A Ruby Kind of Christmas

Rubys Broach
“Tell that Mushy-Fella that this one’s for him.”

Ruby, try as she might to insist that she “don’t trust that Internet”, gets a real kick out of the comments I relate to her – especially when they come from Mushy. She laughs the hardest when he begs for a photo, but won’t let me post one. She won’t let me send him one “privately”, either. She’s even made me swear not to post one after she’s, um… “gone”. That sucks, ‘cuz she is a beautiful lady and I would love to be able to share her visage with you all.

She is very proud of this broach. It belonged to her mother (and those of you familiar with “Ruby’s Mother” as depicted in The Waitress should know that I “cut her out of whole cloth”, as Ruby says – in fact, her nose is a little out of joint about that part of the story, because her mother was nothing like the woman in that story. I have promised to make up for it by posting Ruby’s “Real” Mother in another post, and I will, ‘cuz she was quite the lady, too.).

Anyway, it was Ruby’s idea to take the picture of the broach, to “tease” Mushy with. So, Mushy, there you have it. My Landlady is a great big Tease, with a capital “T”. Merry Christmas.

This particular post should have gone up on Christmas Eve – Christmas Day at the latest – but, as usual, I’m behind the times. I considered “cheating” (gasp! Me? CHEAT?!), and back-dating it, but that would be, well, cheating, wouldn’t it?

I wanted to know what Christmas was like for Ruby, when she was a girl growing up in Northland. That’s a real place, by the way, and if I even mention it to her, the stories start flowing…

Oh, our Christmases weren’t nothin’ like what you get nowadays, let me tell you! We didn’t have none of this buy, buy, buy, like the kids expect now, no Sir! I don’t blame the kids, mind you – that’s all their parents’ fault. Buy ’em everything under the sun, and then expect them not to be spoiled and cranky… Ha! Fools.

We did have a Christmas tree, though. My dad would go out into the bush and cut one down and drag it home. We’d decorate it all up with bows and popcorn strings, and sometimes we’d hang coloured paper-chains off it, if we had the makings. It’d look right pretty, too. No lights, though, on account of we didn’t have any electricity back in Northland way back then. No way to run it in, you know.

Me: Did you put candles on it?

Good God, no! My mother would have had a fit! She’da been afraid the place would burn to the ground, and it probably would’ve, too. No insurance, either, back then, so no. No candles. Still, we had the tree and it smelled so nice! Sometimes, we’d have branches strung over the tops of the windows, too, for the smell, but that was only if the tree was too big and my dad had to trim it down. Made a right mess to clean up – needles all over the place!

Me: Did you make cranberry strings?

What? No! Where’d we get cranberries from?! (laughs like I should have known better)

And we’d only get one gift. Sometimes, it would be a doll, or a skipping rope. I still remember the year I got the plaid snowpants. Oh, they were wonderful snowpants – red plaid, and real fancy. They were all the rage that year! They were fashioned after “britches” with a big flare coming down off the hips, and they tapered down tight at the ankles. I’ll never forget those snowpants ’til the day I die.

Me: Did Santa come?

Of course Santa came! Santa was Christmas when we were kids – that’s how my mother kept us in line. None of us wanted coal in our stockings, now, did we? But, that’s what we got, was a stocking – and it wasn’t stuffed full of toys and money, neither. No, it wasn’t “stuffed” at all, just lumpy-looking in the morning, and we never knew for sure until we stuck our hands in, whether or not it might be coal we’d pull out, after all.

We never did get coal, though, so we must have been pretty good kids. We’d get an apple, and almost every year we got an orange, too, which was a real treat, ‘cuz oranges were hard to come by in the winter up here back then. And we always got a couple of handfuls of those little hard striped Christmas candies. That’s what Santa brought.

After breakfast, we’d go out tobogganing if the the weather was fine, and that’s how we spent the day.

We never had a turkey, either. Seems strange, doesn’t it? I can’t truthfully imagine Christmas dinner without a turkey anymore, but we raised chickens, and my mother would kill two or three of them
(and not the way you wrote her killin’ them, either!), and that was Christmas dinner, along with potatoes and turnip and the Christmas pudding.

Sure is different nowadays.

I can just see that little house all decked out for Christmas, the table lit after dark with a coal-oil lamp, and a dim but pretty popcorn-laden evergreen in one corner. And I can smell it, along with the peanut brittle that Ruby’s mother always made, just like the little box of brittle Ruby gave to me and Ky for Christmas this year.

I’m sorry this was late – I would have rather had it posted when we were all in the spirit, instead of relieved it was finally over again for another year. Next year, God willing, Ruby will add to the story.

Not-So-Random Song for the Day: “Silent Night” – Reba McEntire Ruby’s Favourite Christmas Carol (and version)

When Ruby Runs Out of Stories…

Sanya © Ruby Daniel (sometime in Sanya's lifetime)
Sanya

© Ruby Daniel
(sometime in Sanya’s lifetime)

You noticed “Ruby” in the header, didn’t you? That’s why you’re here. My stats go waaaaay up when I post about Ruby. You should have seen the look on her face when I told her that the other week. Grinning to beat the band, she was.

And then she told me she didn’t think she had any more stories in her. I told her I didn’t believe her, but she insisted that, rack her brains as she might, she couldn’t think of anything she hadn’t already told me.

We went back to the crossword, both a little depressed.

Me, befuddled: What’s a 7-letter word for a “cream-coloured dog?”

Ruby, in the blink of an eye: Samoyed.

Me: How the heck do you know that?!
Continue reading “When Ruby Runs Out of Stories…”

Breathe.

"Trickle Down Theory"Taken October 20, 2007 with Canon PowerShot A550
“Trickle Down Theory”
Taken October 20, 2007 with Canon PowerShot A550

I’m …. tired. The last couple of weeks have been draining. I didn’t realize how tense things were getting, what with the good things, like gearing up for NaNoWriMo, the bad things, which I will get to in a sec, and the confusing things – mostly just trying to find “my place” at the J.O.B., which is difficult, as I was sort of dropped down into the middle of the project, and I feel like I’m just sitting around picking my nose most of the time. I don’t feel very useful there, truthfully.

I’ve outlined a couple of freelance magazine article ideas – another good thing. One, I actually wrote a proposal for, because it’s about an organization that I want to write about, but needs “interviews” with staff, and I thought it best to get the blessing of the head honcho. I got an immediate ‘yes’, and I’m excited about the project, which I already have a publication in mind for. And now (Sigh…*), I have to break it down into manageable chunks that can be dealt with on my lunch hour, since I kind of want to be face to face with the people I need to speak with.

My father is getting better. This was one of the “bad” things that I thought I might be jumping ship for, and I didn’t want to post about it, because we didn’t really know how things were going to turn out. He had a stroke, and then a heart attack, interspersed with several gushing nosebleeds just to make it all interesting. Even more interesting, he made friends with an imaginary bug that lives in the ceiling above his bed in the Critical Care Unit. He spent his whole first day there watching it dig a hole in the plaster and run around the curtain rail.

Yesterday, his 87th birthday, they let him out of Critical Care and he’s now in a general ward. A Co-Ed ward. With two “chicks”. He was a little put out with this at first, because he says he has enough trouble with women hitting on him, and he couldn’t see how he’d get any rest with two more hanging around his bed all day… turns out, he and my mom know the grandmother of one of them, so now it’s all good. I guess you don’t hit on the guy in the next bed if he’s a friend of Grandma. Or maybe you do but he doesn’t mind so much – I’ll have to ask.

My novel, now… I’m off to a slow start. Somehow, I’m not worried, though – I’m not sure why I’m not worried, but it may be that my main character, Emma, is very very solid in my mind, and I love her to pieces already.

I’m having trouble getting to the “getting it down part”, though, and that’s entirely because too many of the new things are still too new, and damn it, there’s too many of them. I want to go back to the more laid-back schedule of school and Ruby, J.O.B. and Ruby, Mom and Dad and Ruby, and rum on the weekends. Routine, please. The writing is more likely to happen then.

I won’t be going back to that routine anymore now, though, because I’ve gone and changed things and started a few things up that are designed to force me out of this place and into the Great Unknown, which, in my case is anything beyond 50 miles of here.

What, me – scared?! Pah!

Yes. Shitless.

I find the picture at the top of this post very calming. It reminds me to breathe, and to learn to take things as they come and actually do something with them. I’m learning how to recognize opportunities and yes, create some that weren’t there before, and Ta-DA! A life away from here is now “seeable”. The last thing I want to do right now is what I’ve been doing my whole life: hide from the things I want, and make up reasons to let them float by. I can’t dive at them though, either, because I’m likely to get myself run over. They are bigger than me.

I’m growing into them though… 😉

Random Song for the Day: “Aerodynamic” – Daft Punk

A Pockage from the Ult Contry

Sand
“Who Sends a Box of Sand from the Old Country?!”

Just in time for Hallowe’en, Ruby came out with a never-before-told story. It’s a little bit comedy. It’s a little bit horror. Ruby leans toward the comedy in a really big way, for some reason. Me, I think I’m still wearing a creepy-feeling expression on my face. I don’t know if it’s the story that bothers me so much, or if it’s that Ruby still finds it so damned funny. Anyway…

In honour of the Horrifying Holiday, I’m going to tell this one myself. Ruby laughed all the way through it – I swear I kept waiting for the punch-line, and when it came…. well. Let’s just say I’m gonna tell this one myself, and leave it at that. And Ruby, by the way, swears it’s a true story, and has made me promise to change the names and the type of business being run, in case relatives of long dead proprietors happen upon my blog somehow – (“I don’t trust that Internet!”) – and take offense.

So, I’ve changed their names to something nondescript, and instead of running a [EDITED BECAUSE I’M AFRAID OF MY LANDLADY] store, they have become Soup Mongers. I’ve even given them a fake accent, phonetically spelled, which you may have to read out loud to understand. Sorry. I couldn’t resist.

When Mr. and Mrs. Smith came to Canada from the Old Country, they did everything they could to fit in and prosper. They did manage to prosper, after a fashion, but the “fitting in” might have only happened up to a point. Canadians being Canadian, no one would be so rude as to give the new people the impression that they were anything but exactly what they felt they were: just like everybody else.

There were oddities about them, though, that they just couldn’t see in themselves. One was the name they chose, believing their own was too unwieldy for the English palate. “Smith” was generic enough, but it didn’t once occur to them that their accent gave them away the second they spoke. They swore to speak only English in this new country, even to each other, and after a time, the Smiths managed a fair grasp of the language, but the accent, if anything, grew thicker with the passing years.

Mr. Smith was a shoemaker, by trade, but was dismayed to discover that Canadians in the ’70’s in the backwoods little berg along the highway had a penchant for wearing running shoes. Everywhere. Everybody was on some new health kick, known as “jogging”. Even the mayor jogged to work in the mornings. It soon became apparent that the Smiths could not get by repairing shoes.

“Schneakas,” Mr. Smith would snort in disgust. “Mock my vords, dey vill all haff flot feets in der ult aitches.”

Mrs. Smith never worried, however. She knew they would get by. They always had. So, she would pat her husband’s head as she set a bowl of soup in front of him, and say, “Don vorry. It vill ull vork out. It ulveys duss.”

And Mr. Smith would eat the soup, and he would feel better, because his wife made the best soup in the world. The whole town thought so, too, and the Smiths were invited to every Potluck ever held, for that very reason.

It wasn’t long before Mrs. Smith was convinced that they should turn the store-front they lived in back of into a lunch counter establishment. Mr. Smith agreed, believing he’d lucked into early retirement, little knowing that he was going to be working harder than he ever had before, waiting tables and washing dishes all day long.

The Lunch Counter, which is what they named the place (pronounced “Loonch Conter” in Smith-speak), was an instant success, and Mrs. Smith ran it like a boarding house. There was no menu; customers ate what was put in front of them, and for awhile, the repertoire didn’t change much. No one complained, though. The soups were delectable, and no one had ever eaten better anywhere else.

“Vy you don mack [UNPRONOUNCEABLE] soop?” Mr. Smith asked one day.

“Day don haff [UNPRONOUNCEABLE] spess in dis contry, das vy,” Mrs. Smith replied. She thought she would write home to the Old Country, and ask her sister Klara to send her the spices she needed. For reasons Mrs. Smith couldn’t fathom, spices she needed for her best soup recipes were not available in Canada.

Klara was happy to oblige, and once or twice a month, a small package wrapped in brown paper, and addressed in “foreign-looking” bold handwriting would be reverently passed among the staff of the post office. They would hold it by turns, sniffing at it, all wondering what the mysterious spice inside might be, and what kind of soup it would become a part of.

One day, Mr. Smith brought home a package that confused him.

“Klara is okay, you tink?” he asked his wife, setting the package on the kitchen table. Mrs. Smith looked up from stirring her soup, worried.

“Yah, I tink,” she replied. “Vy you usk me dis?”

“Look da pockage. Klara don write dis,” he said, pointing to the mailing label. He was right, Mrs. Smith agreed; that was not Klara’s familiar handwriting. A closer inspection showed that the package was addressed to Mr. Smith rather than his wife, which made it that much more confusing. There was no return address.

Mr. Smith opened the package to reveal a bland-looking spice. There was no letter, no note, no indication inside as to who might have sent it, or what it was. Just the spice.

“Vat it is?” asked Mr. Smith. Mrs. Smith lifted the package, and sniffed it.

“I don know,” she said. “Don smell lack nuttin.” She dampened her finger, dipped up a bit of the spice and tasted it. She furrowed her brow.

“Vell?” said Mr. Smith. Mrs. Smith couldn’t place the taste at all.

“I tink mebbe it gotta cook. Den ve find out vat is it. I mack sumtin new!” Excited, Mrs. Smith began right away. When the water in a large kettle began to boil, she tossed in some vegetables, some noodles, and a tablespoon of the mysterious spice from the Old Country. When the soup had been simmering for an hour, she tasted it.

“Vell?” asked Mr. Smith. Mrs. Smith shook her head.

“Don tast lack nuttin,” she said, disappointed. “Mebbe I gotta need more.” She scooped a half-cup of the powder into the pot and stirred it up. She let it simmer a little longer, but it still didn’t taste like anything new to her. She had Mr. Smith try it, and he agreed. It was Vegetable Soup and nothing more.

Exasperated, Mrs. Smith poured the last of the spice into the soup and stirred it around. There were people to feed, and the Potato-Leek Soup was nearly gone. This “Just Vegetable Soup” would have to do.

Her customers accepted the soup, and enjoyed it, many commenting that it was the best vegetable soup they had ever eaten.

“Dat’s ult family recipe from da Ult Contry,” Mrs. Smith said, as usual. “Big seckret.” She would never admit that it was a secret to her, as well. She would have to write to Klara and find out what the spice was, and why it didn’t taste like much of anything at all.

Over the business of the next few days, though, both Mr. and Mrs. Smith forgot about the mysterious spice completely. In fact, they didn’t think of it again until a letter arrived for Mr. Smith, addressed in the same unfamiliar handwriting as the strange package had been. He opened the envelope.

“Who rite dat?” inquired Mrs. Smith, stirring the latest concoction at the stove.

“Is from my cussin in Ult Contry,” Mr. Smith said, glancing at the bottom of the letter.

“Red to me vile I cookin,” she asked, and Mr. Smith complied, reading slowly, translating the language haltingly into English as he read.

“Hullo from hom. Ve hop you iss bote okay. Ve send sad noose dat grundmadder iss not vit uss now, but she usk uss to send loff to you bote before she die, and say she ulveys vish she go to Canada to see beautiful new contry and to see you vun last time. So ve send you ushes of grundmadder dat she be vit you vonce more.”

Now, obviously, these people didn’t feed “Grandmother Soup” to the whole town – I made up the business the “Smiths” were in, after all, along with the wicked accent, but Ruby swears on her life that these people really made soup with the ashes. The whole box. And that they didn’t find out until weeks later, when the long-delayed letter arrived, what the “spice” really was. And she laughs hysterically when she says “Grandmother Soup”.

Random Song for the Day: “I Think I’m in Love” – Beck

Don’t Say “Tapioca” to Ruby.

My Dad calls this "Fish Eyes" Taken October, 2007 with 6275i Camera Phone
My Dad calls this “Fish Eyes”
Taken October, 2007 with 6275i Camera Phone

After my Saturday Walk-About to my parents’, I trotted back chock full of stories: “Aunt Blanche” stories… “Jimmy Prentice” stories… stories, stories, stories. I think my parents may be jealous of the “Ruby” stories getting all the blog-time around here, because I get one memory after another now, without even asking. I was all set to tell my mother’s “Aunt Blanche & the Peddler” story, or if not that one, her Jimmy Prentice & the Radio” story, or even my dad’s “Let Me Tell You About the Time I Fought the Bear and Still Have the Scar to Prove It” story, but Ruby blew them all away because of tapioca.
Continue reading “Don’t Say “Tapioca” to Ruby.”