Annual Golf Ball Hunt

Every year, when the snow starts to melt away from the fairways, we don our mucky-boots and head out to find little dimpled treasures left behind from last year’s golfers. This past Saturday, we once again observed this annual tradition.

We started by searching the rough grass between holes one and nine. I found nothing. We headed on towards hole two and I scanned the long grass between the second fairway and the ninth tee. I found nothing. My daughter followed behind, scanning the grass left and right of where I had just been. She found four balls. My shoulders slumped. I wished I had grabbed my glasses out of the car. My little niece grabbed my hand and pulled me forward.

We passed the second green then the third tee. I kicked my way through the long grass to the right of the fairway. “Yeah!” I shouted. One white Dunlop nestled beneath a clump of long grass. I looked to my right. “Ooooh!” A yellow Titleist peeked out from under a small shrub. The fairway filled up with noise as we all stumbled upon tens of balls on the hill between the fairway and the fence. Pink, Dunlop, yellow, Nike, white, Callaway…we dropped them into Mom’s plastic carrying bag one by one.

“I’m going to find a ball,” said my five-year old niece. She headed down the hill nearly stumbling and, within less than a dozen steps she did find a ball; then another; then another. We followed the fence line along the fourth, fifth and seventh fairways as our hunt continued.

The creek was running. I stood and listened to the sound of the water splashing its way down the creek bed. I inhaled deeply the smell of wet grass, mildew and fresh, fresh air…the smells of spring. The others scanned the creek bed for balls and leaned forward to pull them out of the icy water. I followed the creek bed to where it disappeared into the bush. I love the water. I’m drawn to its movement and sound.

An hour and a half later, after collecting over 70 balls, we made our way back to the house. My five-year-old niece insisted on going the back way. We made our way behind the 8th tee and up the hill behind the house. Once we reached the top of the hill, the kids began to sprint down towards the house laughing and squealing.

There will be more hunts before the golfers return to the fairway. After each rainfall it seems that we uncover more and more balls. After that, our efforts will be made only to harvest those that we lose during our own game. Those, it seems, are far harder to locate.

90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper

As I mentioned in a previous post, I began reading 90 Minutes in Heaven last week and finished it earlier this morning. The book chronicles the accident, death and recovery of Baptist Minister Don Piper, and recounts his visit to Heaven on the day he died.

The book begins, "I died on January 18, 1989." Don Piper was in a terrible car accident on his way home from a conference. A prison inmate driving a tractor-trailer, lost control of his semi while crossing a narrow bridge and hit Don's car head-on, slamming it into the bridge railing. In effect, the semi drove OVER Don's car, crushing it. The time of the accident was 11:45am. The force of the collision was measured at 100mph. Don died instantly. Paramedics on scene failed to get a pulse and draped his mangled car with a tarp.

At 12:45, Baptist Minister Dick Onerecker and his wife approached the scene on foot, abandoning their car now in the long line of traffic unable to navigate through or around the scene. Despite receiving information that Don was deceased, Dick insisted on praying for him, saying that he heard the voice of God urging him to do so. At 1:15, paramedics were still unable to find a pulse and pronounced Don dead at the scene. Dick positioned himself inside the wreckage, placed a hand on Don's shoulder and began to pray.

The time between 11:45 and 1:15 is, I think, what Don refers to as his 90 Minutes in Heaven. He describes the gates of Heaven, the lights of Heaven and (most remarkable in his opinion) the sounds of Heaven. He says in the book that he gets frustrated trying to describe Heaven with words because there are none that adequately convey what he experienced.

He was pulled from the wreckage later that afternoon and taken to several different medical facilities. As he was wheeled into hospital emergency units, the trauma teams would just shake their heads, say that they weren't equipped to deal with the severity of his wounds, do what they could to stabilize him, then sent him to another hospital. Don frequently lost consciousness from the pain and would continue to do that through the weeks ahead, even as he began to heal.

I won't go into more detail. If you want to learn more, you can read the book. It is an interesting story. The whole point, however, is Don's experience with death and Heaven and his reluctance to discuss it or share it until several months after his accident. The fact that he was a Baptist Minister, I suppose, is intended to boost his credibility.

I'm not sure myself. I have always held to the notion that you get what you expect. If you think you deserve Hell, then you get fire and brimstone...or whatever your own idea of Hell may be. If you think you deserve heaven and angels, then you get the streets of gold, the company of others...or whatever you had envisioned you would experience on your day of delivery. If you believe in nothing...well...then it's over. You get nothing. The big sleep. No reunion with the departed, no shackles by a boiling lake of lava, no heavenly orchestras giving praise to the Lord in glorious fields of flowers. Just a casket or a crematorium and nothing more.

It's personal, I think. Believe or don't believe. Seems to me though that the happiest, most successful people I know believe in something. I don't think I know very many people that don't believe in anything at all. Everybody's idea is a little different but, whatever that idea may be, it seems that the very light of that idea, shines in even the most darkest moments of our life.

Truth is, it's just easier to make our way through this life believing in something.

Brownie Points

March is the month of birthdays here in Ottawa. My husband celebrated his on the 4th, my niece celebrated on the 16th, my other niece has a birthday on Thursday and Mom turns 60 on Sunday! There have been black forest cakes, a rocking horse cake, and a cake that looked like a turtle made with edible play dough. There will be more cake before the end of the month, but I am curious to see the next one.

You see, my mother, father, brother, sister-in-law and sister have all just reinstated their diets. Everything in my Mom's fridge has been marked with their Weight Watcher Points' value in black, permanent marker. My mom has the little Weight Watcher computer that calculates Points using total fat, calories and fibre. When I open the fridge, I see some of my favourite foods marked with a big 2 or 3 or -- God Forbid -- a 4! The cake on the counter had a little sticker on it that said - 1/8 of the cake - 2 points. Who eats 1/8 of a cake; points or no points?

I'm not on a diet...not now...not anytime soon. My biggest problem is that I don't eat regularly. I get busy and miss meals which means I end up starving and then I binge. For every 1 cup of water I drink, I drink about 3 cups of coffee. (I take one sugar and one cream.) My weight fluctuates slightly with the seasons -- I gain a little weight over the winters -- but I'm pretty much the same size I was when I got married. I don't obsess about my weight. I don't have scales and I don't have a full-length mirror. If my clothes fit well, my weight is fine. If they start to get tight, I cut back a little until they loosen up. It's that simple.

I almost always feel sad for people on diets. As soon as they call it a "diet," there is inevitably a look that falls across their face. It is a shameful, downtrodden look that carries with it a kind of surrender of their very spirit. People are so attached to their food. Everybody is. You don't believe me? Ask someone to name their favourite food. If they don't instantly light-up, ask them to describe it to you. You'll see. I think food's ability to trigger emotions is largely responsible for the warm reception I receive at the camp, the cottage and from the neighbours. You see, I am known for my brownies...I make brownies that taste so good they will make you cry. I figure that one 1" square piece is probably 10 points. I assure you that they are worth 20.

The menu for mom's birthday is vegetarian chili, salads and low-fat dressing. The chili is actually awesome AND good for you which is great. I'll bring my own Mediterranean Dressing (worth 2 Points per TABLESPOON) and maybe a bag of buns to see if I can get a reaction. I will patiently listen as my sister, sister-in-law and mother announce the Point Value of every item on the table. I will patiently listen as they share low-fat, low-calorie recipes. I will join them on their afternoon walk so that they fulfill their requirement for 20-minutes of daily exercise. I will support them (OK...no buns) and love them and hope that they meet their targets so that one day.....

in the not-so-long future,

we may celebrate their success...

over a tray of brownies.

The Funeral

On the day of Grandma Bea's funeral, I woke early. We were expected to be at the church by 12:30 and were met by the hearse when we arrived. I was rather hoping that the funeral home would already have her coffin inside by the pulpit, but it was not to be. As a pall-bearer I helped my siblings, my cousin and two other dear friends carry the coffin inside the church. We tried to keep to the narrow, paved path as we made our way to the front doors of the church. I stepped two or three times in the soft muck of the church garden as we rounded the bend in the path. Up six stairs, my muscles were straining under the weight of this magnificent coffin. Minutes later, we eased our burden down upon the wheeled device waiting at the door.

Once things were ready, I made my way to the front of the church and deposited letters from the children. I tucked the envelope neatly into the folds of the soft, white cloth and bid a hasty retreat to the rear of the church. I could not receive visitors that afternoon. My concern was with maintaining my composure while I coached the children through their first funeral. My sister would read the eulogy and the children would read some of Grandma's poetry during the service.

My Grandma's cousin is a preacher and he led us through the ceremony. He opened with some kind words and, after the children read their parts, he led us through the hymn Jesus Loves the Little Children. We didn't have the words in our hymn books so he started by helping us through the chorus a couple of times so we could "learn our part." He and Clarice, the choir leader, sang the song and we all joined in for the chorus. It was kind of karaoke-ish. I smiled and thought that Grandma would really have enjoyed it. My sister read the eulogy. It was wonderful. I think she'll post it on her blog. I'll drop in a link if she does. (Or maybe she will in a comment post.) We followed the eulogy by another hymn - Amen. Again, no words, but then again...that's the only word there is...Amen. I NEVER sang THAT song in church before. In fact, I'd only ever heard it sung in a movie or on TV in the setting of a Southern Baptist Church. I smiled again. Grandma would have loved that! As we walked the coffin out of the church, a song played in the background. It was a Christian Rock song. It kept things from getting too terribly sad.

After the funeral and the interment, we returned to the church for a luncheon that the ladies of the church had prepared. It was lovely. Sandwiches, squares, coffee, tea and juice...and lots of dear, dear friends.

Since the funeral, I started to read 90 Minutes in Heaven. My sister suggested that I read it because it would help reinforce my belief that Grandma is somewhere better. My sister took the book up to the pulpit when she delivered the eulogy. It helped her stay composed. Once I get done, I'll tell you about it.

On Stories and Visits and Community

My Grandmother's visitation was yesterday at the town funeral parlour from 2-4 and 6-8. From 1-2, the immediate family arrived and took their turn saying farewell to the greatest lady we had ever known. It was sacred but not somber. Grandma lived far too great a life for anyone to be sad about. As my brother said...quality and quantity.

The kids went to the funeral parlour. I spent a lot of time thinking about that decision but, in the end, I felt that if they were old enough to understand death, they were old enough to be involved in the ceremony of dying. The ceremony is for the living; they needed to be a part of it.

Grandma had already chosen her own casket, her pallbearers, and made books that we would lay out during the visitation. My mother found some chalk, a monocle, a teacher's pin, a teachers' apple and a 60th anniversary photo of my grandparents for the casket. A long time ago, she and my grandfather chose their burial plots. They will be buried together, side by side, in a cemetery located just a few short miles from the home they shared for over 55 years.

Seeing Grandma lying in the puffy, white folds of her casket rekindled that sense of loss and we all shed a few tears. I think that, until they saw her, the kids had more of an idea that Grandma had passed. Seeing her lying there solidified that idea in their minds. It's scary. It's sad and it's so foreign an idea for many kids that they needed a few minutes to process it. It is just as much about our their mortality as it is about Grandma's. My son asked how long most people lived. I'm sure he was doing the math to calculate how many precious years he will share with his parents, his grandparents or even how many years he himself will enjoy on this earth.

From 2-4, many of Grandma's students paid their respects. It was wonderful hearing their stories. They talked about how she would inspect their hands each morning and grade them on their cleanliness. They talked about how she always taught in a dress. Sometimes, if the snow was deep, she would wear pants to school, but she would always duck into the schoolhouse and change into a dress. My cousins came to visit and talked about how Grandma shared her books with them when they stayed in a nearby cottage during the summer months. Grandma's house was like a library to them. One of my cousins said that she still owns a copy of Aesop's Fables that Grandma gave her one summer long ago.

I love hearing her stories. I do. Today I will get a few more. The funeral is this afternoon and, afterwards, the ladies at church are putting on a little lunch. I'll listen then and fill up on more stories; the kind only seniors can tell about a time long before people passed their time in front of a television being told what to think. A time when community dances, barn-building bees and quilting parties knit together the fabric of a community like a fine sweater.

When I hear of these stories, I wonder sometimes if we have advanced as a society or if we are slowly devolving. I wonder how Grandma felt about the changing times. Maybe she didn't see it as much. She lived after all, in the same safe, rural community of farmers and quilters and friends that experienced life as she did. The kind of people that bring pies to their neighbours when they lose someone. The kind of people that stand in line and say, "Sorry for your troubles."

It's nice being back up here. I like the safety of this community. I like driving past someone and having them wave at me whether they know me or not. I like going to the store and hearing somebody call me "Tommy's daughter," as though my father is a kid himself. I like hearing the neighbours call me kid, even though they can see the flecks of grey staining the hair at my temple. I like the way it feels to belong in a community.

A Great Lady

I usually try to avoid using first names on the Internet. I don't know why really. It seems, now that I think of it, silly to be afraid of naming the people in my life to protect their privacy. I wanted to pay tribute to my Grandmother today, so I decided to break my own rule. How can I tell the world how great she was, if I didn't share her name? I called her Grandma Bea.

Grandma Bea, can I have a cookie? Grandma Bea, will you tell me a story? Grandma Bea, will you teach me how to play? Grandma Bea, will you teach me to knit and sew and hook and garden and......? Yes. She always said yes. Grandma was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse for many, many years. Her rural pupils met her during their first day of school in first grade, and she would continue to teach them every year, until they graduated from grade eight. Eight years with the same teacher. She became like a mother to many of them, I suppose. Evidence of this appeared long after the schoolhouse closed. Her 90th birthday party was as much a class reunion as it was a birthday celebration. Several of her students visited her at the nursing home where she lived for the last few years. How many of your teachers do you visit? Surely it was a testament to the enormous impact she had had on these children...now seniors themselves.

I don't remember Grandma teaching. I only remember Grandma at home. She lived in the house beside ours. I remember seeing her kneeling in her garden most summer days. She had the most glorious garden. Dahlia's as big as dinner plates, I often heard people say. She had Hollyhocks growing at the front of the house, an Iris bed, Gladiolas that always turned up at the local fair, and Black Eyed Susans lining the hillside. She tried to grow nearly every kind of rose that the horticulturists could hybrid. Maybe she liked the roses because they lasted longer. Their thorns protected them from the prying hands of three young grandchildren who loved nothing more than to present her with a lovely bouquet of flowers...often from her own garden. I never, ever heard her say a word about it. She would smile and hug us and say "Oh thank you!"

During the long winters, Grandma spent her time hooking rugs and wall hangings, darning socks, painting, writing and reading. She would sit in her green armchair, the table beside it overflowing with projects and books, and quietly work beneath the lamplight. She would be sitting there nearly every time we came over. Any day we were too ill to go to school, we would be whisked across the yard and take up a position on the living room couch. Grandma would pour glasses of Ginger Ale to flatten on the kitchen counter and dig out the saltines from their place in the cupboards. She would pull the chair over to the sink and stand on it to reach the horse liniment in the shelf over the window there. I remember her rubbing my neck with that horrid-smelling stuff and then wrapping an old sock around it to ease my swollen glands and tonsils. I'd sleep on the couch as she worked her fingers with a hook or needle, always creating or re-creating.

I remember climbing into her lap when I was a little girl. She would always drag her fingers through my hair and it would so relax me that I would close my eyes and, I'm sure on occasion I fell asleep. She would tell stories about Dad as a little boy, or about his sister Anne's shenanigans at church. She believed in stories, but she preferred the kind that were told rather than read. She held to the belief of strong family roots tightened by knowledge passed through the telling of stories. Knowing someone, is about knowing their stories. To truly know someone, you must listen not just to what they say, but to what other people say about them. To understand them, you have to hear about their adventures in the third person so that the stories are not slanted by modesty or boastfulness or hurt or humour. There is much truth in perception. Some argue, in fact, that perception is the truth.

Grandma was a great lady. I've heard that a lot in the last few days. My mom says that Grandma was the greatest lady that she ever knew. I have to agree. A couple of the nurses at the home said the same thing, the neighbour who visited yesterday said it, the preacher said it, and one of her students said it yesterday. "She was a great lady!" She was. She was the absolute best. She was my friend, my teacher, my confidante, my cheerleader, my playmate, my compass. She was my "soft place" in a world where so often I learned by bumping and bruising.

My grandma passed away on Thursday morning at 2:30 am. I was with her, holding her hand, reading her one of the stories she had written. The story was about a billy goat that came to the farm when she was a little girl. I like to think that when she passed, she was a young girl trying to coax a billy goat down from the roof of the shed with a handful of oats. I like to think that when she passed, she looked down and saw me there with her and knew how deeply she was loved by me. I had told her a million times during my life, but words sometimes just don't seem to be enough. How do you convey that kind of emotion with mere words? You don't, I suppose. I guess, it is something that can only be expressed through deeds rather than words. I suppose it is something that can only be felt. Like fingers running through your hair, as you sit in the comfort of your grandma's lap.

We Stayed

Well, my niece attended her second public speaking competition yesterday. My brother and sister-in-law were there and so was niece #2. They arrived early to get their little speaker registered. They managed to get seats near the front. My sister and her boyfriend met me there and they saved me a seat in their row near the back of the room.

The competition started at noon. Again, there were competitions in each of the divisions -- primary, junior, intermediate and senior. There were about six or seven children in each category except the senior category which featured only two speakers. The "show" started with the primary division. All but two of the speakers were reciting stories from books they had read. We found out later that the kids in the primary competition could memorize a book OR write and deliver their own speech. Every one of the books memorized by the contestants was written by children's author Robert Munsch.

My niece placed third. Second place went to a little girl who memorized and delivered a French version of Robert Munsch's book, "Up, Up, Down." First place went to a lively speaker who delivered a horror story about school. I think she said it was called the Teacher from the Black Lagoon. I looked it up on the Internet. It's a book written by Mike Thaler. Within just a few seconds, I was hooked. I realize now that I probably wouldn't enjoy the book nearly as much as I enjoyed listening to this little girl tell the story. She was awesome. She deserved first prize. Even my niece said to me, "Yeah, she was good." It's much easier losing to someone so deserving. My niece was quite gracious about it.

After the primary competition was over, my brother and his family left. As he walked past us where we sat in the back he turned and said, "Are you staying?" I said, "Sure. What the heck else are we going to do on a Sunday? This is like the closest thing I get to a night out." My sister and her boyfriend agreed. We stayed.

The junior competition was a wash. Too dramatic, too boring, too broad a topic (not enough depth) or too much detail, these kids tanked. Peer pressure, Guinness Book of World Records, Endangered Species (at least 4 of them), Fears & Phobias, Traditions and Camping Trips. All written and delivered by kids aged 9-12. How could they wow us? After all, we had just sat through a series of Robert Munsch stories. They didn't have a chance. My sister's boyfriend thought that the primary speakers blew away the junior division. (He gloated somewhat when the judges admitted to having a difficult time judging the elementary speakers...he insisted it was because they were all below average.) Fears & Phobias took first, Traditions (making maple syrup) took second place, and another little girl took third but I can't for the life of me remember the topic of her speech.

The trophies and cheques were handed out and most of the contestants and their families left the building. We stayed. I realized that we were the only adults in the room who were still there and not related to any of the speakers or members of that branch of the Canadian Legion. Hmmm.

The intermediate division was an interesting competition. Body image, Bullying, Auditioning, The Teenage Brain, My Hero is my Grandfather, Terry Fox and Beauty were the topics. All of the speakers in this category were young ladies. Third place went to Auditioning who ended her speech by singing part of a song from the Sound of Music -- different. Second place went to a girl who compared bullying to rain in a well-sustained, 5-minute metaphor -- also different. First place went to the girl discussing Beauty. She was great. Her speech was colourful, humorous, and endearing. She deserved the win. I'm sure she'll go very far in the next few competitions.

Nobody left the building, because there were only two speakers left. The competition coordinator was afraid to give us a break and risk having the last two speakers "talk to themselves." We would have stayed.

The first speaker talked about the New Madrid fault line and the earthquake it caused in 1811. (My sister and her boyfriend were quite interested, but that's to be expected. They are currently reading Apocalypse 2012 and are quite fascinated by all manner of theories regarding the end of the earth.) The second speaker talked about the human heart. She used clever wordplay to dress up the topic and she delivered the speech with energy and enthusiasm. She won.

All in all, it was worth spending three hours on a cold winter day inside listening to children talk about things they find interesting and important. So maybe somebody wrote down our license plates when we drove away after the competition. So what! We came, we sat, we listened.

We stayed.