FOCUSING ON FAMILY

    The short daylight hours of the Christmas holiday season provided us with a perfect opportunity to focus on home and family.  Driving me home from Christmas dinner, my grandson, Luke, tells me their children have been asking so many questions lately about his side of their family.  Since it was a three day drive to travel to the grandparent’s home in the U.S. we spoke to them on the phone instead.  “I want to hear everything about your oldest brother Paul, tell me more about him first,” Luke insisted.  The previous briefs about my eldest brother had taken us to Orion, Alberta, 65 miles from Medicine Hat.  Our eldest brother, Paul, sheltered us from the bitter north winds on the way to Pakowki School.  The neighbour’s huge horned bull, Seafoam, would race toward the unfenced roadway to protect his herd of cows and try to get rid of us.  His massive size prevented him from getting under the bridge and we watched him paw the dusty road a few feet from us. 

    Now I’ll tell you about my second brother, Fred, who always seemed to be in a hurry with a new idea.  It began the day he was born on September 9^th when our brother Paul was nearly two years old.  The wheat fields of our farm had been harvested and our parents hitched up the two teams of horses after the two grain wagons had been shoveled full of wheat and the two wagons left for the elevators in Orion.  After both wagons were emptied at one of the elevators, Mother sensed possible birth pangs and left for home.  Two year old Paul stayed with his father to go to the post office to cash the grain cheques.  While standing in line, he noticed Mother was urging her team up the only steep hill two miles from town.  He immediately turned around and directed his team toward home..  Before trucks were available, grain wagons were built with a wider top.  He caught up with Mother’s team in less than an hour.  She had tied her team to a post near an old abandoned house.  He found Mother inside stretched out on the dusty shiplap floor, having already given birth to her impatient baby but had no scissors to cut the birth chord.  Taking Paul with him, they drove a half mile to Mrs. Cup’s place to borrow the scissors.  Mrs. Cup came back with him.  Both were too nervous to cut the baby’s birth chord so Mother reached for the scissors and did it herself and sealed it off with a shoestring.  Two more miles brought them home where they found Mrs. Kriel, the midwife had already arrived, “Here he is,” Mother said. Thinking it was a bag of oatmeal they had bought in town, the midwife tossed it to the couch, as the “bag of oatmeal” shouted loudly.  The midwife nearly fainted.  Mrs. Cup, the scissor lady soon booked the next ship back to her homeland, England.