Home from School

I was talking to a friend this week who asked me "what was it like coming home from school when you were young"? Immediately my imagination sprang over to the old wood stove and yellow sunshine in my mothers kitchen .An old tin match box reflected the sun in my eyes sometimes, and a horse shoe hung upside down over the glass fronted door, while the big black kettle swung out fin-suite, fin-suite, tittle tittle back and forth over the cast iron shinning black stove top.
This time of year in late winter was the most precious of all coming in out of the cold weather we be skating tobogganing or just home from the school bus ride, this small room was paradise.
"Kathleen take your boots off I just scrubbed the porch floor", she would sing out, as she may be in the living room or upstairs who knew, but she knew when we came in every time never missed a mark.Then she may have been just sitting there in prayer sometimes her head back in her chair eyes closed and a pleasant very natural light on her face. Sometimes she would be waiting for the donuts to finish cooking in the deep fryer." Have to make your father some sweets for his lunches this week".
Yellow-Hello was the color of my mommy's kitchen and white with floors so clean you could eat off them until the dog came in or one of her seven cats. We were the last of the farmers in the area but my mother grew up on a farm with only a mother and a couple of Uncles to help out along with her four sisters.Arletta,Mildred Sarah and Ida. Some liked to call her Idy..
It was not unusual to hear her say as I was coming in the porch "don't take your boots off just run these potatoes over to Ted or another neighbour Doris.
One day I was there in her kitchen after school and I was talking about these white buck shoes I wanted, all the other kids had them.I thought this was going to work on her, She looked at me very seriously and ask me "If I jumped off the bridge would you?" "No!" I replied without a second thought.Little did I know this was my early days and ways of leadership training in my moms kitchen after school.Be a leader not a fool.
My mother was a solid woman in her small village of Edegett's landing in Albert Co. NB
She loved kids and we her two adopted daughters knew we were loved. She could sew us a new dress better than any store, make a wedding cake, or wedding dress, a costume for the school play. She loved to laugh and knew how to laugh at herself. This is the greatest gift she gave  me.Don't take life to serious and don't make mountains out of molehills.Sometimes mom would share the kitchen with dad he liked to cook and his meals were very healthy and tasty.No cotton wool bread for him we made homemade bread everyday, to go along with fresh vegetables, greens home made jams fish jellies and fruit.
Today my kitchen is bright the pot is on and my shoes are off while I cook clean and sing into my future a brighter place because of my mothers kitchen and all we found there..

well its Christmas time again, have you thanked Mother Earth by giving tobacco to the earth with a quiet prayer of thank you for the life of your blessed tree.The giving tree is a blessed tree, sacred in ways beyond all others it has the power to join souls with you in your celebrating time.Thank you Motherth thou art the rose in my being, the incarnation of my blood, keeper of all that is scared in and on the earth.
 

a philosophy of the Irish Soul

"Material wealth is the bases of right living".    Devalaria 

The Inner Man

They say when we grow older we can see the reflection in the mirroring of our parents teachings.My parents had wonderful teachings.I have benefited well from them.Some of the rules were foolish and overprotective but we have left most of them behind.I believe we refine the  myths in our own minds as we grow older,seeking some kindness from our own spirits ever flowing upstream as the past generation flows by continuously. One very strange behavior my mother had was when the selling travellers came to the door she would hide us and not let them into the house,it did not happen often as for the most part we were always living out as much as in in warm weather.I remember being hustled off to the bedroom and momma saying in a low whisper "lets be very very quiet until the person at the door goes away."
The teachings usually are taken on or discarded by the next generation depending on the nature of the world around them.They have not always been to our benefit,health and well being.
I love my parents they were "good folk", yet I remember times when I drifted away from their understandings into my own.I was always developing my own character and beliefs,somewhat sentimental and foolish to people of a greater persuasion and experience.
I grew up in a rural setting,a farm on its way to progressive ideals.I for some strange reason loved people, especially old ones.My grandparents lived with us till their deaths much like West Indians, there were not as many nursing homes and there was honor in taking care of your "OWN" we owned our own people.
My tale here today may seem insignificant to some but to me at the time it was a crossroads for me.I began to leave home in search of my own after this incident.I remember it well.I was 17 years old and it was coming upon Christmas time.My father was coming up into his late 40"s and was working very hard to maintain us a very well maintained lifestyle,rich in many material ways.My mother came from a very wealthy lifestyle.I was pondering as we sat in the livingroom one afternoon on what to buy Nana and Pappa for Christmas.My father said "Im putting money in an envelop for them", and my heart sank.I felt so sad, that they would not get a chosen gift from him." At the time I brushed it aside and yet in my deep inner mind I knew this was wrong for me.WRONG in that it was missing the point of Spirit and Spiritual renewal that Christmas has always stood for for me on so many levels.Healthy famalies grow up and move away, in thought and rituals.I love my dad but I do not do the same as he did nor think the way he did about the values I have nor my cultural rituals.
Is it the generation gap or did he just not GET it????I lost a connection to him that day, a lack of perception in my view of him shifted to a clarity in me.I did not agree then nor do I now, and so now when I see this I think of this time and how much I believe in Spiritual connection from one soul to another.I hope I can always get my friends a gift that says this is how I see you in some way.
Growing and expanding,loving and learning,growing and expanding,loving and learning.Through eternity.
Love ya dad thanks for the mirror.

her voice sounded like 

detox

During my forties I took a job in a detox centre with Canada Health and Welfare, over on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. This career took me to the West Indies later in my life.

Working as a counsellor and Reiki Practioner today with a bit more foresight and wisdom I can see how the trail has been allowing me to consolidate my gifts and abilities.

Humour is the greatest gift outside of vision, I have been cultivating in this lifetime. Many funny times were experienced there over my two years in service there.

One day four or five of us were having a smoke in the smoking room and talking about this and that.

There was myself, a very prominent singer’s wife from Newfoundland, she didn’t weigh 90 lbs soaking wet. I never in my days as a rehab counsellor saw a person shake with the tremors like she had the day before. It was as if she was in an electric shock for 12 hours.

An,elderly woman around 74 who’s doctor had her on velum for 14 years was slumped over at the table! One of the nurses Mary was there. We were both easy to talk to.

We told of baby deliveries, recipes, and finally the conversation turned to menopause.

The old woman very drowsily over in the corner with a cigarette sticking up out of her face says, “Huffy, menopause never affected me can’t say I had any problems there!”

In a flash the wit of the newfie girl flew a spuu of words that went something like this. ”Yeah yaw old fucker, ya probably got drunk and slept through it”!!

Well the whole room of women laughed for days on this one and the elderly woman felt acceptance on the spot. For this was the type of language she was accustomed to. It was very helpful for this elderly woman who desperatlry wanted to go home had found it very difficult to trust the medical comminuty after having such a tramatic experience with her last doctor.She then was able to last the five weeks in hospital and plan a solid follow-up for when she did return home.