Section I, about the news
With a title like that, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that I’m not feeling super today. I’m getting sick of cold, rainy spring days, and the sunshine this morning only made the return of the clouds that much more painful and unwelcome. The fact that my house is not under six feet of water is certainly a bonus, but I feel guilty thinking of those who are going through the horror of losing their belongings to flooding right now all over the province.
Beyond the local trials people are enduring, the ones further afield are also bringing me down. I’m firmly of the opinion that listening to the news is bad for my mental health, so I usually only hear it by accident. Or when my husband tells me what’s happening with the Mueller report, or my friend tells me the latest lies spouted by The Donald. How to describe how it makes me feel to hear all this bad news? There’s anger, frustration, horror, but mostly there’s this helplessness that’s painted over all the rest. I’m reminded of the old saw “God help me to accept the things I cannot change”. The only way I can accept them is to think about them as little as possible, because when I do hear about them I can’t help but care. Yes, I’d love to hear that Trump has been impeached, but until that day comes, please don’t tell me anything about the process. It’s beyond anything depressing, mostly because it might very well not happen.
Section II, where I think about my dear mother.
The other day when I was editing my latest knitting vlog (The Guilty Knitter, check it out and subscribe!) , I was trying to decide what to put at the end of it. I always put a little tag, either an extra little video or some pics of a recent vacation–whatever–to reward those viewers who make it to the end. I was browsing through my photos, therefore, and came across a bunch of beautiful photos of my mother from her youth.
Seeing them reminded me that the day before (April 24th) was the seventh anniversary of her death, so I promptly posted a bunch of them as a tribute to her. I love those old photos. They are from a time before my memory of her, mostly, but there’s one of her in a long cloth coat, a coat I remember very well. It was forest green with large brown buttons and she must have worn it for a long time, because I was the fourth baby out of four and I remember it. In the picture of her, she looks to be in her twenties or thirties, it’s hard to tell. She was 34 when I was born, so it’s likely she wore that coat for at least ten years. I’ll insert the picture here so you can see how beautiful she was.
I guess that coat means a lot to me because it was probably the first one I remember her wearing. I can’t separate it from my earliest memories of her, almost. Don’t forget, I grew up in Montreal where the winters are, let’s be frank here, about seven months long, and it’s not as though my Mom would have had a lot of spare coats that she could switch out whenever she wanted to. Nope, it was that coat or a spring jacket, whatever that might have looked like, I have no memory of it, since she probably only wore it for two weeks each spring and fall. It’s making me a bit teary, thinking of that coat.
So many memories are locked up in my Mom, the key thrown away when she died.
I’m absolutely going to get down to the basement very soon and go through the box of essays she wrote. So ridiculous that every time I go down to do my laundry and spot that box, there are always two or three large items in the way, so I think, ‘I’ll get it later’…. Honestly!! Maybe if I keep mentioning it here on my blog, I’ll be forced, from pure shame, to finally get around to it. Which reminds me that my mother had a round green fridge magnet called “A round toit”, so I think I come by my procrastination honestly.
To be continued….
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