8 - FUNERALS ARE FOR DANCING - Chapter 5 - Christmas Memories

         Well, it is that time of year as I write this and I could go all over the map (year-wise) as I am wont to do.  Most people who love me and get the way my brain works must also be very fond of rollercoaster rides.  So, buckle up!

         

The only photos I could find in the-ghost-from-Christmases-past category were of me as a baby and then around age six or seven with my drum majorette doll.  There must be many other shots somewhere in the family, just not with me. 

I remember leggings like these where an elastic ran under your shoe.  I also remember 

boots where we wore our shoes inside.  Do they still make them like that?

At first glance, I thought this was my Barbara Ann Scott doll but, no skates.  
My teeth look a bit odd so I must have been in the loose tooth and losing them years.  

Mum and Dad made Christmas magical for their kids.  Sometimes risking life and limb in the process.  Or, as Mum put it the year (1949ish) I was about five or six, “What are those damn fools doing up there on the roof.  They’ll kill themselves”. 

         

We spent that Christmas in Windsor with our Grannie, our Dad’s mother, Eleanor.  Before we went to bed the three girls … Gina, Jacqueline and Marlene were all lined up on a long footstool in front of the fire at our Auntie Kit and Edie’s house on Lake St. Clair.  We were told to shout our Christmas wish up the chimney, (without scorching our innocent faces on the burning fire) so Santa could hear it. 

         

Apparently, I called up a last-minute request for a doll that threw my parents for a loop.  As it so happened, Grannie had made me a doll, she ... or rather, they, were two dolls in one.  At one end she had peach-coloured flesh and yellow braids.  If you lifted her dress and turned her upside-down her dress changed and she became a whole (well, half actually) different person with dark brown skin and tiny black pigtails all over her head.  Yes, it sometimes bothered me, being the precise person I can be, that neither doll had legs but, aside from that, I loved them to bits, both of them, so much so that as an adult I saw and bought a small version of my now gone favourite childhood doll(s) which I still have on a shelf and often stop by and turn her into that other person.  Were they my first hints at a kind of unity I’d later come to understand better?

         

Meanwhile back at the fools on the roof.  That would have been our Dad and Uncle Bill.  They were up there pretending to be Santa’s reindeer in order to give the three girls the thrill of a lifetime.  Being the youngest at that time, I’d either fallen asleep or don’t remember actually hearing the reindeer but remember the story that became a family legend.  Apparently, they had enjoyed a few too many Christmas Eve celebratory pints.   

         

I clearly do remember all of us skating on Lake St. Clair that special Christmas and the terrible fright when Gina fell through the ice.  Well, it turned out to be one leg only that went into a large crack, but that was enough to build in us a respect for treading on thin ice.

         

Believing in the magic of Santa Claus was a wonderful thing for me and the greatest part was that eventually each of us has the wherewithal to become Santa and pass the magic and generosity along to others.  However, in later years Christmas did lose its magic.  Was it the commercialism, the pressure to try, unsuccessfully, pleasing too many people or just that it was time to let it go?  I don’t know.  I just know in spite of trying for the same magical feeling for my children at this time of year, I think it didn’t happen for them in the same way.  I guess they’ll just have to write their own stories.

We always had to leave the house for 'the visits' on Christmas day.  I guess mostly we were back home for dinner as I don't recall dinners with aunts, uncles and grandparents.  I do remember Mum and Dad putting enormous turkeys into the oven.  Often they stayed up all night, or at least very late, to get those birds dressed and into the oven. 

We often visited graveyards on Christmas to remember those loved ones who were no longer with us and to place a wreath.  That wasn't high on the hit list for us kids so, Mum and Dad called a 'Games Day' for Boxing Day.  We got to play with all our Christmas games and toys for the entire day ... we stayed in our pajamas and ate turkey sandwiches.  The perfect turkey sandwich, by the way, has Miracle Whip spread on one slice of bread with cranberry sauce on the other.  Sausage meat, which was always stuffed into the neck end of Mum's turkeys also goes in, if there is any left.  I'm a white meat person so, plenty of that with lettuce and let us not forget ... Ta-Da ... stuffing.  Mum always made a very moist dressing with plenty of sage, so much sage that the dressing was somewhat green ... but great!  Games Day remains a favourite Christmas memory.  In fact, games were around for us throughout the year.  Mum and Dad often joined in.  We grew up playing games of all sorts.  I later learned how important those games were in helping us learn how to strategize.  It couldn't have hurt to learn to be good losers as well.    

Meanwhile back to the writing of our own stories ... I'd give anything at this age to know more about my parent's and ancestor's lives but, alas, much is gone.  So, for those who wonder why I'd write about my life in personal detail well, let me try to explain. 

I've learned so much from reading about the lives of others, memoirs and biographies being among my favourite reading material.  My life has been fairly eventful, she said holding her breath, and I'm still living through it with a fairly cheerful heart and soul.  I don't observe that in some others I've known so, if I've locked into something that has helped me face life and all it offers by way of tests and difficulties, perhaps others will benefit.  And, if not for that, perhaps my children, who I doubt are reading this 'now', will understand at some point, how life molded me.  It might also help them understand that although I've maintained an overall positive outlook, I'm not without my moments when they too, want and wanted, to clear the room.

                

I married into a family that doesn't hug so, for this particular Christmas I warned my husband's Granny that all I wanted from her was a hug.  I love how happy she looks in this photo.  1975 

1979 - Daughter Emma, not too certain about modeling the Christmas stocking I knit for her.

1981 - Me, Michael, Ben, the Don Mills Santa and Emma.  I was pregnant here with Dana.

Emma & Ben wearing the family's Christmas stockings.  Ben was still waiting for his knitted-by-mummy sock.  I'm guessing 1982. 

This must have been the year the joy of music was instilled in the heart of Ben.  

Wow, a Fisher-Price record player.  

When Emma & Ben wore these outfits people found it hard to believe that, not only were they two years apart in age and not twins but, genetically-speaking, they were not related.

This was in our Port Perry house where we lived from '85-'95.  

Emma's bunny is Eric and even he had to model his Christmas stocking.

There came a time when Ben didn't want "some old guy coming into my room while I'm asleep" so, the stockings were hung in the parent's upstairs bedroom ... with care.  

7 - FUNERALS ARE FOR DANCING - Chapter 4 - Where Did My Creative Bent Come From?

The use of the word 'bent' could apply in different ways here.  

All of my siblings are fairly creative beings.  Perhaps it’s best understood by telling you a bit about the creativity and resourcefulness of our parents. 

When Mum said, “I’ve been thinking”, we knew to clear the room without delay.  Nothing was safe from our mother’s transformative powers.  She could take an aging piece of furniture and give it new life … although it was sometimes a pitiful new little life, one could honestly say, it never looked the same.  Both parents were fine examples of doing-it-yourself.  Their many projects were not always a success, the failures were, however, always good for a laugh. 

Returning my sister, Dale, home after a Christmas shopping trip in the late ’60’s we walked into the kitchen to see Dad with that proud I-did-it look on his face.  He had just papered two walls, one in the kitchen and the other in his living room.  He’d poured himself a drink - Captain Morgan White Rum LCBO #392B - and taken his classic pose at the refrigerator with one elbow up on the corner and his drink sitting atop the cold storage unit … if it wasn’t in his hand ready for the next sip.  He was practically bursting to show us his latest handiwork.  

We sat in the kitchen appreciating what he’d completed (and more than for the fact it was a job completed … do not even ask about my Dad’s, or even my own history, of incomplete projects).  Our youngest brother, Mike, entered the kitchen and quickly noticed a rather large air bubble that he pointed out to our Dad. 

“Psst!” came from Dale accompanied by ‘the look’, warning Mike he was on thin ice pointing out Dad’s errors.  

“It’s okay Porks.”  (Yes, the only one of four girls who never carried extra weight was nicknamed Porks.  I’ve often wondered if I’d been given that pet name if it might have caused more control of my fork.)  “It’s important to get these bubbles out.”  He was up on a chair squishing the air out with a flourish.  Coming down he grabbed for another sip of his drink.  

From Mike, “Dad, there’s another one, quick!”  Again back up on a chair and smoothing the freshly applied wallpaper.  Next, the entire corner of one panel peeled back.  Not at all perturbed Dad jumped up on a chair and smoothed it back with a wet sponge.  It wasn’t until five panels of paper rolled down simultaneously that Dad clued (I resisted saying ‘glued’) into his mistake.  

The paper he’d already proudly hung on one wall of the living room must have been the pre-pasted roll.  He’d bought two rolls at the same time … one pre-pasted and one not.  He’d mixed them up.  Heck, that double-pasted paper may never come down even when it was time to redecorate.  I can’t recall but he may have moved out of that house with that twice-glued paper still clinging to that wall.  

It was the Christmas season so there were many rolls of wrapping paper strewn around.  We simply took the seasonal paper from the rolls and used the emptied rolls to mark and roll up the paper until Dad attacked the job again, this time with the proper paste.

*****  

Our mother loved to change the look of furniture to bring it … ahem … more up-to-date?  She had a beautiful cedar chest that could have brought a fortune to a lucky heir had she left it alone to become a treasured antique.  However, Mum, having purchased some of the ugly blonde furniture in its popular years of the ’50’s, butchered the potential antiquity right out of her dark, brown, cedar chest by cutting off its legs.  The curved and scrolled lovely legs were replaced with so-called modern, black, wrought-iron skinny legs.  She also stripped off all the carved, decorative trim and replaced it with plain trim.  Finally, she painted it a kind of peachy, pinkish blonde (hoping to make it fit in with the new round coffee table and the step end tables).  She then applied Roxatone to give it that all-over speckled look.  Roxatone was a spray-on product meant to be used as a kind of cover-up.  Well, it was the ’50’s as mentioned and Mum was just trying to bring us into the decade with a modern touch.  

Let us not forget Georgie’s leather paint kick.  We had an aging chesterfield that was covered in a nubble fabric.  Mum heard about leather paint and really thought the old couch could use a leathery lift.  So, can of leather-like paint in hand, she applied a putrid colour over the entire thing, cushions, too.  She took a gray and black pattern to a shade of puce that was a cross between shocking pink and maroon - and all in just two easy coats.  Except for the colour choice, she did a pretty good job. 

Remember those nubbles?  Well, they turned out to feel like sharp, little, pokey, needle knobs sticking into the butt of the sitter.  We tried not to complain but, bare arms were scratched and posteriors poked to the point of pain.  Hot summer days were a real thrill.  Shorts were simply out of the question.  If soreness didn’t get you, the sticky simulated leather trapped you until someone came along to help peel you off. 

Mum’s lesson wasn’t learned until her lady friends started to arrive in their nylon stockings.  The sight of a family friend walking across the room in increasingly laboured steps was quite a vision.  Long, fine threads were being pulled from the calves of her stockings while a few feet away the lady was still attached to the couch.  

As this old eyesore of a couch aged the paint started cracking and chipping away.  Eventually, tired of the cracks (especially the wise ones from her family) Mum had the couch carted off.  

I’ve mentioned their misfires only because they make me (and hopefully you) laugh.  Both parents were very good at creating new things and making do with what we had.  I’m happy to have inherited many of my parents’ creative talents.  More important, the genetic gift of humour abides within each and every one of the Turner siblings.  Family gatherings are never about tiffs and rattled nerves.  Our get-togethers are all about sharing life and laughter.  

Mum & Dad in their courting days.  They were married in 1938 so, this would be sometime in the '30's.  They always had a certain style about them and so good looking.  

Dad in his classic pose.  He rarely wore a shirt when at home ... winter or summer.  He must have hated wearing a shirt and tie.  I remember seeing him pull at his collar in disgust and discomfort.

This is my sister Dale (right) and me on our Christmas shopping trip prior to Dad's wallpaper fiasco.  If you've waited awhile for this latest post it was my obsessive compulsive response to finding this lost but remembered photo and the one of Dad above.  This particular photo was found in the last possible place to look in about the last thirty photos to search.  I'm reminded, looking at this, that my creativity in those days was expressed in making my own clothes.  I'm guessing, from my outfit which was made (not the leather coat) for a trip to Great Britain, the year was 1969.      

6 - FUNERALS ARE FOR DANCING - Chapter Three - What Was It About Being Seven?

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Chapter Three – What Was It About Being Seven?

The most wonderful thing happened at my seventh birthday party.  Actually, birthday parties in our house were nearly always just immediate family however, there were times when grandparents, aunts, uncles and/or cousins would join in.  I don’t remember parties where friends were invited.  Being one of six kids, there were always enough people to make it a party.

  

We always got to choose our birthday meal so, depending whose birthday it was, there was a different celebratory menu.  I think mine was steak.  That must have stretched the budget for my parents.  Steak would be my last choice today.  

Mum would have made a special cake.  It was the only time I remember being allowed to drink pop.  Colourful streamers would have been strung and then there was the ice cream to go with the cake.  Back then there was ice cream in a brick form that would be sliced rather than scooped.  Party Brick was a favourite.  It was like Neapolitan ice cream with its three flavours … strawberry, chocolate and vanilla … except vanilla was replaced with a layer of orange sherbet.  It was a family favourite and ‘they’ don’t make sherbet as good as it was in Party Brick.    

I don’t remember Mum ever hiding treasures in the cake as others did.  Probably a good thing for our teeth we didn’t crunch into a coin wrapped in waxed paper.  What we always did was make a wish on our candles as we blew them out.  On my seventh birthday, my wish came true almost instantaneously.  I had wished that our Uncle Bill would be there for my birthday.  No sooner had the candles been snuffed than a knock came at the door and there he was.  It was like magic. 

Later in life, somewhere in my forties, I was on the proverbial shrink’s couch trying to change a needy behaviour that was wanting to be improved.  When I was asked when I thought I’d begun this behaviour my answer shot out right away, “Seven, I was seven.”  I then went on, as I sometimes do, to wonder aloud why I’d said seven. 

“Don’t worry about that,” I was told, “just tell me what was going on in your parent’s life when you were seven.”  After some head scratching, events started to come to mind. 

“Well, my mother’s Dad, my Grampa Tom, died when I was seven … and it was around that time that my mother had a baby die a couple of days after she was born … or was it then that she had a gallbladder operation?”  My dear psychiatrist just sat quietly and waited for the lights to go off, which they did big time.  I remember having the sensation of being drilled back into my chair and ‘getting it’.  How could a parent give the attention needed by a child at times of such stress?  So, it’s when our parents are distracted by the stressors of life and we feel ignored that we start behaviours that later need to be changed.  Just an aside - I believe that sooner or later most of us need to do our ‘work’ on the couch to make sense out of ourselves and our lives.  

Here I was in my forties with two young adopted children who’d been there when I was dealing with a threatening pregnancy followed by the birth of our son, Dana, who lived all but ten days of his life in hospital for the short eleven months and four days he was given on this earth.  Had I been there emotionally for my young children’s needs during all those ups and downs?  I doubted that very much.  Physically, I’d been there as much as was humanly possible, visiting the hospital during the kid’s afternoon naps and after they went to bed at night.    

It’s pretty easy to forgive parents when such a light shines itself onto one's psyche.  So why do I tell you this now?  Am I getting ahead of my own life?  I think it’s important to know that my inner being felt ignored from the age of seven.  I believe that feeling would temper my feelings into the future especially when you think I was the youngest child of three for five years before the second set of three children were born bringing our grand sibling total to six.  That feeling of being ignored did not disappear for decades … maybe it still exists to this day in spite of the fact I learned from whence it came about thirty years ago?  Whoever said life would be easy?  For me, life is a continuing game of mental gymnastics ... always trying to get it right.

Emails welcome at funeralsarefordancing@rogers.com.  

5 - FUNERALS ARE FOR DANCING - Chapter Two - "You'd Better Be Home Before the Street Lights Come On ..."

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“… if you know what’s good for you!”

When I read a memoir I really enjoy reading about the author's childhood memories.  Assuming many of you are the same, I’ll give you a taste of being me as a kid.   

Sweet innocence.  That’s how I would describe the first decade of my life in ‘The Beaches’ area of Toronto … or is it ‘The Beach’.  Has that controversy ever been settled?  I’m sticking with The Beaches because that’s what we called it back in my time there.   

Many summer days had us, where else, down at the beach at the foot of Kew Gardens.  We’d pack a lunch and be gone from breakfast until supper.  No sun tan lotion, no protective headgear and just about freezing our feet and calves off in Lake Ontario.  It was never warm enough to swim, besides, we had our marching orders from Mum and they included, “Only go into the water up to your knees”.  

We stuck by that rule probably more because of the icy temperature of the water and not so much because we were as sweet as we might have tried to be.  It took until September for Lake Ontario to become remotely bearable for going any deeper than our knees.    

Our sand castles, by the end of the day, were something to behold.  Mainly it was the three of us … my two older sisters, Gina, Jacqueline and myself and sometimes a friend or two from our block.  We also loved digging deep holes to see how long it took to get to water.  Of course, the closer you are to the shoreline, the sooner you get to your water goal.

If we weren’t down at Kew Beach we were with our skipping ropes on the street or playing hide-and-go-seek or a multitude of other childhood games.  Will we ever forget our neighbourhood friend, Esther, getting her toes run over by a car when she walked out onto the road AND between two parked cars while reading a gripping comic book?  Probably it was Katy Keene, Archie, Little Lulu or Donald Duck, or, or, or … that had distracted Esther to the point of what could have been fatal.  

On hot, hot days we’d be sitting on the curb waiting for the iceman to arrive.  Yes, we had an icebox back then.  The ice man would use his ice pick to break off chunks of ice for us before making a delivery to our house.  Other delivery men back then included those who delivered bread, milk, and coal.  Some of them, including the iceman, drove horse a buggy. 

It always amazed me how they’d throw a disk out onto the road to stop the horse from running off.  I could have picked up that small weight so, how the heck did it stop a huge horse?  The explanation was something about the bit in the mouth of the horse which hurt if they tried to pull that weight.

Let’s not forget the ice cream man with their tinkling bell warning mothers and fathers to get their dimes ready.  A bag of popcorn or peanuts from the Popcorn Man was also a dime.  I can still hear the whistle from the kettle that kept the melted butter for our popcorn. 

We three girls were always into crafts and making things ourselves.  I guess that’s pretty much what we had to do … if you didn’t have it, then make it.  Mum wasn’t too pleased when we made our drum majorette sticks.  Apparently, one broom handle divided into three just perfectly for our sister’s marching band.  Imagine the look on Mum’s face when she couldn’t find her broom but did find the three of us marching up and down our backyard.  We’d even made pom-poms for our shoes out of red and white tissue paper.  If I remember correctly, red and white were the colours of our school, Norway Public on Kingston Road.      

Dad made us gizmos for doing cork work.  He just used four nails and an empty wooden thread spool.  Somehow we came into a huge spool of baker’s twine.  It was that fine string used to tie around a box of baked goods.  We worked that baker’s string into a piece long enough to reach from the front room, upstairs and into the back bedroom.  Did we stop there?  Oh no, we girls didn’t stop until we could stretch that handmade cord around our block.  Can you imagine our excitement when we got to the point where two sisters at either end could see each other having reached three sides of the block?  

Speaking of ‘around the block’, do all kids feel a sense of freedom and responsibility when they are allowed to ride their trikes around the block?  I mostly remember how it felt to roller skate around the block.  We had a bit of a downhill on one side of our block coming down Elmer Avenue from Kingston Road.  The feel of the sidewalk cracks rhythmically vibrating my entire body sent chills of excitement through me.    Of course, the roller skating would naturally lead to skinned knees.  They could be nasty, especially when you woke up in the morning to find both knees stuck to the sheets. 

Our house on Rhyl Avenue was the typical semi-detached, red brick style of the area.  A very small yard both back and front which was connected by an alley-way between houses.  The house had two storeys and a cellar.  Remember the mention of a coalman?  There was a bin in the cellar that received a multitude of burlap bags filled with coal when said coal man made his delivery.  A basement window opened and the bags were dumped into a waiting bin creating an enormous amount of coal dust in the process.  We liked to go to the basement with our Dad each night after supper when he stoked the furnace and removed the ‘clinkers’.  

Cellar aside, we actually played outside all day, most days.  I think only a hard rain would have stopped us but not if it was a summer storm.  Then we’d don our bathing suits and swim in the deepest rainwater next to the curb.  We could catch quite a current where the water rushed towards the sewer grate.  Can you imagine?  We lived through it, too.

There was a pretty scary time in my life the summer after Grade One.  I’d had teeth extracted and, as it turned out, I proved to be allergic to the gas used to put me out.  For days after the extraction, I could not swallow.  That meant no food or drink.  I just couldn’t do it in spite of the pleading parents.  On the third day of not taking in nourishment and not swallowing the doctor was called in.  After the doctor left I remember a very angry father trying to force feed me a gleaming saucer of Golden Syrup.  I guess my sweet tooth had not been removed … in fact, I still seem to have that dastardly tooth.  

I did not know what I’d done to make my Dad so angry with me.  I’ve since learned, from my years on 'the shrink's couch' that anger, fear, and anxiety are like brothers and travel together.  So, when you’re angry, ask yourself what are you afraid or anxious about and, when afraid ask, what am I anxious or angry about and so on.  The doctor had told Mum and Dad that if I didn’t take in food or drink that night I’d have to go to the hospital the next day.  Now that I’m a parent I know I’d have been incredibly worried under the same set of circumstances.  My grown up kids will tell you I must have been worried a lot when they were growing up.  i.e. angry Mummy!  Actually, they scared me half to death a lot but that’s another story for another time ... perhaps under another name.   

The night that followed the threatened force-feeding of the sticky syrup had me awake feeling incredibly thirsty.  I can still remember going into the dark bathroom and drinking three cups filled to the brim with water.  Then, of course, I threw it all back up, however, that was the turning point needed to have my body heal.  My older sisters still remember hearing my screams during this critical time when they were outside playing.  Apparently part of my treatment involved a needle jabbed painfully into a bum cheek.  And yes, doctors made regular house calls back then.  And, yes again, the whole block knew something painful was happening to Marlene.      

Wouldn’t it have been nice if, as kids, we understood when our parents appear angry with us it could be because of their love for us they are worried about our well-being?  Would we have even understood such a concept as the traveling brothers Anger, Fear and Anxiety?

As I leave recording these particular memories of earlier times it’s only fair to say I do remember being a somewhat solitary kid who often lived in her head.  Was I born with a vivid imagination or was that how it developed?  I spent many hours alone in my bedroom, just daydreaming.  To this day I need alone time just to reflect and be quiet.  My nighttime dreams were and are quite vivid and at one point in my life I could return to an unfinished dream and complete it the following night.  Sure wish I still had that talent today.

 This would be the pram spoken of in the previous chapter however, Artie would have been the rider in that part of the story.  This is me who got the ride around five years before my baby brother was born.

 Is it any wonder those knees were often skinned?  There's a song that goes with this in spite of the fact it came out much later than this photo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvIjQSFLb3U  

The proud neighbourhood gang with their snowman.  He's wearing our Dad's navy hat and those were the days when we actually had chunks of coal to use for facial features.  Esther, the friend who had her toes run over, is standing third from the right.  Gina and then Jacqueline are to the right again from Esther.  That's me sitting on the left.  Hate to say I don't remember who any of the boys are but I look to be pretty young here  

Apparently, Dad was called up by the Navy when Mum was in the hospital delivering me.  She sure doesn't look pregnant here so this must have been on his return.  They are standing in front of our Rhyl Avenue home.  Yes, Dad, I do see that cigarette in your hand.  

I'm the tallest here (don't often get to say that) in our backyard.  My friend, Judy, is giving that shy smile and that's my brother Artie in front.    

Emails welcome at funeralsarefordancing@rogers.com.