A VIRTUAL MOTHERS DAY FAMILY

With no family left in town for this Mother’s Day it seemed like it might be an interesting idea to honour this one by creating a Virtual Mothers Day Family. Selecting from among those whom I would want for my present day mother, I am lucky to have many choices - those who have treated others as well as me with integrity and honesty. A three day drive would bring me to St. George and since I travel only by walker or bicycle I’ll wait and see if the telephone lines will bring me a familiar voice.

The first person that comes to memory in the mid l920s is Alice Bennett, a neighbour who lived about two miles from my parent’s home near Orion, Alberta. It was my first week end “sleep over” and at five years of age I was thrilled. Alice and her husband had no children and perhaps it was a novelty for her as well. Alice called my mother on the barb wire telephone to invite me. My brother Paul had hooked it up on the fence line. My father hitched our team to his grain wagon and drove me over to Alice and her husband’s half section homestead. “No more teasing this weekend from my second brother who is always up to some mischief,” I told myself with delight.

The two men chatted outside about crops and the rain that was needed to fill the empty grain shells with seeds. Alice and I were gathering the eggs as my father gave me a wave, left the yard trail and made a right turn toward our family home as my hands waved their excitement. His wagon descended the next small rise and then disappeared from sight. At that moment a sudden emptiness filled my heart and seemingly my very soul as my whole being seemed to fall apart. I watched Alice set the supper table with exciting food not often seen at our simple home suppers. Suddenly all of Alice’s wonderful meal took on the status of ashes and I couldn’t eat. A special Thanksgiving type dessert had been placed in the oven but when the usual delicious fragrance of apple pie reached the table my appetite had vanished. Alice left the kitchen to strain and separate the milk that her husband brought from the barn and I tiptoed through their living room and sat silently in the semi-darkness of their glassed in porch, fighting back the tears. When she came back she held a plate of fresh made cookies and told me to eat as many as I wished. Alice was considered by the entire community to be a wonderful cook and like a special aunt to us but I could not imagine that I would ever be able to take a bite of food again. The barb wire telephone rang back home and my father’s old grain wagon became a fancy limo as my real Mother tucked me into my homemade little cot.