October 23, 2019

This is a rare essay, because today I am actually writing—for a paragraph or four—about politics.

This past Monday, October 21, the 43rd Canadian general election was held. In Canada, we have a parliamentary system which means we don’t vote directly for the Prime Minister. The leader of the political party that elects the greatest number of members to the legislature (currently 338 seats total) becomes the Prime Minister.

Mr. Trudeau has been re-elected as Prime Minister, but this time with what we call a minority government. That means while his party has the most seats of any of the parties, it doesn’t have a majority of the seats of the legislature (his party now holds 155 seats). The turnout was 66% of eligible voters.

Some people believe that the best governing occurs during a minority government, because in order for legislation to be passed, and to avoid a vote of “non-confidence”, compromises must be made. A “Non-confidence” vote would effectively end the term of the government and another election would have to be called. This can be tricky because we Canadians don’t like to have our choice called into question too soon after we’ve made it. The party that forces another election often doesn’t do well as a result.

The last thing I will say about our election is this. The length of the campaigning period is limited by law. It must be at least 36 days long, but can be no more than 50. This is a good law. It means that we don’t have to endure the bombast and mudslinging of political ads upsetting our supper digestion for too long.

Also on this past Monday, the Ashbury family feasted on our traditional Thanksgiving turkey. Our Sonja hosted us at her house and as usual, cooked a wonderful dinner. I contributed a few things. She doesn’t like stuffing, so I made that for her. I also made the sweet potatoes, and three pies—two pumpkin and an apple.

Though I was quite busy in the kitchen Sunday and Monday morning, once we arrived at her place, I was able to relax and let others do the work. Three of our great-grandchildren were there—our two oldest who are my daughter’s grandbabies—and our youngest one, who is Emma’s daughter and Sonja’s granddaughter. Sonja also invited three of her co-workers, people we’ve met and dined with before. They’re nurses, as she is, and they’re bright with good senses of humor. Altogether there were thirteen of us. Fortunately, Sonja had purchased a twenty-two-pound turkey for the occasion.

A new family tradition, one that we owe to Sonja, is a game we play after supper. It’s a dice game called “left, right, center”, and it’s a lot of fun. We use dollar coins—each player begins with three. Everyone except our eight-month old granddaughter played. And as usual, it was a blast!

At one point during the evening, my husband leaned over and nodded toward our granddaughter, Emma, and her fiancé. “When you’re their age,” he said, “you always end up leaving early because of the children. When you’re our age? Again, you end up leaving early because of the children.” He had a point, as it was a very noisy gathering. Joyful, but noisy.

Our two older great-grandchildren, aged 6 and 5, were full of energy, very rambunctious and very loud. We really enjoyed being with family that night, but still definitely appreciated “listening to the clock on the wall” when we arrived home.

There’s another family tradition I feel I need to mention, one that I consider unfortunate, and this one goes back a couple of generations. When we were kids, my siblings and I, we were aware that our Mom had three brothers, but we only ever saw one of them. He was the brother closest to her in age (Mom was the youngest in her family). We were all quite close with Uncle Howard and Aunt Nora, and saw them regularly.

As my brother, sister and I grew from children into adulthood, my brother and sister also grew to really dislike each other. Despite being the youngest, I was in the midst of that. I got along with my sister—though I did have to work at it and seek Grace in order to do so—and of course, I was and still am fairly close to my brother. My sister died without them ever coming to terms, and I think that he hadn’t spoken to her for a good 10 years at the time of her death.

Raising our own children, our middle son didn’t get along with either his older brother or younger sister. After he passed, I thought that would be the end of enmity between my children, but alas, it’s not so. My son and daughter don’t get along. I very rarely have my oldest son and his family and the girls with theirs together in one place.

Yes, that makes me sad, but I know that I have no authority to change this reality. I’ve learned that you can’t make people get along with each other any more than you can make the sun rise or set. So far, I don’t see a sign of this unfortunate history repeating itself with the children of my son, or with my brother’s sons, for that matter, and that is definitely a blessing.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll take all the blessings I can get.

P.S. As I mentioned last week, for those of you who are used to reading these words via the Yahoo groups, this message was posted at the top of the group page: “Attention: Starting December 14, 2019 Yahoo Groups will no longer host user created content on its sites. New content can no longer be uploaded after October 28, 2019. Sending/Receiving email functionality is not going away, you can continue to communicate via any email client with your group members.” I’m pretty certain that the way I post these words in the Yahoo groups will not be doable after this week’s essay. You can view Wednesday’s Words directly on its blog spot site. A link appears below.

Love,
Morgan
https://wednesdayswordsbymorgan.blogspot.com/
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury