Month: November 2015

I Am The Child Of My Kin [Free Verse]

I am the child of my kin.

My father taught me faith and history and he teaches me still.
My mother sheltered me from harm, but sometime too much.
My grandfather died young. I still miss him.
My grandmother loved me with faith and wisdom while she was on God’s earth.

My father’s sisters inspire me to be a better person.
My mother’s siblings are often alien to me.

My step-father is full of facts. Sometimes too much.
My mother’s health worries me.
My father need me now more than ever. He is alone now.

My sister puts up with me more than is fair. I often feel like a horrible burden to her.
My brother left me twice in my lifetime. The last time, he could not return from death.

Christmas: Lost and Found

In my youth, Christmas was my favorite time of the year. I looked forward to presents, good food, and traveling to see relatives (usually). I loved the glories of winter with fresh snow, icicles hanging from trees, and playing street hockey with my friends. My life was fully rural then and, for me, there was more of a mystique to the season. I only knew Edmonton as the home of the Oilers and the city to which we traveled to shop at West Edmonton Mall before the holidays.

Eventually, childhood lead to adolescence, which gave way to adulthood. We moved to Edmonton, leaving Forestburg behind. For a time, I remained with my parents while I started and finished two years of college at Grant MacEwan Community College.  Once I was firmly entrenched in city life and found a regular paycheck, I eagerly moved out on my own. My parents moved out to Mill Woods while I lived on 124th Street just north of 111th Avenue. Two of my close college friends already lived in the building, so I wasn’t truly alone.

However, my first Christmas by myself wasn’t a joyous event. My parents left the city for Christmas that year, and I had to work. It hit me harder than anything I’d ever felt before. I was in my early twenties, and I had thought Christmas had lost it luster. I missed my family more than I thought possible at the time. And I missed the trimmings of the season. I was alone in  new place with no decorations. No tree to trim. No holiday company. My apartment looked as though the Grinch had stolen in to my life and made off with my holiday cheer.

That first foray of independent solitude didn’t last long. I left my job in the New Year and moved back in with my parents for (roughly) over a year. The holiday wrapping had been discarded to soon. I don’t remember my next Christmas, but I’m certain that family was involved. Even after I moved back out on my own, I always tried to remind myself that holiday time with family and friends is vital to my life.

Christian or not, Christmas is a part of me, and I cannot give it up. Now, however, at over 40, it is easier to spend Christmas alone and with little fanfare. Yet, there is still a part of me that craves the tinsel and tingle of the Christmas spirit.

Mr. Grinch, beware!

My Hands Hate the Weather!

My mind loves the spring and the fall. The blooming gardens of gree. The ruset leaves on the ground. Gentle breezes with thunderous rains. Brisk winds that stir the soul. The temperatures are not in the extremes (usually). It is not so hot as to burn. It is not so cold as to freeze. The world is alive more in my mind.

However, my hands are a different matter. They hate the weather, especially when it rises and falls near Zero C. The backs turn flaky and red. They itch like crazy and there is little relief. Skin creams often make the rash itch even worse. It becomes a battle to keep the skin from cracking. At the worst of times, the hand-backs turn blood red and the knuckles bleed.

It is only when spring turns to summer or fall turns to winter that the flare ups fade away (usually). Even if it is 30 degrees below Celsius, my hands are often fine in their comfy gloves. But beware those mild winter stretches. The hands flare again, slightly. Summer is less kind. A cold snap leads to itch and ruin.

My hands hate the weather!

That Old School

Forestburg School. From Grade One to Grade Twelve with a repeat on Grade Six, I spent my school years in the rural town of Forestburg, Alberta. I have vivid memories of the buildings and the various arch-fellows who shared the classrooms with me. While the oldest of the school’s buildings are now gone and I’ve rarely revisited the village’s school as it is now, I still have vivid images and memories of my time there.

Grade’s One to Three lived in a short hall behind a full-sized saloon-style swinging door but with a a touch of being a reject from Gotham’s Asylum. Most of the cowboys and other inmates weren’t my friends, and it is the section of the school I recall the least. Grade Four, Five, and Six were elevated above the art and music rooms. There was also the original Elementary library and teacher’s offices. The upper floor seemed like a place of power before I got there. I spent what felt like the best and the worst of years of my life in those High Noon rooms full of hucksters and budding villains. There were short-lived friendships and the first real signs that made me realize boys and girls were very different beings.

Eventually, I moved on to Junior High, Grades Seven through Nine. Junior High was a place filled with wild beasts, as well as angst and ruin. It was a jungle of emotions. The rooms felt smaller than those in the Elementary school, but, in truth, we were all just bigger. The teachers’ lounge dominated that hall — a forbidden place for adult woes. Grade Nine was a precursor to High School. It’s room laid beyond a long hall that stretched down a ramp and a sharp left turn; on the edge of the ‘High’ hall  of the school’s upper classes who ruled the mass of Adolescents with a sense of superiority.

More than any other, that hall is burned into my mind’s eye. It was flanked by five rooms of torture and learning including the Ninth Grade outpost. The Industrial Arts lab was a place of wonder and frustration. I was a poor apprentice. I came to know the Principal’s Office well, as did others. I was a catalyst for trouble, as a sensitive soul who was an easy mark. Mr. Young’s Social Studies class was solace. History drove my imagination. The Science Lab was a mess of beakers and reagents. It was no wizard’s sanctum, however, and it became, for me, a room fraught with poorly hidden emotions. The room for English class laid the groundwork for my current goals. Shakespeare opened my eyes to the written world. Luckily, I avoided the horrors of Home Economics.

By the end of High School, I was a pariah of my own making. I cast myself out of the social order that I never truly learned to understand. I ribbited my way through those years. A toad amongst the Hockey Lords of the day. I had no princess and my heart grew cold. I became the villain of my own mind, slinking past the lockers that stood out as bastions of the athletes and metalheads alike.

I will always remember that old school. It is a place I can never forget.