ponderings

"Persons of high self-esteem are not driven to make themselves superior to others; they do not seek to prove their value by measuring themselves against a comparative standard. Their joy is being who they are, not in being better than someone else." 

Nathaniel Branden

they meant new beginings

When I was a kid, we used to go to my granparent's farm alot. It was pretty boring some of the time, really. There was only so much snooping around the garage and barn you could do. But there was always great food and pitch black nights and it was peaceful. I don't think I really came to understand how much it all meant to me until it was almost gone. I guess I always thought it would be ours and I would always be able to drive up.

The house has been sold. I'm not "allowed" to snoop around the barn anymore or run my fingers over the grooves in the wood my grandfather made writing memories in carpenter's pencil on the wall of the garage. How many cows he owned on Sept 15 1957...or the horseshoe's he nailed to the wall. The lilacs that bloomed each early summer next to the white washed garage were barely acknowledged. They were just lilacs and they would always be there.

I moved away. I came back to visit less frequently. It wasn't until my gransmother's 90th birthday celebration at Hainstock that I realized the beauty and simplicity of lilacs. They were cut for table vases. Every table had sprigs of lilacs- pink, purple, white. Memories of the lilacs on the farm. Driving through Red Deer.. lilacs bushes bloomed. Lilacs were a memory of the praires and how much I enjoyed the fragrance of their summer blooms.

We'd sit at the kitchen table- next to the bay window that looked out on the lawn. My grandmother watched the birds and encouraged them to come to the window with birdseed feeders. Chickadee-dee-dee she would say. An occasional blue jay.. but always a robin would be looking for worms in the grass. My grandmother would always say that spring had arrived because there would be a "robin red breast" in the yard. It was a symbol for a new beginning and that winter was breaking.

I love these things..things from the farm. The wheat and barley fields. Yellow yellow Canola fields against blue blue skies. Tangled lines of barbed wire and roses that grow in ditches. Barn swallows dancing on the wind and peeling paint from an old barn or shed. Abandoned farmhouses and their secrets. Lilacs and robins and the peaceful simple air of a small Alberta town. I immortalize these things, pay homage to them permanently in my flesh. Yesterday I had lilacs and 2 robins tattooed on my leg. It's like a lace- delicate and worthy. An heirloom that can't be passed down.

new hobby

Catherine gave me a gift certificate for Birkeland Bros. I was holding out for the felted chickadee classes but ended up taking the felted bowl class. It was OK. I wasn't sure I was going to like it. Felting is not for the impatient. It takes about an hour to make a small bowl.. ot at least it did for me. Nor surprisingly,  enjoy tearing the wool apart. At the end after you rub it with soap for 25 minutes, you get to beat it so it will harden. Its like fiber clay. You can mold them. If I put a video on- I can successfully felt a bowl. 

Birkeland is pretty neat..They were the first building on main street to have a phone and the business has been in the Birkeland family for 80 years. The have a huge wool carding machine in the back that was brought over from England. Anyways.. it was fun. 100.00 gift certificate covered the class, materials to do 1 bowl and wool to make another 3 or 4 depending on the size.