Friday, May 29, 2009

Still Cottage Dreaming - Breakfast



From my childhood perspective the cottage was heaven, but for my grandmother who had to keep it clean, cook and serve meals, and wash our clothes, it was back to the way she had grown up on the family farm (which was within a mile of the cottage). She never complained. There was no running water, just a pump out by the lake where buckets had to be filled and hauled back to the kitchen. There was no electricity, just lanterns, a hand-cranked Victrola, a wood stove that had to chop and stack wood for. No refrigerator, just an icebox that Grandpa had to buy ice for from the old Brechin Icehouse a few miles away. I remember at some point being in charge of making the toast at breakfast. The toaster was a wire contraption that you clamped your two pieces of bread between and held and turned over the flames. And as long as we're on breakfast which was revered in our household, I would comment that everyone who was usually there, Uncle Bruce, Aunt Ethel, Grandpa, my mom Catherine, me and Grandma, all liked their toast differnt ways, almost burned, very light, just warmed. So being the toast person was more complex than one might think. If there was no fish there was bacon. The usual introduction of the plate of bacon coming to the table included Grandma or mom or Ethel saying, "this is Bruce's (looking a little raw), this is Andrew's (cripsy but not black), this is ..." well, you get the picture. Eggs too were done to order!

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Book Note Quotes on Mary Pipher's "Seeking Peace"




Baby picture is of Payton, my great-neice, (Lois' grandaughter, Megan's first born) who is love and light and joy...

Here are some of the quotes from "Seeking Peace" that I couldn't help recording:

"Since the beginning of human time, we have yearned for peace in the face of death, loss, anger and fear. In fact, it is often trauma that turns us toward the sacred and it is the sacred that saves us."
"When we learn to face our pain and the pain of others, we start flourishing. The opposite of despair is not a surcease of despair. (Sorrows are all around us.) Rather, it opposite is an explosion of liveliness and joy ... Love and light exist deep within us, waiting for us to welcome them into our consciousness and share them with all we meet."

"Meditation helped me stay with my own experience and not censure upsetting information. Instead of being utterly entangled in my thoughts and feelings, I learned to note them without judging them."
And here is my favorite:

"We all share similar journeys. We live through childhoods filled with ups and downs. We share houses with people who both love us and make us miserable. We pass developmental milestones, build identities and see them change. We fail miserably and we accomplish important goals. We make the best of it. We take turns being the afflicted and the comforter. We experience a crisis and realize our old ways are not working. We stumble around lost and unhappy, only to see the light, find our path and move forward. This is our universal human story."

Cottage Fishing

A big part of cottage life is fishing. Our most
frequent catch was yellow perch, but bass was
common too. Grandpa Cowie was considered the expert. He was the kind of fellow who if you weren't catching anything and he was, he'd give you his pole all baited up and ready to go, take yours, drop the line over the side and catch a fish on your pole while you still couldn't get a bite. If you thought his side of the boat was better, he'd change sides with you and still be the one to pull in the fish.
Grandfather told me the rules every time just before the boat left the dock. They were: You will not whine to come back to shore, once the anchor has been dropped and the poles have been set. You will bait your own hook. You will sit still in the boat. All three rules were hard on me when I was a squirmy four, five or six year old. Doing my own bait was the hardest, especially if we were using frogs, which we did espicially if going for bass. Finding and catching the little buggers was fun the day before, but putting a sharp hook through their little... ooh, I can't even talk about it. I got used to worms even though they were slimy. I guess I didn't think them cute enough to feel bad about, and they weren't much fun to gather either, but I remember the process as if it were yesterday. After an afternoon rain, just as dusk became darkness, we took flashlights and prowled the grass bent over double to grab the little buggers before they wiggled down into their holes again.

I remember falling overboard one time while trying to wash the icky slime off my hands. I must have been pretty small.
I went out fishing less frequently as I grew older. Grandfather advised me not to learn how to clean fish, so I wouldn't have to. I took that advice to this day, but I still love fish for breakfast (Arlene).

Monday, May 18, 2009

From Mary Pipher's "Seeking Peace"

from:
A story of a Buddhist who developed Alzheimer's:

"He retired from teaching because of his unreliable memory. He made one exception; for a reunion of his former students. When he walked onto the stage, he forgot everything, even where he was and why. However, he was a skilled Buddhist and he simply began sharing his feelings with the crowd. He said, "I am anxious. I feel stupid. I feel scared and dumb. I am worried that I am wasting everyone's time. I am fearful. I am embarrassing myself."

After a few minutes of this, he remembered his talk and proceeded without apology. The students were deeply moved, not only by his wise teachings, but also how he handled his feelings."

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

More on The Cottage

This is today's lakeside view ... The cottage was a duplex when my family owned it. The open porch side here was the Laughlin's side.

Hurricanes are rare in this area, but wind is not.

Windy days that kept us out of or off of the lake were good for going into town. Nearest town is Brechin, small then and now. We got our ice there. Beaverton is next largest and about 10 miles away. We had relatives living near there, the lumber yard was there, and they had a 5&dime for windmills, all-day suckers, water floats and such fun things. Wider range shopping could be done in the small city of Orillia about 20 miles one way. I always liked to go along when the family went there. I took no part in the shopping for supplies except to pick out cutout doll or coloring books. I still remember getting lost in a variety store in Orillia. We often went to Champlain Park for a picnic as part of the trip.

Cut-out dolls were big in my sit down and be quiet play choices, but they were fragile. One time we didn't have enough commercial paper dolls to go around for my friends who'd come over. The wind was whipping up white caps on the lake so we were sitting on a blanket out of the wind on the road side of the cottage. My grandmother (Olive Cowie) came up with a creative idea She gave us some of her old magazines, scissors, glue, crayons, paper, and cardboard. We were to look through the magazines, find models with full body photos and cut them out, paste them on cardboard, then design and color our own clothes for them, remembering to make tabs to fit over their shoulders and waists. We came up with some pretty cute stuff. Future Coco Chanels? I don't think so, but it was fun and diverting.

more next posting...

Sunday, May 10, 2009

The Cottage on Lake Simcoe

This is how the cottage looks today. A new family owns it.


The entry was enclosed when I was a girl; it was my grandparent's bedroom. Off and on over the years I've written about my cottage. Here's some of my latest musings about it:

From 1943 when I was a baby of seven months until I was a teenager in the late fifties, I spent the summer months at our family's cottage on Lake Simcoe, Brechin Beach, Ontario, Canada.


Each summer, as I grew, I loved the cottage more. I was always a place of freedom and fun. When the sun was shining and the lake was calm and the water reflected the sky, my friends from neighboring cottages and I, would swim and play like river otters. Some of my friends tanned brown as stained wood but my fair skin, especially shoulders, forehead, nose, and tops of ears, would burn, blister, peel, then start the process over. One year, Grandfather built this barrel raft for us. We anchored the raft with a rope tied to a big rock just beyond the sandbar where we could stand up. Beyond this point, the bottom drops off rather steeply into what we called, "the deep beyond." We would dive off this side for 'pearls', which in fact were white stones I collected from the shore. I am still a complusive white stone picker-upper. On the sandbar side, toward the beach, we played tag and other water gymnastics. We often had days and days of this good swimming weather. We came out of the water when we were called in for meals and on parental orders had to wait an hour before we could go back in.



However, Lake Simcoe is large and has many moods. Winds comes up quickly and calm water rises into impressive white caps. Trees bend, shiver, and sway. Clouds scurry by or they bunch up in dark gray ceilings. Storms pour in and drive us indoors.
One summer we had a hurricane pass over. I'll never forget the still center of that storm. The wind had blown furiously, breaking tree limbs fell on our boathouse and cottage. Waves soared up and over the well. Suddenly it stopped. The light was greenish then turned golden. It was so still. Finally, we heard the wind coming again. The sky grew dark and the fury returned for another hour before the whole thing passed.