Your Special Day

Yesterday was my birthday.

All things considered, it was a pretty good day. I talked to all my kids and a few other relatives. I got many warm wishes over Facebook. Some cookies and homemade face masks were dropped off at my house by a friend. My husband made French toast for breakfast, barbecued steaks, made a cake and somehow even managed to procure gifts. Pretty good considering we’re stuck here with three feet of snow outside in the middle of a pandemic. It doesn’t compare to last year when the world was good and three kids were all in the same place at the same time and we went out for cocktails and dinner, but people made an effort to make me happy and it was appreciated.

Birthdays are funny things. No one asked to be born, yet we honour their existence with greetings and gifts on that one day. That one day when we are encouraged to be self indulgent, to celebrate our own uniqueness, rather than thinking about others.

I think back on the birthdays of long ago, those many birthdays of my childhood, a childhood where birthdays were big events thanks mostly to my mom. I try to find meaning. 

I am sure if she had been born in a different era, Mom would have been a career woman but she was a 1960s mom who put all her energies into home and community and family. She loved big projects and entertaining. She included everyone in these events. I wonder now if she had ever been excluded herself in her own childhood. Or if growing up in the depression  made her more aware of the suffering of others. She never talked about it, but I wonder. Or perhaps as a teacher in a series of small towns, she had seen the pain that exclusion caused. Or maybe that was just who she was. Whatever the reason, Mom insisted that every girl in my class got invited to my big day. She spent weeks experimenting with crafts and games and cooking and making goody bags and always seemed to pull off the big event effortlessly.  I know she wanted me to feel special and I did. And she wanted to be a good hostess by making all her guests feel welcome. These parties caused me stress. I was the centre of attention, something I have never enjoyed. I was a quiet introverted kid who mostly lived in a magical world of my own imagination and big crowds made me anxious.

Grade two me.

In grade two there were 42 kids in our class, half girls, and they were all invited to my birthday. Mom went all out. Goody bags were paper lunch bags decorated with bunny faces and bunny ears. Cookies were little nests of dough rolled in coconut and filled with jellybean eggs. Crafts were making our own decoupage brooches out of photos cut from magazines. I had a new dress for the day. 

Me with my best friends Patti and Vivianne

It was spring, most of the snow had melted, and I was on my way back to school after lunch on party day when I was suddenly gripped by such stomach pains I had to lie down on the side of the road-it was pure nerves. Eventually I dragged my way back home where I was put promptly to bed before the party.  On any other day, after school activities would have been cancelled. You don’t go to school, you don’t do anything else.  But 20-plus little girls were coming to a party, so the party was going to happen.

And so it proceeded. A lot of running around. A cake shaped like a castle. So many presents. Colouring books and crayons and paper dolls. Girls I barely knew dressed in their party dresses, standing awkwardly with other girls. Shy girls, poor girls, farm girls, daughters of engineers and teachers and truck drivers and the unemployed- I guess. I didn’t think about that back then. I didn’t know unemployment or poverty existed. All I knew was that I was at the centre of things and I didn’t much like it. I was supposed to be friends with kids I didn’t even know. I was eight. It was supposed to be all about me. And it wasn’t about me at all.

Girls and cake

It’s something I look back on and wonder about. I wonder what my mom was thinking. I know my grade three party was a lot smaller. And I think about how the most powerful lessons in life are not necessarily the intended lessons. My mom probably learned something about me that she didn’t know. I learned something about her. I also learned a little bit about what it means to be a hostess. Mostly what I learned was that nothing is ever all about you. Not really. Even when you want it to be.

Nothing.

As my big day unfolded yesterday, I read about impossible situations in our province, country, continent and globe. Layoffs and shortages and homelessness. Uncertainty. Homelessness. Hunger. Fear.

As I celebrated being me, I watched the coronavirus numbers tick ever upward, so many infected and the dying here in my own province and in the world at large. Almost impossible to imagine as I sit here in my comfortable house in my little town.

Every day we all go about our business, trying to fill our time, thinking about our minor inconveniences and our larger struggles but underneath it all, we wonder where things will end up when all is said and done. What will the world look like? How many will die? How will we live?

Yesterday was my birthday. It was full of well-wishes and phone calls and gifts and doing whatever I wanted. But it wasn’t just about me. It never is. Ticking away in the background is always injustice and inequality and uncertainty and people trying to make things better.

It’s a lesson that has taken me a long time to learn.

Thanks Mom.

My Father's Letters

Our daughter Jordan was home last week. Recently engaged, she asked me what I knew about her grandparent's engagement since neither of them are around to tell her about it.

They were high school teachers in Dawson Creek when Dawson Creek was young. They were a bit older than most of their colleagues- Dad was a WW II pilot and an engineer before he became a teacher, Mom had a degree in Commerce and a Masters Degree from the U of A, but neither had found their "soulmate." As the only two single teachers at their school, they were frequently thrown together at staff events. Before long, they started going around together. Then they became an "item". Then they started wondering if they were just together because they were the only two single people they knew. Or maybe that the one thing they had in common was that they were both teachers. My dad got cold feet. He resigned his job, got a new one in Victoria, and went to Syracuse New York to take summer school courses in teaching special ed, which was for some reason the area he, as a decorated WW II pilot with an engineering degree, had been assigned. My mom stayed behind.  They wrote back and forth. My mom went on a cruise to Alaska to mend her broken heart. Out of the blue, my dad proposed.

"I know their story," I told Jordan.  "And I have his letter of proposal."

Stored away in a box of paper, my dad's love letters to my mom, in his perfect penmanship, written with a fountain pen in turquoise ink. Eleven letters I had never had the nerve to read. Eleven letters that went with her from Dawson Creek to Victoria to Trail, back to Dawson Creek, to Tumbler Ridge, and finally back to Victoria. Details both personal  and mundane. Why did she save them? Mementos of their early life together? A symbol of his love? Did she mean for anyone else to read them? I think she did. 

So I gave them to my daughter to read, and on a road trip to the airport from whence she would return to her adopted nation and her fiance, Jordan read them all with gasps and laughter and the occasional "Oh Granddad!"

 Here they are!

My mom and dad

Grandmother

by Elizabeth and Jordan Ramsey

Grandmother with Jordan and Elizabeth

The one thing that always sticks out to me about my grandmother is her stubbornness. If the woman had made up her mind about something, that was it. Grandchildren were to be spoiled. If you’re going to have a party, you have to invite every possible guest. She was not sick. She did not want to eat…unless you were offering her cookies or coffee. She did not need a walker, she didn’t need help with anything. Even when maybe, she might have needed a little help, and she might even have eventually accepted it, but she would never admit to it. I might relate to this a little.

I think this got everyone a little annoyed, from time to time. Especially towards the end of her life. Or ask my dad about what she’d do when he told us we couldn't have ice cream before dinner. But actually, I think that was one of her more admirable qualities. According to my sister, she did her Master’s thesis before Cambridge even recognized women as full students. Despite being a fairly shy person, she still seemed to belong to every organization. She married late and still had a full family. She did what most people wouldn’t have had the courage to do.

Some of my happiest memories as a child were visits to their house in Tumbler Ridge. We’d arrive late at night and I’d  wake up to see their big brown house on the hill lit up by the moon, and quickly pretend to be asleep again so my dad would carry me inside. In the morning we would have our mandatory bowl of cereal with granddad while he entertained us with what were apparently inappropriate songs and stories. Grandmother would scold him as she scurried about preparing for whatever her next event was. Even as I kid I knew she was trying not to laugh.

Kieran, Jordan, Hart, Eric, Kyla, Darby and Elizabeth

Their job was to spoil you, and they did that job very well. I remember one time they took us to the grocery store and let us pick out whatever kind of cereal we wanted: even one Mom and Dad would never have allowed. The box of Trix came with a fee toy, so of course they had to get a separate box for each kid. Turns out Trix is actually a terribly disgusting cereal, and we rediscovered the boxes of Trix months later in the cupboard. This time the box came with a new surprise: moths. Our trips to the store always took what seemed like a lifetime. They knew everyone. And everyone needed to meet their grandchildren. I felt like a celebrity.

Jordan and Elizabeth with Grandmother

Chaos reigned in their house. There were no rules, and an endless supply of sugary treats. There were treasures and half-finished projects everywhere that you were free to explore. No surface, horizontal or vertical, remained uncluttered with books, paintings, old photos, old newspapers, stuffed toys, and potted plants. Everything had a place. And everything had a story. Jordan and I were once told to go through my grandmother's mugs with her, to make more room in the cupboards. None of them were particularly nice. But every single one had a story. Which she told us. After a few hours of this I think we finally gave up. There might have been a couple she allowed us to remove. And to be clear we weren’t planning to throw away the mugs, we were just going to put them in the basement.

The first time I realized something wasn’t right with my grandmother was when I saw her napping one day. She rarely sat, so sleeping was pretty alarming. She was never quite the same after that day. She still tried to do everything she did before, but it became a struggle and frustration was not something she liked to deal with. My granddad bought a smaller house without telling her. Eventually she agreed to move into it. As long as she got to renovate it the way she liked. The day I saw her actually watching television was even more alarming, and not just because of the volume.  We used to dread grandmother coming into the television room. She’d walk in, coffee in hand, take one quick glance at the screen, and you knew your television programme was about to come to an abrupt and unsatisfying end. Grandmother would immediately turn to the person sitting next to her and begin to regale them with tales of Jean, Aunty Peggy and the Beaverlodge crew, or something happening in the community. It was astounding how long she could carry out a conversation with little to no encouragement and undeterred by the television, three grandchildren running through the kitchen and Granddad yelling after them, two dogs barking, three more family members barging through the door, and countless other distractions that were common occurrences at any family gathering. At the end of her story Grandmother would always pause and laugh, she would reflect on what she’d just said, another thought would come to her, and she’d be off again.

Through the breast cancer, her days with the walker, her stroke, and her dementia, certain key traits of grandmother always came through. Her stubbornness was one, of course. Another was her love for her family. I wouldn’t call her affectionate (that’s an understatement), but there was always an unspoken understanding that nothing could ever be more important than us. We saw it when Grandmother and Granddad would drive for miles and miles for the ‘Ramsey family birthday’ and Christmas concerts; we saw it when she would proudly show us off to anyone we encountered in town; we saw it in her face when we showed her our latest report cards or shared our latest achievement (let’s not count the time Hart failed Grade 3 Social Studies). And we saw it in the understanding that we would always be together for Christmas, playing canasta until late, surrounded by family, accepted and loved. 

Jordan and Grandmother

Other people have a granny or a grandma – I had a grandmother. For some reason, that name was what suited Janet Hartford and for that – with everything it came with: the stubbornness, the stories, the competitiveness, the hoarding, the altruism, and the loyalty – I am grateful.   

Janet Isabel Hartford

Janet Isabel Hartford

July 9 1922-July 16 2014

Eulogy by Nicola Ramsey and Crosbie Bourdeaux

When I was a kid, every summer we would go to my grandparents farm now owned by my cousin  Peter and his wife Eileen.  My cousins Sarah and Jansi and I used to play dressups in a room upstairs that was called “the long room”.  One day we were poking through some boxes and we found a box of dolls. Beautiful old china dolls. Knowing these must have belonged to our moms, we took them to our grandmother. Ah yes, she said, this one - a beautifully dressed blonde with perfect hair- is Peggy’s. The totally bald, undressed doll with broken fingers and a cracked finish on her face was my Mom’s. Why were the nice dolls all Aunty Peggy’s and the old broken one was my mom’s? It wasn’t fair! My grandmother told told me “Your mother was hard on her things. She played hard. She loved that doll to death.”

Mom and Peggy with their dolls

That doll told me something about my mom. It’s just taken me a few years to know what. Mom did everything hard. Everything she chose to do, she did full tilt, with all of her amazing energy and intelligence and determination. And although she didn't show it, she threw herself into everything she did with love-love for her family and love for her community.

Janet Isabel Martin, or Jimmy, as she was known to her family, was born July 9 1922 in Delia Alberta. Her dad was an orphan from England who worked for the Bank of Commerce and her mom was part of a pioneer family who settled the Beaverlodge area. Gramain, Grandad, Aunty Peggy and Mom lived in a few small prairie towns until they ended up in Edmonton. Every summer Mom, Peggy and Gramain would come back to visit the farm. After suffering from meningitis as an infant, Mom was small and frail, but according to my aunt, no matter what they did, Mom was always one step ahead. She ran faster, climbed higher, and was afraid of nothing. She was an excellent student, skipping several grades in school. She graduated early and took a secretarial programme. Then she completed a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Alberta and worked for the American Army during WW II. She went back to school to become a teacher. She taught school and was girls’ guidance counsellor in Athabasca and Grande Prairie before returning to the U of A to obtain her Masters degree- in which she tried to discover what qualities make a person a good teacher, finding that aside from spelling and overall intelligence, it’s almost impossible to predict what people will become good teachers. 

At their wedding in Beaverlodge

She moved to Dawson Creek where she met my dad. After an on again off again relationship, my mom took a cruise to Alaska. While she was gone, my dad wrote to propose. They got married and moved to Victoria and then Trail BC where I was born. 

Then it was back to Dawson Creek and the birth of my brothers Rob and Doug and my sister Crosbie.

Me, my sister Crosbie, brothers Bob and Doug

Mom and Dad built a big house in Dawson Creek-at least, it seemed big to me- where our family lived for more than 20 years. It was the setting of coffee klatches, meetings, parties and teacher gatherings. Always one to host big events, Mom wasn't much for housework, saying that “Housework is for people who can’t think of anything better to do with their time.”  So a few hours before any big gathering would come the dreaded cry “All hands on deck’” followed by all of us racing around tidying up.

Mom registered the four of us in almost every activity the town offered. Hockey, lacrosse, curling, swimming figure skating, soccer, boy scouts, volleyball, basketball, guitar lessons, candy-striping, choir, brownies, piano lessons, you name it, we did it.  One of us even took accordion lessons. And it wasn't enough to just sign us up for these activities, Mom had to volunteer herself and my Dad. In the figure skating club, Mom was in charge of the costumes. She and her good friend Jean Cameron would take the Greyhound to Edmonton, returning with bolts of theatrical satin and glitter and our house would be transformed into a costume making factory for several weeks, to the point my dad would answer the phone “Mile Zero Figure Skating Annex.” When we joined the swim team, for years Mom ran the marshalling area swim meets and Dad was the head judge.

She was also very involved in St Mark’s Anglican Church. Among other things she made gorgeous stuffed animals for the fall craft sale with leftover fabric from the figure skating carnival. Through the church, she and Dad helped found an organization called “Fish”. Through Fish, our parents would be called out late at night to help total strangers in need. Once it was a suicidal young mom with no one to turn to. Another time it was a guy stuck at his farm in the bush who couldn’t get his car started- and my cousin Geordie suddenly found himself enlisted to help.

My mom was very attached to her parents, aunts, sister, nieces and nephews and our Beaverlodge family played an important part in our lives. Many Sundays were spent at the family farm. Many summers at the family property on the Red Willow River. Many hands of canasta played around the kitchen table-a game my parents continued on into their retirement and with their grandchildren in later years.

Mom and Dad were partners in everything, including school. Apart from the staff parties, there was the early morning grad breakfast at our house for dozens of grads, once with a rooster. When the high school burned down on a Friday, she spent the weekend creating a mascot, and Palmer the Penguin was ready to greet students and staff at Monday’ assembly. When she went back to work, I remember her dismay at the level of work her students were handing in. Should I lower my expectations? she asked my dad. No, he said, make them rise to yours.

And speaking of high expectations, mom had high standards for her own kids. We were to do our best but when we failed, we were forgiven. If we took on any project, big or small (preferably big), she was there to help. We were to be compassionate. We were to be humble but at the same time know we were just that little bit better that everyone else. And God help the teacher who did not recognize our talents.

Mom didn't do anything by half measures. She did everything with her whole self, including being a mother and a grandmother. She wasn't an affectionate woman and she never hugged me or told me she loved me. She didn't have to.  But she was unwavering and unconditional in her love. She had the kind of love that was expressed through faith, example and action.

....
Mom was so involved in this community, a community that she quickly grew to love. Her tireless efforts in fund raising and sitting on boards was all done to ensure that Tumbler Ridge became a community that one wanted to settle in and raise their children. Those that knew her well, were never surprised to see her volunteering for yet another project, and volunteer dad to help with her many projects. Often seeing her with Cotton Candy flying in her hair. She dedicated her life to her family and the four of us kids and then her 8 grandchildren. As a teacher and librarian she was dedicated to the youth that she taught, taking personal interest in who her students were, they weren't just names in a role call. She was vibrant, positive, active, energetic, supportive person and dedicated to everything that she did.

Mom was truly her happiest when surrounded by her family and extended family. Mom and Dad were once asked by a reporter, What would you say your greatest accomplishment was? Their answer was not the pool, the numerous boards she sat on, the craft fair that became a huge yearly event, not the Ten Thousand villages sale, the many groups she helped establish or the articles they wrote for the paper their answer was simply "our 4 children"

Our parents were both very humble and never felt that they deserved to be recognized the way that they were here in Tumbler Ridge, through Hartford Gardens, Hartford Courts, the display and story of mom in the foe of the centre here and George Hartford forest of Knowledge, outdoor classroom at the school. When I talked to them both about the naming of Hartford Court, they both said Tumbler Ridge gave far more to us then we did to Tumbler Ridge.

Mom passed away quietly in Victoria on July 16 at the age of 92, she has gone forward to once again be by dad's side, the man she loved and stood beside for over 50 years. She leaves behind to mourn her 4 children and eight grandchildren. Daughter Nicola (Len) Ramsey and children Jordan, Elizabeth and Hart, son Rob (Juanita MacNeil) Hartford and children Kyla and Darby, son Doug Hartford and children Kieran and Eric and daughter Crosbie (Tony) Bourdeaux and child John. Niece Kerry Doidge (Terry Korman) as well as many nieces and nephews great nieces and nephews.

Without a History

Me and my mom in Trail B.C.

I've lost some things in the last little while.  My dad passed away; my kids moved on; my dogs died; a third of my town burned down and friends moved away. I miss what I've lost. But more than those- I miss my mom.

My mom has dementia. When I visit, she often does not know who I am. On some days, she doesn't remember who she is. She doesn't know her name. She asks whether she had ever been married and wonders if she had kids.

To help her with her memory loss, I have been working on a book about her life. As I scan photos and read old letters and news clippings and report cards, I wonder what to include and what to leave out. What really matters? What picture will strike a chord? What does she want to remember? What might she rather forget? And think about fact and fiction and memory and the area that lies in between-history.

One of a long line of independent women, second daughter of a Peace Country pioneer and an English banker, mom was an excellent student.  In her grade three report card from Monitor, Alberta, her teacher wrote "One of the best students I have ever seen." She graduated from high school in Edmonton at age 15 but her parents thought she was too young for university. She took a one year secretarial programme, then received a Bachelor of Commerce from the U of A, worked for the American Army during WW II, completed teaching stints in Grande Prairie and Athabasca, got her M Ed and then became girls counselor in Dawson Creek. She married my dad late in life and they raised four kids.

Family Camping Trip, 1967.

My mom was a dynamo when I was growing up. She kept herself busy not just with being a mom and the wife of the high school principal, but also with a myriad of community projects, mostly related to things we were involved with. Masterminding the costumes of the figure skating carnival, running the marshaling area at swim meets, organizing the hospital auxiliary's candystripers, hosting Dad's staff parties and grad breakfasts and countless church events.  She went back to work when I was 16, first teaching ESL, then sewing, law and math.

Dad and Mom

After her move to Tumbler Ridge, she was the school and community librarian. Retirement was embraced with the energy only a teacher could bring to the job, fundraising for a swimming pool, involvement in the arts, horticulture, a new museum, the annual craft fair and whatever else she could think of. She was awarded the Queen Elizabeth Golden Jubilee Medal. Today Tumbler Ridge boasts Hartford Gardens, Hartford Court senior's housing, and the Hartford Citizenship Award. The Vancouver Province called her a "sprightly octogenarian" -a description that appalled her-when she organized what was then the world's largest potluck dinner.  Shortly after that event, she developed in short order breast cancer, an autoimmune response leading to permanent nerve damage in her hands and feet, pneumonia, and finally had a stroke, accompanied by creeping memory loss. Throughout it all my dad was by her side. When he got sick, they moved to Victoria to be closer to a hospital. Then my dad died. Mom now lives with a caregiver in a house a few blocks from my brother.

These are the facts of my mom's life.  But history is more than facts. History can only ever be a version of the truth, reliant on the perspective of memory. In the absence of my mom's memories, I substitute my own. In that version of my mother's story, she was a brilliant, driven and creative woman. Her exhausting schemes were accomplished through her skills of organization and the ability to delegate- and compensate when delegation failed. We would fend for ourselves when one of her projects was underway, scrambling when we heard the dreaded call "all hands on deck!" She was and is not an affectionate woman. I can't remember being hugged. I know she loved me but she never once told me so. Neither was she sentimental, nor was she introspective. Despite her great talents, she lacked self confidence. She was shy yet frequently pushed my brother and me into situations that made us uncomfortable. My dad used to joke that after retirement people called him "George" while she was still "Mrs. Hartford." Fiercely possessive of her own family, she did not willingly share us with anyone. She never warmed to any of my dad's charming siblings. When one of her children brought home a potential spouse it was never easy.  My husband and I were married for two years before we were given a room with a double bed. Two months after our marriage Mom announced that she'd had a dream in which I had married Stalin.

I miss my mom.  I miss her amazing talents as well as her exasperating qualities. I miss the woman who would switch positions in an argument just to keep things interesting.  The lady who read everything in sight, including cereal boxes and the newspapers meant to light the campfire. The woman who organized spectacular parties for me as a child, but forgot my birthday when I was grown up; the lady who hosted dinners for 60, often leaving the cleanup to others; the lady who sewed me a gorgeous wedding gown, but did not finish it until the guests began to arrive; the lady who would have laid down her life for her grandchild but could never have loved her son-in-law no matter what. As I am driven by the currents of my own history and genetics, I see some of those traits in myself. I am powerless to stop them.

What version of you remains after your memories go? Without your history, who are you? Is it your truest self that is left behind? Or is it some pale imitation of the you that used to be? Is that why we, as humans, strive to preserve our memories in photos, art, literature, film and storytelling? I know, in part, that is why I am creating this book.  My own memories, as well as my mom's, are contained on its pages.

My mom and my sister looking at the book. Christmas 2013.