Under Appreciated Hammocks

The sea air has changed from a breeze to a wind, the sun is shining brightly, the splendid, fuchsia, hollyhocks have almost finished their summer extravaganza AND I am in a colourful, striped canvas hammock on the good, old front porch.  I have my beloved computer in my lap. I couldn't  ask for more at this moment.

Hammocks are highly under rated.

I have been going through bushels of old photographs, very old photographs, sorting out so much past. This is a nasty task; what to keep, what to burn, where to find more appreciative homes for the photos. In one picture my paternal grandmother languishes in a hammock set up by the massive stone Presbyterian walls of her family's farmhouse in southwestern Ontario. Her five grown sisters gather around her in their long, starched, white summer dresses.

There is no question of burning this picture of my grandmother, Junie. I am given a glimpse of an unhighlighted time in a family's story. Her father died when her youngest brother was a baby. Her oldest brother, John, kept the farm going well enough that all of the sisters were able to eventually finish high school in various Girls Schools, as country one room schools only went so far. They went on to graduate from Teachers College. This was quite an accomplishment for a family of very limited means, at the beginning of the last century.

My grandmother knew more than a little about hard work, but there she is lolling in a hammock. This is an addendum to "the idle hands are the playthings of the devil" theology that seemed to permeate family ethos. Perhaps this was a Sunday when hands had a day of rest.

I kept the picture of my grandmother, Ethel, smiling as she rests in a hammock at the cottage on Lake Simcoe. This picture would have been taken a few years later, probably the summer of 1909, as my mother in another picture, taken at the same time, in the same hammock is about two years old. This grandma was familiar with hammocks every summer day. Leisure was part of her routine

At our home in Markham, a canvas, green striped hammock stretched out between the apple tree and the pear tree. My cousins and I didn't do much lolling. The hammock was an active recreation. We would take turns winding up the hammock as far as it could wind. Cocoon style a cousin was inside. When let go, the hammock spun its contents round and round until it became untwisted giving the cocoon quite a thrill, leaving the cousin slightly dizzy.

One of the great tragedies of my young life happened as I actively participated in hammock fun. My cousin Myra was wrapped up as tight as could be. I let go. She spun happily until she spun out onto the ground. Unfortunately she landed on tree roots and broke her collarbone. Unfortunately for me, I was held somehow responsible. My mother felt compelled to present her with a gift each day as she lay resplendent, recuperating outside in a lawn chair. The hammock was taken down.To be honest, I felt sorry for my little self with such wounded, tender feelings.

Last summer my younger daughter with her watermelon  belly tried to rest in the very same hammock in which I now lie. Her young nieces constantly urged her on to more rambunctious endeavours.

This summer her baby boy wasn't really in to gentle swinging. He had his own swing. The little girls took over the hammock with a passion. Boy can that hammock swing. We had to go into town to buy an egg timer to accurately define each child's hammock time. I dreaded the accident in waiting, but it never came. A box and a half of bandaids were used up during their visit but none of them were hammock related.

My daughters and I had odd moments in the hammock, usually as the sun was setting.

My oldest cousin and I gave a huge handmade hammock with all the accessories to my daughter and her husband as a wedding gift. It would be fun to know what memories will swing into family lore from that hammock.

Hammocks are an essential part of summer.

Sleeper Inners and Getter Uppers

It is a difficult life being a sleeper inner in a world of getter uppers.

For the most part my friends are getter uppers. By the time I enter consciousness, my compatriots, scattered hither and yon, have taken significant bites out of the day. Dogs have been walked, tea leisurely savoured, clothes washed, The Globe and Mail consumed, muffins baked. It goes on and on.

I know this because I get up early to feed my impatient dog. Before I crawl back into bed, I can hear the familiar buzz of a world awake, both literally and figuratively.

In a small fishing village, five o'clock isn't that early. It is the tides that tell the time. For the many farmers that load down my family tree, the day's schedule was guided by the needs of the animals, the demands of the land and the control of the weather.

Why should this matter to me ? I don't know, but it does.

I put much of the responsibility on the long gone shoulders of Calvin and John Knox that shaped the Protestant Work Ethic with the strong power of social pressure.

It is a decree of my grandfather, long gone before I was born, that has taken root in my psyche. "Five to seven victory, five after seven defeat." I can't seem to rid myself of the concept.

I am a nine o'clock kind of gal. I go for a leisurely morning awakening,unfortunately lightly coated with strong, flavourful  sense of guilt.

Thankfully, nightwear and daywear, these days is almost indistinguishable from each other. I can almost  convince myself, that the early riser at my door doesn't necessarily guess my morning secret.

A Challenging Year

The End of Summer is nigh. The trees have lost their robust green. Some are even tinged with Autumn's yellows.

For me this is the end of the year. September brings a new season with a new pace. Some summer dreams are folded up for another time. The happy times recorded, wait on full cameras. The world drifts in lazy quiet.

This has not been a gentle year and I am tired.

In several weeks we will celebrate the first birthday of my grandson. He is a bright spark of humanity, with a gentleness that helps calm the world. His entry into the world was not a gentle one. For the first few weeks, he did not thrive and his mummy was in and out of the hospital with unrelated health issues for three months. I thoroughly enjoyed being a presence in his early days and now delight in his healthy pudginess. My daughter will return to work soon from maternity leave. His father is a wonderfully engaged parent. However the worry beads got a good workout.

My sweet, old rabbit hound died before our life could return to normal. She was an eccentric bundle of joy and I miss her daily. She died Thanksgiving weekend.

I never find Christmas an easy season. There are happy times, but it also comes loaded with grand expectations and memories of not so happy times. Last Christmas was spent at my daughter's house. Her little girls were spending their first Christmas apart with their daddy and his large family merriment.

On their return, we did our best to fill the house floor to ceiling with fun. We had fun, but it was a tough Christmas.

I love  my house in winter. The fire burns and the living room glows. This past winter did not offer many chances to enjoy such warmth. My cousin, who lives nearby, went into the hospital for a relatively simple operation, and was caught in a grand struggle between life and death. Long ago warnings of blood poisoning in my mother's stories, became a reality. A once healthy man became a frail image of his former self. His friends rallied, his family rallied, indeed the whole community rallied until in fact he rallied. We finally were able to take a deep breath as he became able to return to his former life.

Spring brought with it fresh air and bright sunny days.

Unfortunately, all was not well in this small kingdom. For reasons beyond my understanding, we had a mini outbreak of unkindness. Words were spoken that could not be taken back, actions sometimes spoke even louder than the words. Good people acted in nasty ways.

It took an act of will to fully appreciate a wonderful world that usually, continuously seeps in.

.... and then my grandchildren arrived.

I cannot claim that an exuberant six year old and and her no less exuberant four year old sister brought about a peaceable kingdom. I do know that an egg timer measured hammock time, little baby cousin could not have got more love and attention and the nearby beaches of the shore absorbed so much energy and offered endless adventures and fascinations.

Water gun fights, trips to swim in a freshwater lake, late night sparklers, a living room filling challenging puzzle, creations involving puddles of glue and unwashable paint, endless watermelon, a fort in the bushes, dress up clothes, dolls from another time. The squeals of joy and the not so joyous squeals.

I became very aware of the wisdom of young women and men holding the reins of parenthood.

The house is quiet now, just old Moe and me. Maybe just a little too quiet. Good byes are not easy.

However, there is time to rest, and as I rest gradually kneed everything into a loaf of memory, for future baking.