Miss Susan Dreyer

pre-kindergarten Betty with her raspberry harvest

Betty began kindergarten this year. 

In the months preceding Betty's starting date, her two siblings would gather round her telling her about her new-to-be kindergarten teacher, Miss Dreyer. 

"When Miss Dreyer comes to work she wears the same colour. Her jacket, her skirt, her shoes, her purse. Either it’s a pink day, or a blue day, or a yellow day.” 

There was a longing in their voices for the good old days of kindergarten with Miss Dreyer, a teacher didn’t like having bullies in her class. 

If an altercation happened, or a stand-off between two kindergarteners  happened, Miss Dreyer would run over to the apparent loser, perhaps from a fall of being shoved, or the indignity of having someone take something from them. 

She would say, “Oh, are you alright?”   Apparently Miss Dreyer gets down low, looks right into the child's eyes and the tone of her voice is soft and loving as she speaks to the child.  We can only imagine that Miss Dreyer teachers in high heels, for when her walk is modelled it is not the walk of someone who has on good tunners or walking shoes.  Quiet, small, quick steps.  So darling, watching the older kids take on the "Miss Dreyer personna".  

It seemed to Michael and Alice that feelings, hurt feelings and how to heal them, was the highest objective on the kindergarten teacher's agenda. 

And here’s the best thing about her, or the memory she left with the older kids. On the last day of school she looks each one in the eye and said to them, “I am going to miss you. Please come back and see me.”

I wonder if any of them do.

Maybe I have the answer to my question.

Michael and Alice know how to revisit Miss Dreyer, for they did it in their explanation of how school would be for Betty.

Arta

PS  Since the telling of how lucky Betty is going to be to go to kindergarten, Bonnie and I sometimes declare "Miss Dreyer" days and when we take on that wholey loving vocal tone that we heard in their voices our accidents and disappointments, our whole days go better.

What Does the Sky Taste Like?

 So I have not yet had the heart to completely harvest my mint since it still has flowers that the bees are visiting.

But yesterday, with a fall chill in the air, I decided to pick some leaves and make some tea to warm my hands as I worked outside on my patio (one of the joys of tele-working from home is that I can take my tablet outside and work anytime I want).

I decide to try to take a picture of my tea, hoping the mint leaves steeping in the water would make a nice shot for this blog.

Instead I was blessed with an image of the sky above me. 

What does the sky taste like you might ask?  Well, chocolate-mint of course.

 

Fall Treasures: Garden Spiders

One of my favourite parts of the Fall season is catching a glimpse of a garden spider in my backyard.  They make the most beautiful big webs, and just sit there with what seems to be pregnant bodies.  I don't know if their bodies actually swell in the fall, but that is the way it seems.

I love that in the above photo you can't even see the web, it is so fine.  I know it is there not only because the spider must be clinging to something, but because in the bottom right you can see a tiny fruit fly caught in the web.  It must have been too small to bother with.  Certainly not a meal, and evidently, not even big enough for a snack.

And here, a photo with my finger for scale. She is a big beauty.

I have gone back to the spot where I found her every day since I took this photo, but I have not had the pleasure of her company again.

I recall one Fall at our home in Gatineau having the chance to see tiny spiders spill out of a spider's egg sack on our patio table umbrella. They scurried to the edge, let loose a thread of silk, then drifted off in the air.  Just as described in Charlotte's Web.  It was magical.

I have not spotted any egg sacks in my backyard in Lethbridge yet, but I will keep an eye out.
 

Smoke in the air

I woke looking to the north-east and I could see a white cloud along the top of Bastion Mountain. I thought, “Oh, it’s going to rain today”, and I checked the table on the porch where I could already see that the dew had pooled in the night, … but no rain yet. A few hours later Bonnie said, “Oh, that’s not the mist of a cloud. That is smoke that has come from the fires raging in Oregon. I think this is just the beginning of it.” And she was right.

The smoke has crept in until it covers the water which means when I look out I can only see the cabins that rim the perimeter of the lake which I can see beneath me.

Bonnie wondered, “shall we drive to Moiya’s to stay out of the smoke?” after Moiya had invited us over for lunch. I thought about that drive versus what can only be a two-minute walk between my house and Moiya’s. I thought back to other years when our home was filled with smoke. Those are the years when the claustrophobia of staying inside seemed to equal the danger of the smoke to our lungs outside.

While we’ve been living in a pandemic for almost five months now, six months, really, the danger of the pandemic has to be imagined in my mind. The danger of too much smoke inhalation that I now see is so visible, that seems more like a pandemic to me, though that is just danger of smoke inhalation, not something that the whole world has to worry about.

The fall rains and autumn winds will take away the smoke, but the dangers of the pandemic will still be here.

... Dave on my deck ...

I hear Dave Wood talk about the pandemic.

He lifts his arms off the table and spreads them, holds them apart for a second as if he has caught time and the virus in that space for me to see. 

He moves both of his hands toward  me, as though he has caught them for a fleeting moment in time and space. He holds them for a second as if that second represents the six months of coronavirus.

It seems like a l-o-n-g second.

Then his hands fall open to the table with a thud that marks his powerlessness over this danger.

I can see these thoughts on the lines of his face, a face that is usually stoic, even unreadable. But when he talks about the pandemic, I l watch the lines on his face as well as listen to his words.  The lines deepen.

I change the subject.

“You don’t like playing games, do you?,” I asked him. He nodded.   He doesn't.  I felt a solidarity with him. I don’t like to play because the cards don’t have print that is readable to me anymore, nor are board game pieces legible anymore.

Dave did play a game with us, but when the game he ended, he said, “Well, I’ve wasted three hours of time. Fun for me is chopping wood.” I don’t think I have the same feelings that he does about the time we’ve just spent together, though I’m holding some of the frustration of having a good hand that will not play out for me and there are 9 iterations of this hand. I feel that frustration every time 10 cards are dealt to me, yet I win the game. I worry how the others must feel toward me since they were working with the same frustrations. I may have added to their angst because sometimes I gave them a skip card, and I wonder why I even worry because I play games so seldom.

I woke this morning again taking some of those very deep breaths of somewhat smokey air to the bottom of my lungs, the breaths I like to take when the air is fresh and I can almost taste the cedar that I can smell. As well those are the breaths that are coached by the physiotherapists or any therapist who is trying to help me remember the joy of being in the moment , using the full capacity of my body. Unlike the fear of getting sick during the pandemic, I know the air outside will be clean again. I’ll be able to see it, and walk in it, still conscious of the virus terror that Dave Wood helped me imagine, there between his hands.

On reading manga style graphic novels

When Michael, Alice, and Betty were at the Shuswap, I liked finding one-on-one time with each of them. If I say to all three of them that I am separating one of them out so that I can “do school”, the two that are left behind don’t feel that they have been cut out of something that is going to be really fun. Just the words “do school” seems to set up parameters that they don’t want to enter.

The book binding is on the right hand side
and not on the left hand side.
This is confusing to me.

Now, I had been watching Michael carry around a book called The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons – Oracle of Ages by Akira Himekawa . Once I saw him with his finger inserted into the middle of the book so he wouldn’t lose his page. Then he crawled into the chicken coop, did what he needed to do there, and backed out of the coop again, finger still inserted in the book so he would know what page he was on. That is a kid who wants to read.

Fifty years ago, I can remember my dad telling me in response to my question about how to engage with one of my children, “You have to find something they’re interested in.”

Doral went on to say, “that may take weeks, months, maybe even years.”

I didn’t want to hear that part of his advice, but something about the whole message rang true for me when I looked at that book Michael was carrying around.

I knew my job was to talk to him about what was in it if I wanted to make a connection with him.

To my drawing of an angry manga character
Michael added the ear extension meaning "blowing off steam".

To do my homework I had enter the internet and look up what manga meant. I had to read that the style of a manga character included drawing large eyes, small mouths, and abnormal hair colour.

I’m not really good at visualizing what that might mean, so I opened his book and tried to draw “manga-style.”

I held my finger on the page of my instructions and when I would read that the character’s tears had to be large enough to be caught in buckets, I drew big tears. 

Soon my note paper was filled with manga faces; I read a laugh had to engulf the face while the eyes at the same time had to be slits. Anger was portrayed with rosy cheeks, so I took a red crayon and made some of the faces angry. I was having fun.

I didn’t do just a little research. I did a lot of research. I went to the internet to find out who Akira Himekawa is. I found out this is a pen name for two women. I make the same mistake other people make on the internet because I found the two women were just one click away, which led me to their appearance at a gaming convention, and of course I had to watch them, now, so I listened to them in translation. I was busy making a large set of notes in one of my scribblers that I will never find again. At the gaming convention I learned why the book is written Japanese style, which for me seems back to front.

self portrait by Michael
Huuuua on top is the sound the character is making

When I felt armed with enough knowledge, I tried to get Michael into a discussion about the author(s). He showed no interest. I thought again about what my dad had said to me. I could see that a 9 year old boy had no interest in gathering the knowledge I would have gathered as an adult if I had been writing a nice essay.

I really had to drop my adult agenda and go to the child’s agenda. 

That feels like a loss to me because I have so much to give to him now about manga, at least in my terms of reference. “I did my homework. I am bringing it to you.” That is the feeling I have. I tried to remember my role is to be the teacher. I am not seen by him, yet, as the holder of the information he needs or wants.

I’ve discovered, if I want to keep the child’s interest, I have to turn mine off, just like a toggle switch. 

I’ve also learned that when he reads aloud to me, I have to let the pictures be driven by his interest, and not mine. 

“Doing school” is really hard, even when a person is certified by the corporation that seemingly owns all knowledge.

These are my notes as I am
learning how to draw  manga characters.
The words whoooo, kaboom, bwoof
bloomp, vwosh, snap and slasd-d,
ka-chin, urg, klang and fwoo
are not usually in my vocabulary.

I tested out Doral’s theory. Talk with children about something they are interested in. That was my form of “doing school.” Michael and I traded information now, and I showed him one of my angry manga face drawings. He took my pencil and to the ear of one of my characters he attached a pipe with a cumulous cloud at the end of it, which is the best way I can describe it, steam. Then he said to me, “Now the character is really angry.” I was thrilled to be trading information with him. A breakthrough for me, if not for him.

He didn’t take the book back to Calgary. He told me it belonged to his Aunt Bonnie. I’ve kept the book on my dresser, for a month now, since he has been gone. 

When I look at it, I feel a strong connection to my dad and to my grandson. 

 I think about The Great Binding Law of the Anishinaabe Nation which explains, “the seventh-generation stewardship is a concept that urges the current generation of humans to live and work for the benefit of the seventh generation into the future”. 

For me, “doing school” that day involved four generations.

Arta

Backyard Harvest: Is it too soon? When will it be too late?

So, I didn't plant too much in my new backyard this year: some chocolate-mint, a few tomato plants, chives and a Kale plant.  I've been wondering what to do with my chocolate-mint. It doesn't taste too much like chocolate, but it sure does smell like it.

It was a beautiful day on Sunday, and with September in Alberta, you never know when you might get an overnight freeze.  I decided to go pick all my mint and dry it out to use for tea later in the winter.

Alas, as I got down on my knees with some scissors, I saw this little friend.

I couldn't bear to take away what little food this friend has now that the fall is here, so the chocolate-mint harvest has been delayed for another couple of weeks.

Mary

Fall Treasures: Milkweed Pods by the Oxbow

When the fall arrives, I can't get enough of milkweed pods.  They just make me think of dragon eggs and dragon scales. 

I took these photos on Sunday as we walked the path in the river valley around the Oxbow.

About the Elizabeth Hall Wetlands:  This 78-acre Nature Reserve is found along the west side of the Oldman River. The wetlands are protected because of the unique cottonwood forest, oxbow pond and wetland. A two-kilometer walking path, with interpretive signs about local species, circles the pond. This is an excellent spot for watching birds and other wildlife species! Lethbridge Parks and Trails