The Old Red Sweater

As I puttered around the house this morning, I picked up my old red sweater which I had carelessly tossed on the armchair the night before.  It is a ratty old sweater, but like many ratty old clothes, it is to my body what comfort food is to my mouth.  Familiar.  Pleasurable.  Comforting. 

I obtained the sweater in 1984, when my young daughter won a $100 Hudson's Bay gift certificate for me in a Mother’s Day colouring contest.  We lived in a very small town in the Northwest Territories, a town with a little general store, a tiny Bay, one hamburger take-out joint, one eat-in restaurant, one motel, some government offices,  the college where I taught, and about 750 people not counting the students temporarily in residence.  As any serious shopping required a flight out to Edmonton or an excruciatingly long drive on rutted gravel roads to Yellowknife,  and we had been in the North for nearly a year, I used it to replenish my rapidly depleting and somewhat boring closet.  I don’t remember what else I bought, but I do remember falling in love with the bright red sweater.

As I walked down the hall, sweater in hand, towards the bedroom this morning, I noticed a seam under the arm that needs mending and a button that is loose.  A seamstress I am not, and mending usually means the rag bag or perhaps a donation to the thrift store,  but the thirty year old sweater will be mended.  Too sloppy to wear for going out, it is my go-to sweater when I am chilly in the house.  It is warm, it is comfy, and it is full of memories.  And, as I hung it up, I noticed it is a medium – a size I haven’t worn for a very long time – which really makes me smile as it isn’t the least bit too small for me.  

I love my old red sweater.   I love its cheery colour.  I love that it still fits me without the least discomfort.  I love that it has lasted over thirty years.  And, most of all,  I love that it was a gift from my child who coloured so carefully in the hopes of winning something for her mama. 

The old things in life are often the best :  old friends, old dogs, old recipes, old sweaters. 

Winter memories, winter stories

The farm in winter

For three years just prior to my move to the island, I lived on a small farm above the Fraser Valley, where I cared for 18 animals: four dogs, a cat, an alpaca, and a family of 12 potbellied pigs that I fostered for Hearts on Noses sanctuary.  I lived alone and taught full time, life was busy, and winters were never easy  - lots of snow, frozen pipes, power outages, an old  barn with no light or heat and more than one family of rats.  Keeping the animals safe and healthy, the home and barn in good repair, and the long driveway and paths to the barn cleared of snow, were daunting tasks. And yet those years provided me with the richest experiences, the greatest laughs,  the sweetest memories. Those years were among the best years of my life. 

Many of my stories - both fiction and creative nonfiction - emerged during that time.  A lot of those stories are a combination of both genres, stories based on real events but embellished with imagined conversations with the animals. Looking back over my stories, this tenth day of Christmas, I realize there are several I have never shared on the blog.   This is one such story - written after a cold winter's day when the pigs were tired of confinement and I spent the morning talking to them and singing to them in the barn until.....well, read it for yourself.  Enjoy. 

The Piglets and the Wintry Day

(c) Jean Ballard, 2008

The piglets were getting restless.  They had been confined to the barn for nearly three days now.  First there was all that cold fluffy white stuff outside.  Brrrrrr!  Then there was a foot of wet slushy dirty white stuff, so heavy Foster Mama couldn't even get the barn door open.  Brrrrrrr!  And now there was torrential rain cascading like a waterfall over the doorway, creating very wet, sloppy, cold muck in the yard outside.  Brrrrrrr!  Brrrrrrrr!  Brrrrrrrr!

Foster Mama had served their meals and treats inside, so at least they weren't hungry.  But twelve piggies in one stall (not counting their potty area) didn't leave much room for running around exploring as piggies like to do. 

"Pwease, Foster Mama,"  said Whisper, "can we come into the big part of the barn to play?"

"I'm sorry, Whisper," replied Foster Mama.  "The big part of the barn has too many things that greedy curious little piggies might get into, like bins of food and pallets of pumpkins, bales of alfalfa and hay and straw, and even garbage cans full of garbage that might make you sick.  I will tell you a story instead."

So Foster Mama sat in the straw with the piglets all around her, and told them the story of how their papa pig and pregnant mama pig came to live there after being rescued by the SPCA.  And then she told them stories about each of the dogs, and stories about the cat and even a story about Martin the alpaca.   

But still the piggies were restless. 

"Pwease, Foster Mama,"  said Swizzle, "would you turn off the big taps in the sky and turn on the big round ball that warms up the earth, so we can go outside and play?"

"I'm sorry, Swizzle," replied Foster Mama.  "I may be a pretty smart foster mama, and I may be a pretty handy person with tools, but only the Great Spirit, the Creator of all life, can turn off those big taps and turn on the big round ball called the Sun.  I will sing you a song instead."

And then she sang the Sunshine Song to them - the papa pig's favourite song.  "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray….." she sang.

"Oooooooh!" said the little piggies.  "If Papa is your sunshine, and Mama is your sunshine, and all ten of us little piggies are your sunshine, then you have LOTS of sunshine, don't you, Foster Mama?"

"Yes" said Foster Mama.  "All you piggies are my sunshine and warm up my very soul and fill my heart with happiness.  And that turns all my cold, rainy, snowy, muddy, slushy, dark days into springtime!"

And the piggies smiled proudly to think that they could turn a cold wintry day into springtime for their foster mama. 

And suddenly sweet little Fizzy ran to the barn door and stared outside and said,  "Oh!  Look!  The rain has stopped!" 

And then chubby little Tom ran to the barn door and stared outside and said, "Oh! Look! There is a lovely bit of blue sky up above!"

And soon  bouncy little Toddy ran to the barn door and stared outside and said, "Oh!  Look!  The big warm ball in the sky is back!

And all the piggies ran outside and tore around the yard and dug in the dirt and checked out the shelter that Foster Mama had built for the alpaca.  And they sang and danced and celebrated the freedom of being outdoors in a place where they were safe and loved and well fed, and where snow and slush and rain could all disappear because a bunch of little piggies brought so much sunshine into their Foster Mama's life.

~The End~  

Iz this icecream?

Belle and Oliver, two of my dogs,
on a wintry day at the farm

Out with the old....or not.

January is a time for new beginnings: "Out with the old, in with the new".  And  every January I get the urge to purge - to clean my cupboards and closets, bookcases and drawers, sending to thrift those things I really don’t need any more.   After all, just how much does one person need, and who in my small family is going to want this old stuff when I’m gone?  

And yet there is a place for the old – a place for items of great sentimental value, for beautiful objects whose very presence brings pleasure,  for treasures that tell a story.  I keep a few such things.  One of my treasures  is a carved wooden box.  I wrote its story for my writers’ group in November 2012, and share it with you here, on this eighth day of Christmas.  Happy New Year, everyone.  

The Carved Wooden Box

(c) Jean Ballard, 2012

I hold in my hand a carved wooden box on a small wooden base – the sort of thing men of my father’s generation used for their cuff links and watches and loose change.  On the top of the box is the carving of a dog, with long ears and longish fur but a muzzle like a pointer.  One side of the box is engraved with “Deutschland” and on the other “Neuengamme”.

It was my father’s box.  I asked him about it once.  He said it was carved by a German soldier at a POW camp where my dad was temporarily stationed;  Dad obtained it in exchange for some cigarettes. The war was a taboo subject with my dad, so I probed no further.

Dad passed away 37 years ago, and I loved him dearly.  I kept the box because it was his, because it represented a time in his life that he couldn't talk about, couldn't share even with his family.  The box was a part of his history as much as it was part of the carver’s.

I always hated history in school – boring stories of men traipsing across foreign lands, men fighting wars, battles lost and won.  And so I recalled little of what I learned about the Second World War or the cities where atrocities took place.  The name Neuengamme, and its nearby concentration camp,  meant little to me for much of my life.  

Some time in my forties, I started reading history from a different perspective: the history of women and children, of families and everyday life, and I grew to love learning about the past.  My ancestors sang to me from the pages of those books in a way that stories of old dead guys battling other old dead guys never did.  Gradually those dry dates and places and battles took on new life when looked at through the eyes of the families and individuals most affected by the wars, instead of through the eyes of the politicians and military personnel orchestrating them.  It was no longer about who won what battle, or which country sided with which.  War became a story about the pain of saying goodbye, the fear as bombs rained from above, the hunger and thirst and dirt and mud, the missing of family, the death of one’s friends, the trading of goods and sometimes one’s body for food and cigarettes, the carving of boxes.

The carver didn't sign his work – there’s no name carved or written anywhere on the box.  Just a dog, and a place, and a country.   I don’t know where my dad was posted when he obtained the box. But I picture two men on different sides of a war  looking into each other's eyes, communicating with their limited foreign language skills and with gestures, trading a carved box for a handful of cigarettes.  

And I think about the German soldier who carved the box,  and I wonder if  that dog was his dog, if Neuengamme was his home rather than his posting, and if he shed tears of homesickness as he carved. 

I find myself wondering what his children, his grandchildren might say if they only knew that a box carved by their ancestor in those dark days of WW II, a box with a dog carved into the top,  is seventy years later and half a world away now treasured by a woman who loves dogs.

(There’s a footnote to this story – as I polished the box to show my writer’s group, I discovered, for the first time, two tiny initials just below the dog’s ear:  OW.  The carver has spoken.  )

The Lady on the Hill

On this fourth day of Christmas, I’d like to share with you a story about one December's day in my childhood – a true story of how a simple act of kindness blessed me with a wonderful winter memory.

The Lady on the Hill

(c) Jean Ballard, 2014

It was December of 1957, and I was 7 years old.  I was walking home from school just before the Christmas holidays.  I had quite a distance to walk – a couple of miles – but in the 1950s that was neither too far nor too dangerous for a seven year old to walk, even by herself.  Usually I enjoyed it, swinging my school bag, singing a song, skipping and hopping down the long hill to my little house on the edge of town.

This day, however, was different.  For some reason I was late – a detention perhaps, or chalkboard duty?  Whatever the cause, the short winter’s day was growing dark, and made all the more miserable by a bone-chilling blowing snow.  By the time I was two blocks from home, I was sobbing and calling for my mommy.

A woman came hurrying down a driveway – a tall, slender, beautiful woman with expensive clothes and freshly coiffed hair.  I knew who she was, though I’d never met her.  She lived in the big fancy house at the end of the long sloped driveway, the house on a rise of perfectly manicured lawn, the whole property edged with carefully pruned evergreen shrubs.  In spring there would be boxes of flowers along the front windows of the house, and blossoms on the fruit trees in back.  My seven year old mind imagined this well-to-do woman as some kind of royalty, certainly a Lady 'with a capital L.'  I dubbed her "The Lady on the Hill."

I was just a little girl from a very small home where I lived with my financially struggling, recently immigrated family.  So when I saw her hurrying down her driveway I stopped partly in awe and partly from curiosity – what was she doing out without coat and hat and gloves, just a cardigan pulled loosely around her shoulders? 

“Little girl, are you lost?  Can I help?” she called as she ran quickly toward me, sliding on the freshly fallen snow.

“I’m ccccoooold,” I sobbed, “and it’s almost dark, and I want my mommy!”

“Here, come with me,” she replied softly, as she reached out and gently placed an arm around my shivering body. “We’ll get you warm and I’ll phone your mother to let her know you’re alright, and then I’ll walk you home.”

And so she did – she took me inside her beautiful house,  hung my wet coat and hat and mitts over a radiator to dry, phoned my mom, and fed me hot chocolate with marshmallows – the first marshmallows I’d ever had – with iced sugar cookies. 

When I was warmed up and my winter clothes quite dry, she suggested we head home.  She helped me on with my coat, buttoning it all the way to my chin, pulled on my hat and mitts, and then reached into a drawer and pulled out the softest scarf I’d ever seen, which she wrapped snugly about my face.  Then, almost as an afterthought, she reached into a fruit bowl on the kitchen counter,  pulled out one mandarin orange still wrapped in its green tissue paper, and placed it in my mittened hand. 

"For you," she said, "when you get home."  I looked at her in amazement – in my home,  mandarin oranges were something only seen on Christmas morning,  the orange orb  tucked in the toe of my Christmas stocking. To get such a treasure days in advance of Santa's visit was incredible! 

Off we went, the final two blocks to home, my one hand tucked in hers, my other clutching my mandarin orange.

I never met her again, and never did learn her name.  She was always just that very nice Lady on the Hill.   

In later years I drove past her house and realized it wasn’t that big, it certainly wasn’t fancy, the driveway wasn’t that long, and the hill was a mere bump.  But her kindness stuck with me all these years, and I can still see her clean modern kitchen and feel the softness of the mohair scarf as she wrapped it around me. And I never smell a mandarin orange, freshly removed from its little piece of green tissue, without remembering how special she made me feel.

If she is still alive today, she is probably in her nineties.   I’d like to think that she still remembers that day, and somehow knows in her heart how much her kindness meant to one shivering scared little child.  Because that shivering scared child has never forgotten it.