Memories of my Father

There are three things that stick out in my mind when I think of my father. They are, a photograph of him drawing the string of his bow, ready to release the arrow; his piano, all apart and in pieces in the basement and the old twelve string guitar that he gave to my brother, Chad; and my father's Bible. These three things have become symbolic of my father in my mind, so that whenever I see them or think of them, I am flooded by some of my favourite memories of my father.

So if you'll forgive the sentimentality of this post, I'd like to tell you about my father.

My father's bow is really big. I don't remember ever being strong enough to draw the string back far enough to launch an arrow any great distance. In the photograph, my father is standing, one foot in front of the other, his right arm straight and strong, holding the bow, the other arm drawing an arrow on the string past his ear. He is wearing a leather guard on his right forearm so that the string does not strip the skin off when he releases it. He is slim and fit and very strong, quite dangerous, in fact, but good. There is something majestic about him in the photo. He is confident, proud, and strong. In another photograph, taken on the same day, he is kneeling on the ground; my brother is standing in front of him, no more than five years old and about three feet tall. My father's arms are on his arms as he tries to draw the bow.

I have never seen the old piano all in one piece. For all my life it has been all apart in the basement. I remember coming home from school once or twice to find my father working on the old piano. Inexplicably, this filled me with an incredible sense of joy. I always liked seeing my father working on the piano. I don't really remember all of what he did, but he fixed all the hammers and made all the keys hit all the strings ... Then he would sit there and play the Homecoming.

The piano is my favourite instrument. I could sit and listen to a well-played piano for hours and hours and I loved listening to my father play. He'd only play two or three songs, but I could listen to him play them over and over again.

He also had an old twelve string guitar. Some of the posts had broken, so he only used six strings on it. But, one day he gave it to Chad, and together they replaced the broken posts and strung it with all twelve strings. That was the first time I'd ever heard a twelve string guitar, and it was really impressive.

My father has an old black leather-covered Bible. It has a binding that can open and close, almost like a binder, but it doesn't look like a binder, it looks like a Bible. He can open the binding and bind his notepaper to the Bible, wherever he wants to. I always thought that was fascinating. It was really neat to leaf through it and feel the smooth, thin pages of his Bible and the rough notepaper all together. Some days he would sit in the living room arm chair, next to the front window and spend what seemed like hours reading his Bible. When we got up in the mornings, he would have already left for work, and his Bible and reading glasses always sat on the table where he had eaten his breakfast.

I remember when my father became an old man. We were playing baseball, he was running backwards to catch a fly ball and turned at the same time, tearing the cartilage in his knee. It took surgeries to fix it and he was on light duty at work after that. He couldn't be as active as he used to and he lost his slim, muscular physique. Before long, I could easily outrun him. That made me sad. While he was still far from being frail or weak, the image I had of him being invincible and powerful was permanently destroyed.

Even so, my father is still probably one of the most creative people I know. I don't think there's anything he can't fix or build. Even if it's something he probably hasn't done before, he'll find a way to fix it or build it. He seems to be a natural born problem solver. He's also a great teacher and he loves to teach, which works out just great because he can teach complicated mechanical stuff to someone like me. And he has a very witty and dry sense of humour. I like to think that I get mine from him. Most people just don't get it, but I find the weirdest things funny.

I think my father is sometimes misunderstood. He may seem severe and strict, and he can be, because he has very high standards. Also, he doesn't beat around the bush with anything--if he has something to say, he comes right out and says it. So, he may seem kind of scary sometimes. But he's not very judgemental, because if he has a problem, it's already out in the open because he's told you about it, so you don't have to worry about what he might be thinking. It also shows that he cares and that he's not quite as hard and severe as he seems.

My father likes to tell jokes with a poker face, just so you don't know how to take it, so you look at him kind of confused for a while and then his eyes start to twinkle and his mouth starts smiling and the humour of it dawns on you and you start laughing.

Hood by Stephen Lawhead

Some years ago, I read Stephen Lawhead's The Warlords of Nin. It was a well told story with memorable characters and I was curious and interested enough in the story to want to read the preceding and succeeding novels in the series. I never got around to it, though. The writing wasn't so great and it seemed, to me, like a Lord of the Rings knock off. Not that that's a bad thing, I just noticed that it seemed to have all the same elements. Maybe that's true of all fantasy novels.

Now, Lawhead has had the time to write quite a few more books and this one came recommended from Joey and Colin. So I read it. After having read Kevin Crossley-Holland, though, I found the writing of this book a little difficult to navigate. I found myself annoyed with the writing at first. But as I read more of it I enjoyed it more. I shared this with Janelle who had read the book before me and she said, "Crossley-Holland's writing is like a thick, nourishing but refreshing smoothie. It's both enjoyable and easy to consume. Lawhead's writing is like a thick juicy steak. You enjoy it tremendously and it's very nourishing, but it's difficult to consume. It takes effort." And I found this to be true. I found myself liking the writing more and more as I read further into the book.

The story is a unique and original retelling of the legend of Robin Hood. Lawhead puts Robin Hood in Wales, far from Nottingham and Sherwood Forest. Robin Hood becomes Rhi Bran--King Raven--the prince and heir to the throne of Elfael, a small Kingdom in the Welsh Marches. However, the Norman conquerors have ambitions in Wales and invade Elfael, killing its king and sending Bran into exile in the forest.

The story is very slow paced. Lawhead takes his time telling it, and goes into all the political intrigues surrounding the story. He gives all the details. It makes for a long, and sometimes tedious, but rewarding read. Also, he does a fantastic job of bringing the world of Wales and Norman England to life. And he does it subtly like by giving the French names of the conquered English places or having his characters speak French rather than English or by having his characters allude to historical events in their conversations, for example, King Harold, son of William the Conqueror, is famous for having been shot in the eye with an arrow and this event comes up again and again.

If you like history and fiction and well told stories and memorable characters, you'll love this book. I'm looking forward to reading the next in the series.

At The Crossing Places by Kevin Crossley-Holland

This brilliant sequel to The Seeing Stone continues the story of young Arthur de Caldicot, bastard son of the crusading knight, Sir William.

Having been squired to Sir Stephen de Holt, a Lord over the Middle March, Arthur moves to Holt castle to begin his training and to prepare to go on crusade. At Holt he encounters a whole new set of adventures and challenges and continues to look for his mother. All along, the seeing stone continues to show him episodes from the life of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table that strangely seem to parallel his own life.

Richly written, the stories told in this book make a wonderful continuation to those begun in The Seeing Stone. There is much feeling and its world is rich and vivid. It's just like stepping into medieval England. Crossley-Holland demonstrates a wonderful sense of humour that makes these novels such a pleasure to read. And his characters are simply unforgettable.

a newsy post

i guess its been a while since i've written a newsy post and a lot has happened.

first of all, our baby died. that was very sad and disappointing. being pregnant, we had such high hopes for the future, so not having the baby is like an ongoing disappointment. every now and again we just have to stop and grieve for a bit.

we are joyful that God gave us our little baby bean for those nine and a half weeks, though. it brought us so much joy and let us know that people really do care about us, even people we would never have thought to turn to for comfort or support. everyone was so kind and generous and we thank God for showing us that. and we still have lots of hope for the future.

we had a bit of a busy july with lots of visitors. we had angele and robb with us for a saturday and that was wonderful. we also had justin and bekah over a couple of times. they went on a honeymoon and bekah broke her knee or something while rock climbing, so she came to see us in a wheelchair. and yesterday they brought her crutches back and came to visit us, it was super nice.

we were expecting to have wens and ada with us for a week or two, but after our baby died they disappeared without a trace.

we also spent an afternoon with sarah and donald. andrew and emma joy were there too and we hung out by the lake and rode the sea-doo. it was really nice except i got a nice sunburn. donald barbequed some steaks and they were wonderful, tasty and tender.

on thursday we spent an evening at rebekah daigle's house with a few friends. jonathan and andrea were there too, they just moved to halifax from ottawa because jonathan is a rcmp officer. it was lots of fun and rebekah made some enchiladas and we consumed them with relish. and afterwards there were some left over and rebekah sent some home with us and we had them for lunch the next day and they were still delicious.

work has been getting busier and busier as we get closer to september first.

also i've got some awesome books to read.

well, i guess that's about it, though.

The Seeing Stone by Kevin Crossley-Holland

To begin with I have to say that this is a very good book.

In Children's Laureate, Anne Fine wrote, "This is astonishing ... a book that lasts has to create a world so real that you can run your fingertips over its walls, feel its morning frost bit at your throat, and remember the people who lived there for a lifetime. Crossley-Holland has done it and I am so, so jealous."

I don't think I can say it any better.

I could write on and on about how wonderful this book is but I'll just keep this short and make you curious enough that you'll want to read it yourself!

Here's a quick quote from the beginning of the book, just to give you an idea of how it goes.

"Tumber Hill! It's my clamber-and-tumble-and-beech-and-bramble hill! Sometimes, when I'm standing on the top, I fill my lungs with air and I shout. I shout."

The book is full of this kind of excited writing. Crossley-Holland makes excellent use of hyphenated words. I think that's my favourite thing, his hyphenated words, they're just so beautiful and exciting.

Also, the story and characters are so full of feeling, just bursting with emotion. It's hard to find any book or story that comes even close to being as well rounded and well written as this! I'm looking forward to devouring the sequel.

If only I could write as well.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

This isn't a "Christian" story. Jesus doesn't show up anywhere in it. It has little to do with God too. But it does have much truth in it.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a fable about a man who dies and then has his life explained to him by five different people who crossed his path at one point or another in his lifetime. Although the story is about death, it has more to do with life and how it's lived.

I thought this story would be a little like The Shack, where the reader gets a glorious glimpse of Heaven that has the potential to be life-changing. But it was nothing like that. Rather, this book was more like a quiet reassurance.

The truth in the story comes in five different lessons, the first one is that there are no accidents, no coincidences. Everything happens for a reason. The second lesson is about the meaning of sacrifice. The third lesson is about the importance of forgiveness--not so much for the other person, but for yourself. The fourth lesson is about the strength of love. I'm not totally sure what the last lesson is, but I think it has something to do with how important the little things are, like fixing rides at an amusement park may not be a very fulfilling job and it doesn't bring a whole lot of meaning to life, but it's a very important job because without someone doing it, all kinds of little people would die in horrible amusement park accidents. Either that, or the good things you do in life make up for the bad things ... but that's not so good or true, so I'll stick with my first thought.

This book tries to be one that comforts you before you die, tells you that everything will be okay, that what you've done with your life wasn't meaningless, that you were important to someone or to lots of someones. It tries to help you face death.

How to Lose a Battle by Bill Fawcett

I found this book at a small bookstore while waiting for a flight out of Toronto's Pearson Airport. After leafing through it and laughing at Fawcett's unique humour, I decided to buy the book. Of course, I didn't want to be gouged at the airport, so I ordered it from Amazon.ca.

The book arrived and I read a few of the more interesting chapters. Today I read the whole book while waiting at the hospital for Janelle to come out of the OR.

It's a great book, very funny, very easy to read, and very accessible if you know even just a little bit about history. Bill Fawcett is not the author of the book, but its editor. The book is actually a compilation of articles written by various historians about poorly commanded battles throughout history. The first chapter deals with Alexander the Great's battle against Darius III at Arbela and the last one details the bungled battle of French commander Navarre at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam. A handful of the articles are written by Bill Fawcett himself, and these are the best ones. They're funny, witty, and well written. Some of the other ones are less interesting. For example, the author who wrote about the civil war seemed kind of cranky--like he had a point to prove; and the author who wrote about the Six Day War seemed to have a political agenda because the article was more about the politics surrounding the war and the historical events leading up to the war than the actual war itself. But, mostly, the articles are right on, fun to read and short enough that you can read one or two in one sitting without getting bored out of your pants.

So it's a fun and interesting book if you're interested in this kind of thing.

Meet the Austins by Madeleine L'Engle

Madeleine L'Engle is well known for the book, A Wrinkle in Time, which is sort of metaphysical science fictiony and quirky weird in a good sort of way that makes it interesting and fun to read. Also, it's very well written.

Meet the Austins is not like A Wrinkle in Time. I was actually kind of surprised, because I was expecting it to be kind of metaphysical and science fictiony but it wasn't. Instead, it told the endearing story of the Austin family. The father, Wallace is a country doctor, the mother, Victoria is a musician and a homemaker. They have four children, John, who wants to be an astronaut and is building his own space suit; Victoria, who's a bit of a bookworm, but is mostly just plain and ordinary; Suzy, who wants to be a surgeon and is exceptionally smart, extremely stubborn, and always practicing surgery on her dolls; and Rob, who likes being the youngest very much and wants to be a ferry pilot when he grows up.

Their adventure begins when their Uncle Hal dies in a plane crash. That same plane crash leaves a family friend, Maggy Hamilton, orphaned. So, until everyone can decide what's to happen with Maggy, she is placed in the care of the Austins and goes to live with them. However, living with Maggy is no easy task because she's spoiled, willful, and generally hard to get along with.

I liked this story, even though it didn't have all the exciting science fiction stuff going on. It moved at a slow pace that made it easy to enjoy. The characters are very well developed and interesting and the more I got to know them, the more I liked them. There wasn't a whole lot of action or suspense but I kept reading it because the story was just so well told and well written and fun and interesting. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes to read, it's all kinds of fun and I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

more adventures

last monday i swept and mopped our main staircase from top to bottom. no sooner had i finished than i discovered that someone had urinated on the landing between the main floor and the first floor. right in the middle of the afternoon, no less, and while i was mopping it!

so, last night was my only night off all week. janelle and i watched a movie while we had supper, and then i rode the bike to the library and returned some books and took out Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce and went to canadian tire and bought a new weight scale and then picked up some arrowroot cookies and gingerale for janelle. janelle and i spent the rest of the evening relaxing and doing not much of anything and around eleven thirty we went to bed. we read together for a little bit and talked for a while and then i turned out the lights and we prepared to go to sleep.

no sooner had i closed my eyes than a horribly annoying ringing sound started going off in my ear. it took me a few seconds to figure out what it was. the fire alarm. as i climbed out of bed, janelle looked at the clock. midnight. dang. it always happens at midnight.

i got my pants and shirt on and called joy. she was heading down to the fire panel to find out where the alarm was going off. the fire panel indicated four locations, one being the eleventh floor, another being the second floor, and two in the basement. she directed me to the second floor but when i got there, there was nothing happening, no fire, no sprinkler, just the annoyingly persistent ringing of the fire alarm. looking through the window, i noticed that the fire department had arrived, so i made my way down to the main floor and found joy, just as the firefighters were coming in.

joy took two of the firefighters down to the basement sprinkler room and i took the rest up to the eleventh floor in the elevator. my fire key broke off in the elevator key hole, so joy and i had to switch keys, which resulted in an embarassing fiasco that i'm not going to write about here.

henry, our maintenance chief showed up shortly after the firefighters did and immediately took charge.

anyways, we got to the eleventh floor and saw water streaming out from under the door of two of the apartments. the firefighters got the door of one opened, and were banging on the other one but there was no answer. i unlocked it but the door was chained shut, so they banged and yelled some more. finally they cut the chain and forced the door open, stamping into the apartment. water was streaming into the apartment from under the wall. the carpet was already soaked. the firefighters had to wake up the occupants. back in the other apartment, they discovered that a sprinkler head had gone off, spraying water all over the apartment. when they had made certain that there was no fire, the firefighters turned the water off for that floor and smashed the toilet to drain the water, then started the long and tedious process of containing the water spill. i fetched a shop-vac from the basement and brought it up to begin vacuuming water out of the carpets.

the firefighters did what they could and then left, and the sprinkler people came and replaced the sprinkler head and turned the water back on and then they left. and joy called the carpet people and then we waited for them.

it turned out that the water flooded the apartments on the tenth, ninth, and eighth floors as well.

i was impressed with the carpet people. there were four of them, they came at around two thirty, one at a time. they brought sixteen dehumidifiers, at least as many blowers, and a bunch of water sucking vacuumes. they lifted the carpets and cut out all the underlay and threw it in the garbage, and then stuck blowers and dehumidifiers under the carpets.

as soon as the carpet people got themselves all set up, henry went back home and joy and i went to bed. it was three o'clock by the time i got home. thankfully, they let me sleep in until noon the next day.

chad and leanne and jelena come to visit

so our company left today. flew out at eight this morning. what a week.

we picked them up around midnight last friday at the airport. saturday we went out, walked along the waterfront, the girls did some shopping, and then we relaxed for most of the rest of the day. sunday afternoon we got pizza and we tried to do bubble tea, but it was closed. so much for keeping regular hours. monday i gave chad a grand tour of our building and in the evening we went to peggy's cove. tuesday and wednesday janelle and i worked. while we worked, chad and leanne went out to see the sights. on wednesday chad helped me clean up the building. wednesday night we went to dartmouth and had supper at the alderney landing, where there was a concert but we didn't stay long because it was bedtime for jelena. after we put her to bed, mom and dad swan came over and we went up on the roof of our building to watch the fireworks because it was canada day. afterwards janelle, leanne, and chad worked on some posters that janelle had agreed to make up for the sunday school. i made some beef jerkey and then i went to sleep on the floor. janelle woke me up at around two o'clock and we went to bed. we had to get up early the next morning because we were going camping.

we got our stuff all packed and left halifax at around eight thirty. we drove to shediac in new brunswick, where joanne and colin and their kids had brought a trailer and camped out for most of the week. they left the trailer for us and we arranged to stay for two nights. of course, the weather was kind of crappy. we went to the beach on the first night anyway and chad, janelle, and i went swimming while leanne and jelena watched. it was pretty cold. then it started raining and it rained the whole time we prepared supper, huddled shivering around the campfire. chad and i baked some potatoes, leanne made up some steaks, and janelle cleaned out the trailer so we could eat inside. we ate supper, played a few games, and then the rain let up enough that we made up another fire and sat around it cooking smores. the trailer was damp all that night and it felt like sleeping in a puddle. we decided not to spend another night and, after a breakfast of hot delicious pancakes and turkey bacon, we packed up the trailer and made plans to head to moncton for the day. as we packed the sun pierced the clouds enough that janelle and i both got sunburnt.

it started thunderstorming as soon as we got to moncton. dark clouds filled the sky and it rained violently. we went to chapters and to crystal palace, where jelena and leanne rode a carousel, and janelle and leanne rode a roller coaster. jelena liked the carousel so much that we had a hard time taking her off it. it stopped raining a little and we went to swiss chalet for supper. yum. after that we drove back to shediac, where we dropped off leanne and janelle at a flea market while chad and i went to the campsite with jelena to get the trailer hooked up to the car so we could leave. jelena was so upset at being ignored while we worked on the trailer and furious at chad that when we picked leanne and janelle back up at the flea market she told leanne all about how papa had neglected her. the sun broke through the clouds again, so we decided to go to the beach one more time before we left. this time we all went in and we saw some jellyfish, i think i may have even been stung by one. and even jelena went in the water a bit. after that we got all our stuff back into the car and headed back to halifax.

we got back around midnight and were happy to climb into bed and get a full night's sleep in a dry place. saturday we spent the day doing laundry and relaxing. saturday evening we had supper at mom and dad swan's house and they babysat jelena while we went out to a movie. the movie turned out to be a disappointment, so we decided to go out for bubble tea to make up for it... but the bubble tea place was closed again. we went back to mom and dad swan's for dessert and then got jelena packed up again and went back to our place. janelle and i pretty much went right to bed, but chad and leanne had lots of packing to do.

and sunday morning at five thirty we were up again and heading to the airport... the week went by altogether too fast.