Fireworks

There is something about fireworks that draw me in. I’m not an "aahhhh-er" or an "oohhhh-er" as fireworks light up the night sky but I really enjoy watching them explode, unfold, disintegrate and float away. It doesn’t matter the kind, or whether they’re huge, multicoloured starbursts, shooting stars with long colourful tails, the kind that drip and weep as they crackle into extinction, or the white flashes that just go “boom.”

I watch silently, somewhat awestruck, impressed, I think at the relatively safe but powerful force of it all.

When I was a child, we could buy recreational fireworks at the corner store. I was not allowed to buy the rockets that shot into the sky and exploded, or the twirling pinwheels - too dangerous - but my parents saw no problem, providing I followed the rules and didn’t throw them at anyone or anything, with the smaller strings of red firecrackers, the kind powerful enough to cause severe burns or blind an eye, but probably not strong enough to remove a finger.

Lighting each one and watching it go “Bang!” got a little monotonous so we experimented. We blew up piles of leaves and sometimes had to stomp out the fires that started as a result; we dropped them down sewer grates and listened for the echoing bang, but the most fun was to light several as quickly as we could, and place them in a can. Seconds later the can would fly into the air on a probably more unpredictably dangerous path than well-aimed rockets.

Then, alas, these small-scale fireworks were taken off the market because too many people had managed to do damage to themselves and others by hanging on too long and being burned or possibly by being struck by flying cans. A person needed a permit and an occasion to purchase fireworks. From then on I had to be happy with watching planned displays.

Most fireworks watching requires spending time on a surprisingly chilly evening and being insect bait for the millions of nasty mosquitoes that hang around waiting for unsuspecting fireworks watchers not dressed in jeans, socks, and long sleeved hoodies to expose bare flesh and provide a late-night meal. The actual viewing experience requires shivering, swatting, flapping and slapping, and, if you are really close and lucky, keeping hot little embers from burning holes in your clothes and/or skin. Still, I'm enthrawled.

I’ve never seen a huge explosion – not, thank goodness, explosions resulting from acts of terrorism or war where bombs rip buildings, bodies, families and nations apart or explosions caused by gas leaks or other combustibles that cause great damage, so maybe my fascination with things that go boom is naïve.

I was once told that had I witnessed unplanned and horrifying explosions, my fascination for fireworks would be quickly squelched but I'm not so sure. My curiosity doesn't extend to horrific details or how fireworks are made or what actually makes them work. I only want to watch in awed silence as the sky lights up with spectacular but safe bursts of colour and noise.

Lily

Lily is growing up – six months old already. Her most endearing personality traits are her enthusiasm for anything tasty and her hound instincts. She’s a mooch and unlike other finicky doggie eaters we’ve known who hack up anything spicy, savoury, or heck, sometimes even toast, Lily seems to have guts of steel. 

Not that this is a good thing. I wish she was more discriminate. Because dachshunds have such long bodies, added weight is unusually hard on their backs so we want to keep her as slim and trim as possible. Nevertheless, she’s right there, under the table at mealtimes, especially when the boys are here, scooping up any tasty crumbs that come her way and begging for anything we might be inclined to share if she stares long and hard enough at it.

Outside she eats grass, flowers, mulch, twigs – anything she can wrap her lips around. This is not a good thing either, especially when combined with her hound instincts. She snuffles around in the grass, in the flower beds and under the trees. So far she’s come up with two dead mice and at least half a dozen dead sparrows. So far she hasn’t tried to eat them, but instead brings them to me. Blegh.

At first I wondered where the dead critters were coming from but soon realized that with the amount of bird feeders, and the amount of birds that visit over the winter, it stands to reason that the odd one would succumb to the cold or old age in our yard. The same with mice living under the mulch and also eating the bird seed. We didn’t know we had mice living nearby – I guess it’s okay if they don’t come in the house! The old and frozen ones crept under the bushes and expired and we were none the wiser. However, Lily sniffs out the bodies and makes a gift of them.

She also thinks she’d like to catch a live bird. Today, the baby sparrows from one of the birdhouses flew the coop. I’ve been expecting this to happen as I’ve been watching their little beaks get bigger and more impatient as the parent sparrows brought food.

Anyway, I didn’t realize they were out until this afternoon when Lily spotted a baby in the middle of the yard. I don’t know if she would have hurt it or picked it up and brought it to me because the mamma bird was right there, flapping and squawking around Lily’s head. Lily immediately took after her (that’s the point, right?) and followed her half way across the yard in the opposite direction while the baby bird jumped, flopped, flapped and scrambled to the safety of the nearest flower bed.

Later tonight, when Lily and I went out, she sniffed out every inch of the area she covered chasing the mother bird. She didn’t go the other way and look for the babies. The mamma did a good job. There are at least three baby sparrows and one baby robin hiding somewhere out there in the garden. I hope they learn to fly and fend for themselves soon before Lily realizes she’s been duped.

Time Flies

Time flies when you’re having fun – or not. Whatever the circumstances, life goes on and eventually you have cause to stop and wonder how you got to where are now. Our children, the ones who stole our hearts when we were barely adults, grow up far too quickly and when they reach adulthood it seems impossible that all those years have passed by.

You realize that you’re not 20 anymore as you watch high school end, college years pass by, and soon you’re shopping for different clothes – a mother-of-the-groom outfit followed by mother-of-the-bride dresses, garments you’ve always thought belonged to a woman of a certain age, certainly not you, not yet.

Then the grandchildren arrive and you fall in love again. You attend birthdays, dance recitals, concerts and what’s this? Graduation time already? This week our eldest grandchild, a stunningly beautiful young woman, walks across the stage to accept her high school diploma and set out on her adult life with plans for a bright and exciting future.

Just last week, we watched a very special grandson receive an award as his kindergarten year ends. He’s not the youngest but his journey, just beginning, for sure will be one of the most interesting. God willing we will be there to see every one of them graduate from high school and watch them follow whatever post secondary road they choose. Sooner or later, I’ll have to admit I’m not 40 anymore 60 anymore. The years have flown by.

I will shop, each time, for something appropriate to wear. I will have to admit to sensible shoes, something in (blegh) mauve polyester, a lacy cardigan. Maybe when time takes another leap and flings me into octogenarianism, I will be ready for that, but not yet, oh please, not yet.

Zip It

Apparently there are things I am not allowed to say.

At times, I’ve been told that I don’t stand up for myself, that I let things that I should take exception to slide, that I’m a flighter, not a fighter. I am not outspoken, I am not bossy. I am friendly, compassionate and an extremely good listener. However, when crossed I can be direct, not terribly tactful and really accurate. It’s called shooting from the hip. Mostly this isn’t appreciated. Mostly, I don’t care.

At this point in my life, I should be able to say whatever I want to say. It can be taken as insight, wisdom or the ranting of an old woman. There are people who I need to hear what I have to say – whether or not they need to hear it is questionable. However what I would like to say would rock the boat and it’s not my boat to rock, so I rehearse conversations that will never happen, bite my tongue until it bleeds, and take my blood pressure pills regularly.

One-on-one conversation is not my speciality. Being a writer, my weapon of choice is the pen, but I’m reasonably sure angry emails and nasty notes fall into the category of conversations I’m not allowed to have. I am limited to hiding fact in fiction, writing indirect and obscure blogs, and journaling until my fingers are numb and the anger subsides.

If her cubs are threatened, a mother bear attacks with a vengeance. But I am not a mother bear. I am a human mother, and I have compassion for both the cub and the attacker. I understand the cub’s reasoning; I understand the attacker’s lack of moral compass.

So I will be quiet as requested. My thoughts will remain silent to the ears I want most to hear them. Events will unfold as they should. I smile at the knowledge that Karma can be a bitch.

Bianca

I recently purchased a pet chicken called Bianca. She is white and fluffy with dark beady eyes and she lives in her own elaborate chicken coop. I thought she would be an easy pet to keep, but, as it turns out, she’s high maintenance. She is always hungry, she gets sick and she constantly wants to be entertained. And that’s only the beginning…

Bianca is a virtual pet. She lives in her own affluent virtual world inhabited by a multitude of other virtual pets, all on a quest to earn virtual cash and buy more virtual stuff. I purchased Bianca so I could play interactive games with my grandchildren, a concept that intrigued me but, it seems, this feature isn’t high on the site’s priority list. It’s very difficult to meet up in game rooms without being aggressively overrun by other virtual pets that are either starved for attention or, considering the life Bianca leads, spoiled rotten.

I’ve spent time as an interloper in this virtual world, trying to evaluate the quality of the time spent on such a site. Certainly children learn to take care of their virtual pets, but beware, its pets, not pet. Pets need friends, right, and therefore there is a big push to add to the virtual pet community. Poor Bianca remains alone, only finding companionship in game and reading rooms where she meets virtual strangers on a superficial level.

Each pet comes with a virtual room and some virtual money. Like anyone just starting out in life, there are necessities to acquire – a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, food and furniture, maybe a television, a trampoline, a motorized scooter – the list is endless. With a little cash anything is possible. And where does the cash come from? It comes from a small daily allowance, answering quiz questions, playing arcade games, and maybe getting a job.

At first I thought Bianca should take the high road and become a valuable member of her virtual society. She went to school and was rewarded for her achievements. Then she looked for a job. There wasn’t much for an inexperienced chicken to do but she tried hard to be successful. The tasks got harder very quickly. Poor Bianca couldn’t keep up and her confidence was shaken. (Lord knows how five-year-olds do this!) However, she managed to earn enough to add rooms and a yard to her home and purchase food and clothing.

But Bianca yearned for more. I tried to find a creative outlet for her, or some community-minded activity that would teach her to share, but other than buying and sending toys to other virtual pets – the ones belonging to the grandchildren – there was no opportunity to be a nice, upstanding chicken. She raises virtual fruit and vegetables in her virtual garden and occasionally attempts jobs that challenge my dexterity.

           

Eventually Bianca and I had a virtual breakthrough. She was able to save up and buy a virtual pool table and she discovered she was very good at playing pool – so good, in fact, that she now earns a steady, if somewhat shady, income from her talent and has been able to turn her home into a virtual mansion, take virtual vacations, visit virtual the virtual spa, and has a six-figure savings account. I wonder, as Bianca chalks her cue yet again, if perhaps a little more emphasis on relationships, sharing, community service and charitable donations, were they available to her, it might do her some good.

Published in airdrielife magazine summer 2010

Meet Betty Jane Hegerat and The Boy

Today I would like to welcome

Alberta author and good friend, Betty Jane Hegerat to my blog. Betty Jane is the author of three works of fiction, Running Toward Home (2006), Delivery (2009), and The Boy (2011) as well as a collection of short stories, A Crack in the Wall (2008). She is also the author of several short stories and creative non-fiction pieces published in both Canada and the United States.

The subject today is The Boy, a novel described as metafiction by publisher Oolichan Books, which weaves fiction and non-fiction together beautifully to create a compelling read centred around a tragic time in Alberta history. Documented events recalled by the author are intertwined with fiction through the prodding of a concerned fictional narrator and the story of her modern day family. The real boy is Robert Raymond Cook, the last person to be hanged in Alberta, for murdering his father, step-mother and siblings in Stettler in 1959. The fictional boy, whose story plays out in what seems to be a sinisterly parallel fashion, is the step-son of the fictional narrator, Louise.

Both reality and fiction are set in small town Alberta, places that seem idyllic to many for their friendliness, slower pace, and, more significantly, their safety. Having moved to what was then a small town many years ago for those very reasons, I asked Betty Jane to comment on this setting.

Hi, Ellen.  Thanks for inviting me, and for turning the attention to the setting in this book.  While I was doing the research for The Boy, visiting towns in central Alberta, recalling my own childhood in New Sarepta, and Camrose, imagining the fictional town of Valmer to which I moved Louise and her family, I spent a lot of time thinking about both the positives and the negatives of small town life.  So on to your questions:

What draws people to small town life? Are small towns really safer than the big city or is it an illusion?

 I think there is a belief that small towns are safer, friendlier, less stressful places to live.  That people look out for one another and that raising children in that environment gives them a sense of belonging and community.  Interestingly, when I interviewed Dave MacNaughton, he told me that he moved his family to Stettler after he graduated from law school, because he felt it would be a better, safer, place to raise a family.  His first case in the law firm he joined in Stettler was his defence of Robert Cook in what was to become one of Alberta’s most infamous murder cases.  So much for the quiet, mundane legal career he’d anticipated.  In fact, so much for the illusion that violence is the property of large urban centres.  The Stettler area was the site of two other mass murders with in a decade of the Cook case.  Perhaps there is security in living in a community where strangers stand out, and it’s difficult for someone with criminal intent to move about anonymously. And perhaps there is less to fear when we live in the midst of people who have a long history together.  On the other hand, in a startling number of violent crimes, the perpetrator is someone known to the victim.  In the case of the three murders the community of Stettler remembers well, the crime was committed by a stepson in one, a husband and father in another, and a neighbour in the third.  But these are exceptional, and Dave MacNaughton did tell me that the move to Stettler was the right one, because the small law firm and the wonderful community did give him time for his family and they feel deeply-rooted.

Is the sense of community in a small town where everyone knows everyone else’s business a positive or negative thing for a family who has a “bad” child?

I know that the lack of privacy in smaller centres, whether it’s around children, or marriages, or health issues, or finances, is something I would find difficult if I moved to a small town.  But people who grow up in those communities accept that transparency, and I think there is an ingrained sense of what can be gossiped and to whom, that comes with an equally ingrained sense of who “belongs” and who does not.  Robert Cook grew up in Hanna, and the town knew him as a young boy prone to mischief, but a boy who had lost his mother and had a close bond with his dad.  The town of Stettler, on the other hand, met him as an adolescent who was already in trouble with the law.  He was seldom with the family, and my sense from talking with people in Stettler is that he was seen as trouble, and an embarrassment to his family.  His visits home, and the brief period he actually lived with Ray and Daisy in Stettler didn’t afford him the status of “community member” even though his parents had gained that quickly.  In my fiction, Louise’s story, the town to which Jake and Louise move is Jake’s hometown, and even though Danny is already a problem the community is tolerant.  People speak to Jake about Danny’s behaviour before they take it to the police, and even then they offer reassurance that this is something he will “grow out of”, just a phase. It’s Louise who is the outsider, and perhaps this is my own projection of how I would feel moving to a close-knit town with which I’d had no previous connection.  

Are small towns like Louise’s small town different from small towns in the late 1950s?

While today’s small communities still have a core of long-time families, many of them have become commuter towns, and have had an influx of people seeking that ideal that illusive quieter, slower lifestyle.   As well, there is a greater tendency for children who grow up in these communities to move on, and often farther away than their parents would have ventured. Immigration in the past few decades has brought people from all over the world to smaller centres as well to our big cities.  So different demographic, greater mobility, more in common with the cities, I think.  One of the questions a reader asked me just a few days ago, was,  “Will the Peters family stay in Valmer?”  Interesting. J  I have the sense that Louise isn’t done with me yet, and perhaps I’ll find out some day. 

To listen to a clip of Betty Jane reading from The Boy:
http://bettyjanehegerat.com/2011/05/31/talking-about-small-towns-and-bad-boys-with-ellen-kelly/

That time of year again

My column, published in airdrielife magazine (http://airdrielife.com/), Spring 2011.

Gardening, like learning a foreign language, comes easier to some than to others. I am one of the others. I don’t like gardening. There, I’ve said it. Admitting to not enjoying gardening comes close to supporting non-breast feeders on the scale of societal abominations, but let’s be clear. I like gardens and I like planting things and watching them grow. However, I have no aptitude for picking the right plants for the right spaces, I don’t like mucking about in the soil, and I don’t like watering the little sprouts while being eaten alive by mosquitoes. However, a certain amount of gardening is necessary if I want to enjoy my yard.

I usually start out with a burst of energy in February. With lengthening days, my tiny sprouts, carefully planted in milk cartons and little peat pots, are primed to burst forth in time to transplant to planters and beds. But this is optimistic. Year after year, I start plants only to have them wither, possibly from lack of water, light or both. I prepare the soil and plant bedding out plants from the nursery with only slightly more success and when tender, delicate perennials poke through in other people’s gardens, my hardy ones remain dormant. Not a crocus to be found. Sometimes a rare tulip pushes through, only to be frozen by a late frost that somehow doesn’t hit the tulips in the yard across the street.

Years ago, I gave up on anything fancy. In my yard, I have peonies, daisies, a few day lilies, a couple of hardy rose bushes, a poppy (yes, just one) and several lovely plants whose names I can’t remember. I have low-growing snow-in-summer planted behind towering day lilies, ground hugging campanula ensconced near the roots of a seven foot rose bush, a Virginia creeper that, rather than cling to brick as my neighbour’s does, flops lamely along the fence. I dig and poke, but not with much enthusiasm. There seems to be more weeds than plants and mostly, I can’t tell the difference.

People tell me I have a lovely yard, due mostly to the lawn, kept manicured by my husband. At least that part is tidy. When I visit other gardens, with flowers blooming in rows, dancing like well-dressed maidens in the breeze, I am in awe. I make plans – next year my garden will be like this. But when I return home, to my lawn swing, my cup of tea and my book, and see the unorganized wildness of determined perennials, violas thriving in sidewalk cracks and under the swing, surprise plants – gifts that have arrived in bird dropping, and the disorder growing around me, I am not tempted to change it. Somehow there is comfort in the confusion.