Anyway, it has been very quiet around here. We had a fine
Thanksgiving dinner totally sourced and cooked by my wonderful daughters and
the ED’s partner, who obsessed about the turkey but did a fine job. All I had
to do was one pie ahead of time and it did not run over or burn or come out
underdone, so I guess I scored. Oh, and I set the table. While all the chopping
and mixing and timing was going on, I was relaxed in my fine new reclining
chair, playing my game and having a couple of nice naps. I do love my family.
We were one short, however, as the grandkid is now in
England, a few weeks into her Master’s program. She is getting out and about on
hikes and runs, and tells her aunt, who was overseas and treated her to a
weekend in London, that it is a bit puzzling that she is not having to work
harder. My mother was the kind of student who had to have everything down
perfectly in case she missed something. She did a second Master’s degree while
I was a teenager and I vividly recall her obsessive (to me) revision and the
worry that went with it. I think my daughter inherited the gene and she
certainly passed it on to grandkid, who adds diligent work to a fine brain. It
missed me, for sure.
In a strange sort of reversal, how well you did at formal
schooling does not seem to matter, once you have graduated and are out of
there. Your proud mother may remember that you won a medal, but the world does
not care much, if at all, unlike competitive sports, where placement is
everything. Second place should not be a loss of first place, but it frequently
is. And if it is the Olympics or World Championships or the like, just getting
to go ought to be a point of pride forever.
In the intervals of producing this deathless prose, I am
checking the score of the Jays’ and Mariners’ seventh game. At present it is
top of the ninth, Jays one run up. My parents would have been glued to the
screen, or to the radio before we had a television set. They were both fanatic
baseball fans – in their case, the Detroit Tigers since we lived in Windsor.
They used to rent a television for a month in the fall and watch the playoffs,
whether or not the Tigers made it. The first set we owned was only acquired in
1954 or 1955. I do not know why we didn’t have a set much earlier; we were
affluent enough to afford one. But they listened to the games on the radio. I
still remember my mother ironing with the radio babbling away. I also remember
watching the last game of the Canada/Soviet hockey series on TV while trying to
get the laundry done and ironing my hand at one crucial point. I kept the
little girls home from school to watch that game, but they say they do not
remember that. It was 1972 (just checked
that) and so they would have been six and five respectively.
By golly, the Jays did it. One of my daughter’s stepsons
works for the Mariners and he is going to be some sad. By one run in the last
game. Talk about squeaking by!
I used to write letters to my mother and father, once a
week, regularly. Long, newsy screeds with reports of what their grandkids were
doing, what I was doing, the weather, the political scene, the latest scandal,
whatever. No spellcheck, a ballpoint pen and, mostly, plain white paper.
Sometimes I typed, but I ‘thought’ better with the pen, as it was slower. Now I
type everything and this post is not as carefully done as my letters were, but
the content is somewhat the same. I do have a ‘review’ function, and so the
spelling, at least will be American standard, zeds and all. And I do keep the
text for a while and review it. For what that is worth.
And so, the other reason. Finally. This reason is that not
much has been happening to write about. However, as you can tell if you have
got this far, I do not need much to be happening. I can babble on, regardless. And
I should stop this and do the review, already. Goodness. No mistakes.
