When i was still a liddley, winter warmth was the Hudson's Bay blanket i used in the winter time. It was at least 1/4" thickness of wool, and that in combination with a top sheet kept me warm on the coldest of nights. I hate wool, but i loved the smell of the blanket.
Lovely essay dlowan! This begining of the summer (what? We haven't had spring yet!) has me feeling anxious. For 13 years I've been out of the school cycle with it's summertime intermissions. Yet, I still feel like summer is already ebbing away. With the Sumemr solstice around the corner, the days will be getting shorter. And the worst of it is that all our little plants are stunted and yellow from lack of warmth and an excess of rain. This summer has started as an antithesis to last summer.
LOL - it is funny, isn't it, how that study rhythm becomes part of you - I have now been away from study institutions for longer thna I was in them, but I still feel cheated at not having a long summer break - well, I worked during them and during term, too, since I was 15, but still, when study was the main purpose of daily activity, a rest from it felt like a total holiday!
Hudson's Bay sounds like a pretty serious blanket, Setanta!
Yep, dlowan, I worked through them too. But, it was ..... SUMMER....!
It's one of the reasons I want to be a teacher. I'll prolly still work through them, but it'll be .....SUMMER....!
Sure 'nough, Bunny--it was only available at the high end stores, like Lord and Taylor. Of course, this was genius marketing: HBC can't trade 'em to the Injuns fer beaver pelt any more, so they whip up this phoney nostalgia, and sell 'em for a mint. No bout a doubt, though, that's the heaviest, most well-made blanket i've ever seen.
Boy - this is turning into a real little confessional for me, this thread!
This one's got sad stuff, so read at your peril.
To Absent Friends
My thoughts have turned to people who are not here any more.
Two reasons - first one, because it has just been the twentieth anniversary of her death, so that one is simple.
Second and third ones? Hmmmm - a combination of things. First, one of the heated discussions about capital punishment here, when I commented that some people affected by serious crime ARE able to rise above primitive desires for revenge, and secondly the fact that the alleged Bali bombers are on trial, and a number of people who survived that experience, or who had loved ones who died in it, are in that courtroom every day, or are testifying about the effects on them, and there was a discussion about being in court on the radio today - and that set my mind to wandering. It will become clear where this one is leading later!
1. To Kathy
(I have changed names, cos it really IS a small world!)
This is just a little piece that is my sort of tribute - to say I haven't forgotten.
Twenty years ago I was living in a share household. One of the friends I lived with, Peter, was separated, or divorced or something - anyway, his two children stayed with us regularly.
Kathy was six and a half - a lovely, blonde little girl - one of those kids with a rich fantasy life who was always busy playing very intensely some complicated story or other, with props like little bunches of flowers, or one of my cats (who always turned into sort of soft plastic - eminently malleable - in her hands - including the stroppy one) - or any available adult, if you cared to join in.
She was stubbornly herself - her parents had been keen that she not be trammeled by silly, frilly feminine frippery - (her mum, like me, had been tortured and tormented by a mother determined to dress her like a sweet little girl) - but Kathy gloriously ignored all the overalls and shorts and pants, and dressed herself in the pinkest, frilliest, silliest frocks she could find - to her father's amused despair. Karen, the other woman in the house, wore more make-up than I did, and she and Kathy would sometimes disappear into Karen's room and play make-up and dress-ups and such, as Kathy's mum wasn't into that stuff.
As a crazy aunt figure, I was more into sharing Kathy's love of animals and the small life to be found in our very unkempt garden - worms and golden-eyes and nesting birds and such. We also shared a love of reading, and I got to indulge myself in sharing some of my favourite books - some of which she hated, of course! She loved my recently purchased complete Winnie The Pooh - "Now I Am Six" being a favourite poem, of course, for a six year old.
We also both enjoyed playing with the two very large dogs - the ebullient Marx (who had an extremely active sex life in the neighbourhood because of the firm denial of his owner, Karen, that "her boy" would "do that") and Ludwig, the most cynical and depressed dog in the world - later replaced by the small and unwell cocker spaniel whose real name I have forgotten, but who Peter and I cruelly called "Two-stroke" behind her owner's back, because she had, indeed, had two strokes - poor lovey.
Kathy also loved her dad's little trailer sailor - I can see her in the bow, face to the sun - laughing.
All was not easy. Kathy, in the acrimonious separation of her parents, (Peter always said that Kathy was the result of the only time he and her mum were actually friendly - her older brother, Tom, and the marriage, being the result of the rhythm method failing due to Tom's mum's exam stress!) had quietly allied herself to her mother, to whom she was closer, and Peter always felt he had a lot of ground to make up in her eyes. Kathy sometimes found the change of houses difficult - and her mother was not always happy or coping very well, and this affected both children, as did the separation. Sometimes we had a sad or angry little girl, and she wet the bed reasonably often.
One of my loveliest memories of Kathy - and her dad - is the day we went to see "E.T". Peter is a very reactive man in films - the sort who clutches you and hides his eyes on your chest in scary bits, or who cries unabashedly in sad bits, or roars and cries with laughter in funny bits. I am more restrained, and more cynical about films like ET - but going with those two! Kathy was entranced - absolutely entranced - her reactions were lovely to see - and Peter equally so, both of us also being ignited by Kathy's joy and sadness and raptness.
She was a damned fussy eater, though - crusts, bread the right thickness, not this - yesterday's favourite tomorrow's turned up, disgusted nose! As Peter said in despair - how can this be the kid who ate curry and sushi and every bloody thing when she was three!
Anyway, one day Kathy was hit by a car on our street. I had looked after the children on the previous night, and Kathy had been unusually distressed and unsettled - but had calmed, eventually, and curled up for her and Tom's bed-time story. I took them to school in the morning, and waved them goodbye.
Peter had just got a job as a teacher - after a period of unemployment - and gave Tom and Kathy permission to play outside when they got home from school. Tragically, he was exhausted by the new job, and went to sleep without realising it was happening - leaving the kids unsupervised in a way he would never normally have done - in a way none of us would normally have done. I was working late - writing a report - which has haunted me, as these things do, and nobody else came home early - so it goes. Tom ended up round the back - and Kathy on the street - where she would not normally go - but, hey, she was six - who knows why she went?
She was resuscitated by a couple of nurses who lived down the road, but her little brain was dead, and the life-support was turned off late on the next day.
That 24 hours was a gift, really - since it gave people a chance to say goodbye - and so many of us gathered - people from both parents' lives - well over fifty at various times - the hospital was a little stunned, at first, but adapted well (Peter is one of eight kids, for instance, each bigger and noisier than the last) - with food and booze and lots of love and tears and hugs. I was the first of us to reach the hospital to be with Peter and Kathy - who looked unharmed and very peaceful. I was lucky to be left alone with her when the doctors took her parents off to discuss the medical situation the first time. I knew she was dead - don't know how, really, since that was not clear then - but it was good to have that time, since, naturally, her family were the ones that needed to be there after that, and this was my only real chance.
The only real chance to grieve, too, really, because, of course, in the following year or two it was Peter who needed the support, and I don't think any of us felt sure we had enough to give - it was frightening, in a way. Just think of the parents who lost so many children in days gone by, or, awfully in such a rich world, in so many countries now!
One of Peter's sisters and I went to the inquest - which was helpful in a weird way. It was nice for the driver, too, poor man - who could not have avoided Kathy - and we got to say how terribly sorry we were for his experience, too. I hope it helped.
None of us who were part of that have ever lost the special bond. We said we wouldn't forget you, Kathy, and we don't. I wish you were the 26 year old you should have been, sweetie - nobody wanted you to stay six forever...
I will write the other piece later.
I knew that u could make me laugh. Now I know that you can make me cry as well.........
I'll second that sniff...what a sad story, deb.
Yesterday when I had read yr post, I was feeling particularly fragile emotionally, as I just heard that a close friend of my ynger brother passed away (he was only 26). He got run over by a train in India when he was going for a holiday with his friends.
When I read yr posts, I just could not stop my tears....
WIMP
****! I WARNED people not to read on!
Hope it was a bit cathartic for you, Gautam...
Tears here, too. And some sozlet-clutching.
Let me tell of an incident with a happier ending.
My older brother was hit by a car when he was 3. He survived. My parents told how they saw him fly thru the air and land on the street. (They'd instructed him to stay in the car, but he didn't.) He was in a coma for weeks, and had to re-learn to walk and talk when he woke up. But other than some gruesome scars on his head, he has no lasting effects - though we do like to blame his general goofiness on his near-death experience.
Does he have any memory of it?
