Christmas memories...

 December 27, 2023

For those who keep it, I hope you all had a very good Christmas this year. I hope your celebrations were all that you had hoped they would be, and more.

The three of us here in the Ashbury household were invited to a Christmas Day brunch at the home of our son. It was the first time we’ve brunched with them, and the first actual Christmas day we spent together in many years.

This has always been a very busy season, and one in which it can be difficult to co-ordinate schedules efficiently.

When David and I were first married, we used to alternate spending Christmas Day between my family, and his. My mother wasn’t a fan of “mixing the families”, as she was, in her later years, as much of a hermit as I am today.

To ensure we included everyone, then, often meant spending Christmas Day split in half – breakfast at one place and then supper at the other. In the middle years, and after we moved to the small town that we’re in now, we would host a Christmas day feast that included my in-laws as our guests. By then, my mother had passed, and my brother had his own well established Christmas traditions, in which we partook on the day after Christmas, which here in Canada is known as Boxing Day.

After our nest had emptied, we fell into a new routine; Christmas day at home, Boxing Day at my brother’s house for brunch, and then two more gatherings within the week. Usually, dinner at our son’s with his three children and then one with our daughter and our second daughter and the rest of our grandchildren.

Now here we are again, trying to find a new normal way of doing things. My brother and his wife are both gone now, and the only constant celebration is being hosted by our second daughter at the earliest possible day after Christmas that she and our daughter can coordinate their schedules. This year it will be on January 8^th. As you can imagine, we were very happy to visit with our son and his entire family for a few hours on this past Monday.

As much as my heart would like to throw a big party for everyone, I am long past the time of being able to plan and execute a meal for a dozen plus people. I do contribute a few dishes, of course, to the dinner Sonja hosts. I was also able to take two dishes to my son’s—one of which was the carrot pudding my mother used to make.

The recipe for that pudding is tucked up safely, wrapped up in so many warm and happy memories gathered over the span of my lifetime. We always had it as our desert when I was a child, and for every Christmas that my mother was alive. I didn’t attempt to make it myself until a few years after my mother passed. It’s not a complicated mixture, but it is a steamed pudding that when it’s done looks more like a cake. Boxing Day when my kids were small was spent at my brother’s, and I remember well that first time I brought the pudding there. He took a spoonful and then closed his eyes and sighed. “Yes, this,” he said.

That first time was special. It really was like having Mom with us again.

Our three children always loved that dessert. So much so that one November, when he was about sixteen or so, our younger son, Anthony, came to me with a concerned look on his face. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “It’s been almost a whole year since you made that Christmas pudding, and I’m worried that you might have forgotten how. I know that Grandma and Grandpa are coming for supper. So I think you should make that pudding in the next few days, to make sure that you still have the touch. I’ll be happy to test it, and I will let you know, honestly, if it’s good.”

Yes, I made it in November of that year, as well as in December, for our Christmas guests. And I will be making a second pudding to take to Sonja’s this year, as I have promised my oldest great granddaughter—who loves it—that it will be there.

For me, socially, Christmas has always been about family and traditions. And because that is so, I’m fortunate to have a treasure trove of poignant memories to visit each December. So much of the woman I became is accented by those memories.

They are what makes Christmas time so special for me; they are, quite simply, the only gift I need, a gift that never stops giving.

David and I wish you all a very Happy 2024. May the New Year be the best one, ever!

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

A Christmas tree and crumpled paper...

 December 20, 2023

As of last night, and with the help of two of our great-grandchildren, our Christmas tree is finally up and decorated.

David had taken the tree out of the box and put it up earlier in the day, since we knew the younger ones would be here for supper and to spend time with their grandmother, our daughter. We also had wanted the tree itself to be erected for a few hours ahead of decorating because, different this year for us, we have a kitten-cat in the house.

Smokey is still of the opinion that there are but three things in the world—play, food, and sleep. And the greatest of these is, of course, play. We weren’t completely certain how the tree was going to fare this year.

For the last several years, we have had this artificial tree that stands but four and a half feet tall. When we first erected this tree, we knew immediately that our old, regular-sized ornaments would never do, so we set about purchasing miniature ornaments. I must say that of all the trees we’ve had over the years, I think I’m happiest with this one. We don’t buy tinsel anymore—it’s been about four years since we last laid those silver icicles on the green, manufactured boughs. Of course, that doesn’t mean there is not still the odd piece of a glittering metallic strip to be found.  (David was proud that he saw one and grabbed that sucker right off there as he was putting it together, because, well, cats and tinsel do not a happy combination make.)

After David erected the tree, I took up the box that contained our ornaments and culled out all that were made of glass and therefore easily breakable. Those will have to sit out this year. It seemed to me that it would be the height of arrogance to put glass ornaments on the first-ever Christmas tree of Smokey-kitty. We still had a lot of little wooden and plastic ornaments left to adorn the tree, so that was fine.

After supper, while their Nana did the dishes, I put hooks on ornaments and handed them out to the kids to hang. They listened intently as I asked them to not cluster the ornaments in one spot and to not hang anything near the bottom of the tree. Of course, they nodded their understanding and then proceeded to hang the ornaments in clusters and along the bottom…. well, they’re 10 and 9 years of age, and listened according to the norms for their ages.

A good couple of hours passed after decorating the tree, before the kitty finally noticed that there was something different about the new thing his grandpa had put up in the living room. And about five more seconds after that for him to capture his first prize from the tree—a very miniature toy soldier.

On the positive side, Smokey-kitty was very delicate about separating tree and trinket. On the negative side, those tiniest of ornaments could be a choking hazard for him, so I took it from him, and then moved the handful of others that were of a similar size to a spot out of kitty-sight and therefore, hopefully, out of kitty-reach.

Also on the plus side, Smokey doesn’t seem overly fixated on the new item in his world. While he does love to play, his third most preferred group of toys are the dogs—he has a patented stalking, then leaping very close to but not on them manoeuvre that is truly something to behold. His second-best toy is human feet. Coming, going, cane-aided or not, the little critter loves capturing those feet and then curling around the legs that support them and hanging on—either for a ride, a fling, or to nibble, whatever the mood of the moment may be.

But the number one favorite toy of this silly kitty remains, thank God, the tried-and-true bit of crumpled paper. We keep stashes of paper in the kitchen, in my office, and in the living room. I cut up pharmacy bags and junk mail to amass those stashes. So there, at the ready, are hidden piles of pure kitty bliss. Just waiting to be crumpled into tight balls and tossed.

I am grateful for the availability and efficacy of this simple, so far no-fail distraction. I don’t even mind picking up the deserted and/or cached bunch of “toys” Smokey strews throughout the house on a daily basis. Some can be reused to distract anew, and some are assigned to the trash. And since these bits of paper are all from paper that has already been used once or even twice, I tell myself I am not only entertaining the cat among us.

I’m also doing my part for the environment.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

Tis the season...

 December 13, 2023

The Christmas season is upon us!

If one is inclined to, one can watch a heart-warming movie every day to help put one in the spirit of Christmas. I suppose though, before one does that, one needs to decide something rather important.

Just what is the spirit of Christmas?

Of course, there is no one answer to that question, because like many things, and beyond the historical details of the holiday, the spirit of Christmas is a subjective thing. What it means to you may not align to what it means to me.

When I think of Christmases past, so many snapshots await my attention. I think my earliest memory is of a house full of people talking and laughing, some music, a happy atmosphere, and someone saying something about needing a candle….and little four- or five-year-old me saying, “I will get it!”, and grabbing a candlestick holding a burning candle off a shelf I could just barely reach. Of course, tipping the thing toward me meant spilling hot wax all down my dress…

Because most of the memories I have of my childhood are only snapshots, I can only set that one down and reach for another.  

Christmas was over, and Daddy was taking down the tree and I was sad. Then he said, “Well, Santa hid a gift a little too well!” He reached under the tree and handed me a book! It was titled, “Kim and Katy Circus Days”. I can tell you now that it was written by a woman named Mary Grannan, who was a Canadian author. I do not, however, remember the story. Did I read it? More than likely my daddy read it to me, because he always read to me. He was an author at heart.

One of the last Christmases before I got married, mom, my sister and I were in the living room, opening gifts by the tree. Now, I don’t recall everything we got, but I do recall how we all three laughed, because I had bought my mom and sister each a pair of warm, fuzzy slippers. And my mom had bought each of my sister and I a pair of warm, fuzzy slippers. And my sister had bought each of my mom and I…. you get the picture. It was funny, and kind of wonderful, too, because that house was drafty, and we proved that day there could be no such thing as too many warm, fuzzy pairs of slippers to own.

Older now, I can recall some of the Christmases when our children were small. In those days, David and I only got each other little things, because we put everything into giving our kids the best Christmas possible. Aside from the family tradition of an enormous sit-down breakfast of side bacon, peameal bacon, sausage, eggs, breakfast potatoes, toast, orange juice and grape juice, milk and coffee, there were the gifts. It was a time of staying up late to assemble complicated toys, and making the children wait on the stairs Christmas morning until we had our morning coffee in hand and were seated, as awake as possible, because our biggest gift—our joy—came from watching them. And we never wanted to miss a moment of that. Each year we tried to save up ahead of the day, and each year found us struggling and sacrificing perhaps more than was wise, to see those smiles on Christmas morning.

That whole time in my life, in my memory, is a kaleidoscope of photos and tiny scenes, all filled with so much love. I remember making a point, just after my youngest reached adulthood, of asking all three of them, separately, if they ever recalled a Christmas time that was “less than”.

I can’t tell you how gratifying it was at the time that they each told me that there had never been a Christmas, in their childhood, that hadn’t been wonderful.

That particular memory has given me enormous comfort over the years, especially when I think of our younger son whom we lost in 2006. And that brings me to one other emotion associated with the spirit of Christmas—the shadow of loss.

If we did not love, we would not mourn. And mourning is another very personal, very individual experience. You grieve how you grieve, and when you grieve a child, regardless of that child’s age at the time of their passing, it is a wound that never will heal, and a hole in your heart that will never be filled.

And because that is true for so many people, once you’ve suffered a major loss, then the joy of Christmas becomes more tempered. There comes a bitter-sweet flavor to the holiday that likely will be yours forever.

I always take a few moments, alone, to think back, to remember, maybe to shed a tear, but always to smile with gratitude.

So as you sink yourself into the busyness of holiday preparations, take a few moments along the way to gather your own snapshots. And maybe, you could take a moment to hug a parent who is missing a child, or a friend who is missing a loved one. Doing so would be a gift you give to the one who really needs it, and a gift that will enrich your own heart, as well.

After all, ‘tis the season.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Me, speaking out...

 December 6, 2023

There are a whole lot of questions in this life that I don’t know the answers to. Most of them I likely won’t know until I have the opportunity to ask God, face to face.

I would like to believe that I don’t hate other people. Neither collectively nor individually. I do hate bad behavior that harms others. I do hate injustice. But I don’t hate people in the way that too many in these times appear to hate others.

Sometimes I wonder if hatred toward people is a thing all its own, or if it’s merely a symptom; a means of expressing fear or anger. As I said, I have many questions in this life.

Today is a sombre anniversary in Canada. 34 years ago today, there was a mass shooting at a school – specifically, the Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal, which is an engineering school affiliated with the University of Montreal. This dreadful event has been categorized as an “anti-feminist” mass shooting, as all 14 of the deceased targeted and slain were women. In addition, another 10 women—and four men—were wounded.

I don’t think it’s possible to be aware of world events, to watch news casts, and not know that there is a growing level of violence against different races of people. Some people hate Jews. Some people hate Arabs. Some hate people of color. Some hate people of a different sexuality. Some hate white people. Some hate Indigenous people. And some hate immigrants.

Then there are those who hate not along the lines of ethnicity or color or sexual orientation or place of origin. They do not hate solely on the basis of faith.  They hate beings of every one of those categories, including their own equally. Because they hate women.

Despite the gains toward equality that have been made in the last couple of hundred years, there remains in this world a hatred toward women that defies comprehension.

One need only know the history of the “civilized” world to understand that western society has always been a patriarchal one. Women were at one time considered property. They had value, of course, maybe not as much as a house or a horse or any other asset, but value, nonetheless.

I would like to believe that those attitudes toward women that existed for so long belong in the past. Women can vote, they can attend college and university and can work. They can be business owners, and CEOs. They can, in fact, do practically anything they want to do. For my part, being a woman, I have never believed that women were anything but equal to men. Different, yes of course, but absolutely equal.

And I am always shocked when I am reminded that there is a significant number of the population of the world that does not feel that way. Many men give voice to the principle that women and men are equals, and I do believe that those men do believe that.

And yet there are still times when it becomes clear that many men do not.

News coming out of the two wars raging in our world currently, in Europe and in the Holy Lands, is grim these days. Hatred abounds. It taints the very air we breathe. Atrocities are committed against people, based on faith, yes, and ethnicity, yes. But the very worst atrocities are committed against women and children.

And when you hear that terrorists have used rape as a weapon of war, you know without having to be told that the victims of that weapon are not men.

I do have many questions in this life, and not many answers. But I do believe this one thing: when the numbers of people speaking out against evil, against violence, against injustice becomes large enough; when the sound of their collective voices becomes loud enough, that’s when things begin change.

This essay, today, is me, speaking out as loud as I possibly can.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

https://www.bookstrand.com

 

Snow and choices...

 November 29, 2023

Yesterday we received our first snowfall of the season. For a time, it looked like a blizzard out there, but eventually the driving snow turned to a heavy floating-down snow, until finally tapering off around noon hour.

By then we’d received at least two inches, which compared to the lake effect snow that was attacking areas of Western New York State, wasn’t really much at all.

I’ve often said that the first snow of the season is yes, a beautiful sight to behold. And it is, as far as aesthetics go. But I’m one who requires a more substantial “uplifting aspect”, when it comes to the cold white stuff. For that I need only consider the winter calendar according to the Ashbury household. We are today only one day away from the end of November; winter is October to March inclusive on the Ashbury calendar; therefore, we are but one day away from being 1/3 the way through winter.

And we’ve only now received our first measurable snowfall!

In any given situation, we always have a choice. It can be viewed in a positive light or a negative one. It all depends on how you look at things.

We had planned to go out and get a couple of things yesterday. The snow didn’t interfere with that plan, but our daughter’s car being in the shop for it’s final free maintenance work did. Of course, since she has clients in the wider county, she needed a vehicle and so had the one I’ve been driving—which is actually her car. We don’t own a vehicle ourselves, not since my Buick died.

One of the items on our shopping list hopefully for today is a new pair of winter boots for me. I haven’t had a new pair in a very long time, and I really am overdue. It’s important for me to wear something on my feet that will be warm, and that has a really good tread. I walk very carefully all the time, and never more so than during the winter. I also want to be able to put them on and take them off by myself.

I did check the weather network to see whether or not we’ll be able to head out today; I think it’s a wait and see situation at the moment. It is possible we’ll get more snow squalls today, so we may give it one more day before we make that supply run. Fortunately, we have plenty of toilet paper, and sufficient coffee-making supplies on hand to tide us over.

When you get right down to basics those are the only short-term must-have necessities in life—although I usually phrase that thought a little more indelicately.

I know it’s not quite December, but I have already given some thought as to when we’ll erect our small Christmas tree. Normally this isn’t something that requires a great deal of thought. We put it up whenever.

However, this year we have that new kitten. And while he is technically still a kitten (not yet four months old), he is already bigger than our daughter’s teacup chihuahua. And as far as Smokey-kitty is concerned, life is comprised of three elements: food, sleep, and play.

And the greatest of these is play.

Therefore, my plan is to be more careful in selecting the miniature ornaments that will adorn our small tree. Nothing that is breakable shall this year go upon it. Luckily, I purchased a whole slew of tiny wooden and plastic ornaments shortly after we purchased the less than five-foot-tall artificial tree. Regular sized ornaments just looked ridiculous on it.

Now, my first thought was that we just won’t hang any ornaments along the bottom of the tree—and that might be an idea. But this is a fairly small tree, not even as tall as I am. We don’t, therefore, have a lot of room to work with. Maybe, I’ll try to ensure that nothing dangles below the level of the tree’s “branches”.  That might work.

Will Smokey-kitty consider the festive decor a source of exciting and endlessly diverting fun? Well, that’s something we can’t reasonably predict beyond a fifty percent probability.

We’ll just put it up, likely in a couple of weeks, and just see what happens.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Remembering and thanks giving......

 November 22, 2023

Today is the sixtieth anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. 60 years! That’s hard for me to wrap my head around, likely because there are moments from that day that I recall so vividly.

I was a nine-year-old child in 1963, a fourth grader in a three-room school about a half a mile from my home in rural southern Ontario, Canada. Probably but for the major event in my life earlier that same year, the death of the American president would not have impacted me so strongly. But that other event had happened, and it had been the first, and most brutal piece of reality of four brutal pieces of reality that I believe most profoundly shaped me before I became an adult.

Going to school for me was a matter of walking. Looking back on that time in my life, I have snippets of memory, but only that. I don’t recall walking to school or back home again as a regular thing that I did, but I know it was how I got to school almost every day. I remember flashes of the playground. I recall the day I fell and split my head open against the post of the outside door, and my parents had to take me to the doctor to get stitches.

But for the most part, I remember two days with specificity during that year. I recall the day in January of 1963, the second day back after the Christmas break, when my Uncle Howard came to pick me up from school. I was surprised, wondering why he was there from all the way over in Brantford.

He’d picked me up to take me home because my father had died a couple of hours before.

And I remember the day, just ten months later that Miss Ritchie, the other teacher at my school, knocked on our classroom door, crying, because the American president had been shot.

We were sent home early that day—not a lot early, but there were no school busses at our school, we all walked, so we all walked home when sent.

I recall my mother telling me the next week, as we watched the President’s funeral on television, that President Kennedy had been nearly the same age as my daddy. I remember that because it was the first time my mother had mentioned my father’s death since it had happened.

Death really impacted my childhood, and in fact, the rest of my life. I don’t think I actually had much of a childhood after my father died. I was the youngest of three ranging in age from 8 to 18. I became more serious and very interested in American politics. I was 14 the year that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. I do remember, at the time, believing that life as we had known it was over: the world was going to hell in the proverbial hand basket. Why care about what you would be when you grew up when there was nothing in our future but death and destruction?

Somehow, however, I grew out of that teenaged-angst stage. I left childhood behind and turned out to be only slightly neurotic, prone to expecting my loved ones to die at any moment. But otherwise, I became a relatively normal adult.

We who are alive right now cannot possibly analyze what the events in our own lifetimes mean in the larger story of our humanity. True analysis depends upon possessing a certain amount of objectivity which we’re simply not capable of attaining when it comes to our own times.  Therefore, we must blindly leave it to some future chronicler of events to weigh in on how major milestones shaped the world, going forward.

We can look back over our own development and make some guesses as to how we ourselves have been shaped by our own experiences. Yet we do so without certainty. Our emotional perspective will always cloud our ability to see the details clearly.

At this point in my life, however, I can honestly say one thing. I believe that as a result of so many losses over the course of my lifetime I have become more appreciative, more thankful for the people and the relationships I’ve been fortunate to have in my life. And I hope I never stop having an attitude of gratitude.

I wish my American friends a Happy Thanksgiving.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Time and blankets....

 November 15, 2023

We are already, today, smack dab in the middle of November. Can you believe it? Honestly the older I get the faster that time seems to fly. Things are moving so fast, that I really do need to sit down and relax sometimes just to try to get my bearings from all the whizzing and the swooshing. But that doesn’t slow the time either, because when I do that, I tend to doze off. Even if it’s only a short little cat nap, heck, I wake up ten minutes later and that’s another ten minutes that flew by so fast, I didn’t even see them.

And why do they call it a cat nap, anyway? The cat we now have, who is still a kitten at 3 and a half months old, will sleep for an hour or more whenever the notion occurs to him. One of his favorite sleeping spots, if I am in the living room with my legs up, is on me! During this so-called “cat nap”, I pick him up and move him if I have to get up out of my recliner, and he is boneless and continues to sleep through the entire maneuver. He doesn’t even care where I put him either, as long as wherever it is, it’s warm and soft and therefore, for sleeping.

Last weekend was a busy one for us here. We celebrated our second daughter’s and David’s birthdays on Friday (they were born on the same day, so we have a double celebration every year). We used to take the whole gang out to one of the local steak houses. However, this year, we decided that we could make it at home a lot better and for a lot less money than we could buy it out. A family steakhouse meal that was pricey before the pandemic is now beyond pricey and into the category of “forget it” now.

So, we had grilled ribeye steaks, baked potatoes, mushrooms and onions, garlic shrimp, and sweet kernel corn that had been home frozen. All very much tastier and absolutely less expensive than in any restaurant.

The other tradition with regard to these particular birthdays has to do with the cake. Ages ago, our daughter made pineapple upside-down cake for their birthdays. She made three cakes—one for each of the celebrants to have for their own, and one for the rest of us to share. That went over so well (in the opinion of the celebrants) that she has done this ever since. Also, it is the only time in the year that anyone gets pineapple upside-down cake.

Then during the weekend, our daughter’s grandchildren were here from Saturday morning till Sunday after supper. We had a guest for lunch on Sunday, and daughter took her grandchildren to the pool on Saturday and then to the park on Sunday. It was a very enjoyable time, but also, for those of us who will never see sixty-five again, an exhausting one.

We, all of us here in this house, appreciate simplicity. That is a very good and very basic thing for us to have in common. We don’t put on airs or stand on ceremony. We like to be comfortable, so we don’t fuss over the number of blankets found in our living room. There are times when we look around at the people and the dogs, each of us having some or all of our own blankets and accept that in those times, the Ashbury residence is nothing more than a flop house.

I take a couple of hours in the middle of the day—usually while David is having his nap (one that is like the cat’s in that it definitely lasts more than an hour and he sleeps very deeply). During that time, my daughter’s teacup chihuahua asks me to fix his blanket (yes, the smallest dog has his own designated blanket) so that he can enjoy Zeusie-grandma time. Lying beside me, mostly or completely covered by his blanket, he gets a good sound sleep, too. It is expected, of course, that during this time I “pat him” a few times by tapping my hand gently on his blanket-covered little body.

Apparently, there are more rituals to be observed in this house than one could easily count.

And to anyone joining us on any given day, we always issue a warning—if there is a blanket in your path, either on the floor or on a chair, please do not kick it or sit on it. Not, that is, until you check to make sure there is no innocent, sleeping critter completely hidden within.

Even the animals in this house are protected from unnecessary rude awakenings.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury