Marcia popped by today.
She had dropped Zach off at William Aberhart High School and wondered if there was anything she could do for me while she waited an hour before she going to her hair appointment.
I told her I did have some things in mind that are really difficult for me to do, but slightly ridiculous. So superficial that I even hate to ask someone to do them.
The problem for me is that I can’t carry stuff easily from one place to another while still keeping both of my hands on my walker.
Marcia picked up a broom and started to sweep and told me to make a list of what to do when she was finished. It wasn’t hard to had items to my list of wants when I saw the whirlwind job she can do on a kitchen floor with a broom. I kept adding things to my list: sweep my stairs, put away dishes that I don’t need to use, fill my water bottle and take it to my computer, sort my music books so I can get at ones I want for the little children, put away my laundry, sweep the bathroom, move the Winston’s Dictionary to a high shelf for I don’t need to get at it right now – she did it all. And she added jobs I wouldn’t have thought of.
“Can I scramble some eggs for you– enough that there will be leftovers for tomorrow,” she asked, “and with or without pepper?”
As she was moving the step ladder around to do some of these jobs, she reminded me that she had just swept the steps that she cried under when she first went to university. That was a lot of years ago. She was away from home for the first time, leaving before her mother had even had time to teach her how to do her own laundry. As a first timer in Calgary, she was losing her way home from the university, she was at the university trying to find her way to her first-year engineering class rooms, and she was living with cousins and an aunt and an uncle and eating out of a fridge that was absolutely new to her. She had a lot to cry about in that first week and she choose to do that weeping under the basement stairs she was now back sweeping.
The basement stairs have a long history. Doral used to sleep there – he tells his kids his parents used to make him sleep under the basement stairs, just like Harry Potter. Connor’s bed was there while he went to university. Now that space under the stairs houses two filing cabinets and extra laundry detergent.
Back to Marcia.
If she had called me and asked if there were something she could do for me, I would have told her I didn’t need any help. That I am good. But popping by and grabbing a broom? How welcome was that.
I have a free-standing mirror in my bedroom which belonged to her. Whenever Marcia gives away furniture, Wyona and I find places to tuck it in our homes. That mirror is one of those things. Calling it “our mirror”, Marcia wiped it down and gave it a good shine – something I have been planning to do for months.
If Marcia ever drops by and asks if she can give you help for 45 minutes, give her full range of all of her powers. She is pretty amazing.
Arta
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| Cabin where Marcia spent her childhood summers Print from Original painted by Wyona Bates |
She had dropped Zach off at William Aberhart High School and wondered if there was anything she could do for me while she waited an hour before she going to her hair appointment.
I told her I did have some things in mind that are really difficult for me to do, but slightly ridiculous. So superficial that I even hate to ask someone to do them.
The problem for me is that I can’t carry stuff easily from one place to another while still keeping both of my hands on my walker.
Marcia picked up a broom and started to sweep and told me to make a list of what to do when she was finished. It wasn’t hard to had items to my list of wants when I saw the whirlwind job she can do on a kitchen floor with a broom. I kept adding things to my list: sweep my stairs, put away dishes that I don’t need to use, fill my water bottle and take it to my computer, sort my music books so I can get at ones I want for the little children, put away my laundry, sweep the bathroom, move the Winston’s Dictionary to a high shelf for I don’t need to get at it right now – she did it all. And she added jobs I wouldn’t have thought of.
“Can I scramble some eggs for you– enough that there will be leftovers for tomorrow,” she asked, “and with or without pepper?”
As she was moving the step ladder around to do some of these jobs, she reminded me that she had just swept the steps that she cried under when she first went to university. That was a lot of years ago. She was away from home for the first time, leaving before her mother had even had time to teach her how to do her own laundry. As a first timer in Calgary, she was losing her way home from the university, she was at the university trying to find her way to her first-year engineering class rooms, and she was living with cousins and an aunt and an uncle and eating out of a fridge that was absolutely new to her. She had a lot to cry about in that first week and she choose to do that weeping under the basement stairs she was now back sweeping.
The basement stairs have a long history. Doral used to sleep there – he tells his kids his parents used to make him sleep under the basement stairs, just like Harry Potter. Connor’s bed was there while he went to university. Now that space under the stairs houses two filing cabinets and extra laundry detergent.
Back to Marcia.
If she had called me and asked if there were something she could do for me, I would have told her I didn’t need any help. That I am good. But popping by and grabbing a broom? How welcome was that.
I have a free-standing mirror in my bedroom which belonged to her. Whenever Marcia gives away furniture, Wyona and I find places to tuck it in our homes. That mirror is one of those things. Calling it “our mirror”, Marcia wiped it down and gave it a good shine – something I have been planning to do for months.
If Marcia ever drops by and asks if she can give you help for 45 minutes, give her full range of all of her powers. She is pretty amazing.
Arta
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