Presents in the Mail

I awoke early. It was so early that Ginger was not waiting outside the bedroom door, as he usually does. Try as I might, sleep would not return. Rather than lie in the bed contemplating life, the universe, and everything, I arose.

Ginger waits for me every morning, to deliver him a bowl of fresh water. When I come through the door he is waiting, sometimes patiently, sometimes loudly. He moves immediately to his position by the water bowl. He stares at me, “do the right thing Maggie, do the right thing”. And I do, I take his water bowl to the kitchen, rinse it out, fill it with fresh cold water, and return it to its rightful spot. Ginger is waiting by the rightful spot, he watches me closely to make sure I am doing the right thing. Once this ritual has been performed properly, he drinks, then retires to the sofa to rest after all his hard work managing humans.

After doing the right thing by Ginger, I moved on to my usual morning routines, brushing my hair, washing my face, etc.

I am a morning person. When I awake, I am instantly fully awake, and ready to tackle the day. As I enter the morning my mind is a whirlwind of the day’s possibilities. This morning, since Attila was still asleep, and the world outside my windows was dark and inky, I decided to collect all the outstanding bills, and pay them. When the bills for December were paid, I had $55.00 left, which doesn’t sound like much, but it will last us until January. If we run into an expense beyond this little reserve, we will dip into the little pension savings account we have put aside for such circumstances. However, we are very good at keeping within our budget, so this will probably not be necessary.

Further into the day I had a lovely chat with my youngest sister. She is creating photo albums, my Mom is helping her, and they are enjoying the project. It was fun to talk about our childhood, and we are both in awe of how well my Mom coped as a very young adult, running a farm, with five very young and very precocious, each one year younger than the one before, kids running around. What a time we siblings all had together, what a time my Mom had keeping us all safe and happy! My youngest sister came along years later, and so missed a lot of the fun, but no matter, she was the apple of all our eyes from the day she came home from the hospital.

Our childhood experiences remind me of the O. Henry story, “The Ransom of Red Chief”.

Even further into the day Attila appeared with a package in his hand. It was from my Mom. She sent us Christmas and Birthday cards, and some photographs from my childhood, she is housekeeping, I am so happy to have these photographs. There are baby photographs of me, and early pictures of my oldest brother Carl and myself, hand in hand on the front porch of the first little house we lived in. There are pictures of my brothers, pictures of my cousins, pictures of a long ago paternal family reunion, pictures of my Aunt and Uncle, so many memories. Such wealth.

Here at Mist Cottage the weather is above freezing. Attila is taking advantage of the mild temperature, and is busy in the garage building a shelf above the entrance door. The shelf will store totes with our camping gear, light items. This project has been on Attila’s mind for over five years, and at last he can tackle it. He is using lumber we already have, and screws and nails we already have, so that this project is free but for labour. This will clear up some room in the basement, to make it easier to store our home canned food, and preserving equipment.