes, you’re big enough to learn to quilt.” 

In a few moments, I have a needle and thread in hand, and am trying to poke the thread through the eye of the needle.  Finally, it gives in to my stubborn repeated efforts and slips through.  What now, I wonder?  What if I sew badly and ruin the beautiful quilt?  My hand trembles a little and I draw back from the frame.  Seeing my hesitation, one of the ladies gently places her hand over my much smaller one.  Very slowly and gently, her fingers guide my fingers, and there!  Over-and-under, over-and-under the needle and thread slides through the quilt.  Her other hand has taken my other hand and guides it under the quilt, pressing it gently up against the fabric.  I feel the motion, the flowing of the growing design.  It feels alive to me.

Suddenly I jump as I am snapped out of my dream-like quilting reverie. A passel of youngsters, who had been out playing in the yard, come running into the room, dashing around the table to get a hug from their mothers, and hopefully also a bit of cake.  Startled, I drop the needle and thread, and am horrified to see that my last stitch is large and crooked.  Grandma and Mommy lean over and look at my work.  Mommy hugs me and I lean into her shoulder, feeling shy but pleased.  Grandma looks at my stitches a little more critically, and I hang my head a bit, worried that she won’t quite approve.  But she turns to me, smiles, and says, “Well done!”

I am delighted.  And more, I am in awe.  Because in those few moments of over-and-under over-and-under stitching, I have made my first steps into the sisterhood of women, young and old, who for untold generations have gathered together in amiable company to share their lives and to create together hand-crafted quilts.  Quilts that will not only keep their families warm on cold winter nights, but will add beauty to their everyday lives, and will, with proper care, be handed down to new generations to come.  And I dream that I, too, will someday pass down some of these skills, and share this sisterhood, with my own daughters and granddaughters.

I will definitely get some better up-to-date pictures soon!