valeriesbookofme

As I have written before, there was very little that I knew about my extended family. However, two  things I DID know were (1) that my maternal grandfather had served in the Boer War and that (2) a great uncle had died in WWI. Like so many other treasures that have been discovered thanks to genealogy and the opening up of records, in the years since I began tracing my family roots I have added to those two sparse facts. First, my maternal grandfather. Tracing how and where he served in the Boer War was a challenge until I found out that, instead of living in Scotland as he had always maintained, he had grown up in a small village in Lancashire called Hoddlesden. According to the 1891 census, he was still at school at the age of 8 but his brother, aged 10, was already a warehouse boy at the cotton mill and his other brother, aged 13, was a reacher in. There is no doubt that, in the years that followed, Grandfather went to work at the mill too. Then the Boer War happened. According...

I can't say I have any particular unexplained memories. Mixed-up ones like some friends have mentioned--things that you believe happened but that no one else remembers. But those are not memories in the way I think of as "unexplained," that is, that you just don't know why you remember them. Still when you are in your 60s you have been through so many experiences, most of which you DON'T call back from whatever brain cell they are stored in, that you wonder why certain experiences stay with you so strongly. It's understandable the memory would stay though if there were strong emotions attached. For example, the early morning that the telephone rang saying that my mother had taken a turn for the worse. Sixteen year old me struggling to get dressed while my dad tried to convince me not to come with him. And then the call that came again as we were just about to leave that we needn't rush, she had died. Me, sitting on the couch, screaming silently in my hea...

I participated in trick or treating from the time I was about 3 until I was 13. I don't remember any fancy costumes; I think my mom usually cobbled things together from my older sister's party dresses. I do remember one year dressing in a kind of Chinese Mikado-type outfit. It was always so cold in Montreal on October 31st that we wore coats over our costumes anyway. And we carried paper shopping bags that we had to take great care to watch--too often the bottoms would become wet and break apart. Kids didn't trick or treat after the age of 13 back then. I am continually surprised to see older kids--and now adults--trick or treating nowadays. Last week I handed candy out to a Crusader who was probably 70 years old! Although we no longer trick or treated, there were often Halloween parties to go to. Bobbing for apples and lots to eat. Spooky Halloween stories. I do have one funny Halloween story from when I was an adult. I decided to dress as Irma La Douce for a single ...

A series of shelves in my living room currently symbolize my "time capsule." In each cubicle there are mementoes of happy times, trips, people I loved and love, books and CDs. I have taken photos tonight, November 4, 2013, of the cubicles as they are currently constituted. So many trinkets, china figures, photos I am so glad that I have a few items that I grew up--the penguin and rabbit families, the elephant, the marble horse bookends, three small watercolors prettily framed. And I have photographs of family--cousins, nephew and family, my darling daughter, and my wedding day. Two Lladro figurines, one that I gave a friend's parents and my friend returned to me after their deaths. The other a gift from my husband one Christmas, which means a lot to me because he is not in the least sentimental yet he saw the figurine in a shop and remembered how much I cherished my other. Mementos from our trip on the Queen Mary--a photograph and a tea pot.  A santon (woman in ...