On The Frosty Eve of A New Year

Behold,
it's cold,
I'm told.
-- my mother's poem, right off the top of her head when I said, "I need a poem about a cold winter's night at the end of the year."
Maybe once she gets into the champagne, her poetic genius will emerge.
Till then, I'll let the photos be the poem:

The dream of summer..

Can you spot my Christmas geese? They didn't get rescued in time!

The chickens are snuggled up tight in their coop. They'll be dreaming of summer, too.

The last sunset of 2013

Happy New Year! May 2014 be a good year for you and yours.

Orange You Glad You Hung Up Your Stocking?

First published in The Oxford Journal on Wednesday, December 25, 2013, by Sara Mattinson.

If I sit quietly, for long enough, and relax, without thinking too hard...

If I picture the living room of the home we lived in when I was a child...

If I see in my mind a decorated Christmas tree and wrapped gifts under it, if the morning light is faint – but not before six o’clock, by decree of my father – if snow is falling outside the big windows in the old house...

I can be there, tiptoeing across the green carpet in a long flannel nightgown (new for Christmas Eve), peering into the living room to see if Santa had come.

What was I looking for? What would reveal to me that Santa had been there? It would be the most new and wonderful change from the night before when we draped our stockings over the back of a chair and put out a glass of milk and plate of cookies: Those once-flat stockings now thick and bulging. 

My stocking, propped up by the arm of the chair, was forest green felt with a snowman; my sister’s, on another chair, was royal blue felt with a large piece of holly. On the couch were my parents’ wool work socks, bulging as well, and this excited us too; Santa was here for Mum and Dad!

Around the stockings were the unwrapped gifts that Santa left for us. A record and a book, Fisher Price toys and a stuffed toy (a dog or Kermit the Frog) in the early days, CDs and earrings, books and clothes in later years. For my mother and father, piles of books and boxes of chocolates (Laura Secord miniatures and Turtles).

Always, always in the toe of each stocking, each sock, a huge orange.  

(For a kid, fruit in a stocking is a shocking waste of valuable space. What was Santa thinking?)

If I sit quietly, without thinking too hard, if I am relaxed and picturing that silent, pristine Christmas morning scene, I can actually FEEL the anticipation of my six-year-old self. The memory is so clear and strong, I can remember my pure childish joy in discovering that SANTA WAS HERE!

Like all good legends, the story of how the Christmas stocking came to be a tradition has several versions, having evolved over hundreds of years to reflect differences in cultures, time period and the storyteller’s prerogative to embellish and rewrite. 

The most common story, from Europe, is this one: A father had three beautiful daughters but he despaired of any of them marrying because he was too poor to provide dowries for his daughters. 

One Christmas Eve, while passing through the man’s village, St. Nicholas of Myra heard the locals discussing the uncertain future of these girls. Knowing the man would be too proud to accept a gift of money from him, St. Nicholas waited until dark then snuck to the man’s house and dropped three bags of gold coins down the chimney.

It just so happened that the daughters had washed their stockings that day and had hung them by the fireplace to dry. The bags of gold coins dropped into the stockings, one bag for each daughter. When they woke in the morning, they each found enough money to provide each of them a suitable dowry and they were all able to get married.

As word spread about the bags of coins falling down the chimney on Christmas Eve, others began hanging their stockings by the fireplace, hoping for a similar gift. 

St. Nicholas, the original secret Santa.

For North Americans, the tradition of hanging stockings by the fireplace was immortalized by Clement Clarke Moore’s famous 1823 poem, “A Visit From St. Nicholas”, which we now know as “The Night Before Christmas”, in which he writes: 

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

Over the past few years, I’ve tried to return my family to this simpler way of giving gifts at Christmas. 

“Just stockings!” I say every November, but on December 25 there are more gifts than technically count as ‘stocking gifts’. But this year, money is tight and we also agree that truly, no one needs anything so finally my request is being taken seriously. 

“It’s the way Christmas used to be done,” my mother said to me.

My request for ‘just stockings’ resulted in an unexpected remembrance from her. For what I think is the first time, she told me about her Christmas stockings from her childhood in the 1940’s.

“We used to get a navel orange and a Red Delicious apple and a silver dollar in the toe,” she told me. “There were also a mix of nuts and little wrapped gifts. But I don’t remember what they were.”

You may think that the silver dollar represents the legend of St. Nicholas but there is a version of the saint’s story that replaces the bags of gold with gold balls. 

And that’s what the orange in the stocking represents. 

In Conversation With...Eric Mosher

First published in The Oxford Journal on Wednesday, December 18, 2013, by Sara Mattinson.

In the 1998 movie “You’ve Got Mail”, there is a store called The Little Shop Around The Corner. In Oxford, there also is a shop around the corner, more commonly referred to, however, as “the alphabet store”.

“Next year will be forty years of having this store,” says Eric Mosher, now the sole owner of  GJDE Enterprises, a name that doesn’t even hint at the gifts and treasures inside the big, old store.

“We moved here in 1974,” Eric says of what would be the Mosher family’s last move. 

Before Eric was born in Springhill, George Mosher had operated the Stedman’s store on Water Street in Oxford, only to return to the same location after 13 years of managing Stedman’s stores in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and New Brunswick. 

“It’s certainly been a great building and Oxford has been good to us,” Eric says.

It was quite a building for a 13-year-old boy to move into. The store is on the first floor, the family living quarters are on the second while on the third floor...

“That’s Oxford’s first theatre,” Eric explains. “A.E. Smith owned this building. Before he built the Capitol Theatre, he operated a theatre in this building. It was before safety film so the movies were bursting into flames. The projection booth is lined with tin.”

By the time the Moshers moved in, the third floor had been converted into a kind of giant playroom. 

“This building was wonderful,” recalls Eric, now 52. “There was a swing up on the third floor and rings you could hang from. It’s a huge open space, 15 feet tall. It was great.”

Eric, who has a Masters of Fine Arts, now uses the vast third-floor space as a studio. 

“I paint up there. We’ve rehearsed plays up there and made sets. The mural across the street was varnished upstairs. Because the space is so big. You just have to be able to get [the project] up there and get it out,” he laughs.

He was involved with the Maple Players and hopes to get that group going again and through Visual Arts Nova Scotia, he worked on mural projects in the county. Most often now, though, he directs his creative energy into the store displays.

Has he found it challenging to pursue his artistic interests in a rural area far from Halifax?

“It’s all a point of view,” Eric says. “People will tell me my talent is wasted here in Oxford and I feel if it’s benefiting anybody, it’s not wasted. I don’t really have any big dreams. I’ve done pretty much what I want to do. I’m pretty fulfilled.”

The store has provided an income that supports his artistic endeavours. 

“I never pursued trying to make money off my art work.”

Eric got involved in the day-to-day running of the store in 1985, after he’d completed his Masters degree. By then, his father had left Stedman’s and was running the store as an independent. “GJDE” represents the members of the family: George and Joan are Eric’s parents while the D is for his sister Deborah. 

On his return, Eric says he told his father they couldn’t survive as a variety store.

“I thought we needed to carry more unique things. We’d never been to trade shows that weren’t with Stedman’s so we started going to trade shows and Dad sort of begrudgingly let me experiment with product. When it started to sell, I got more say in what we were carrying,” he says. “It was fun because we’d go to a show and there’d be people there [with Stedman’s] and they would be saying that it was really difficult and Dad would say ‘You should be trying different things!’ because it was working for us.”

The Mosher’s store perhaps is best known for its year-round collection of Christmas decorations. 

“When you’re doing inventory and you have all this Christmas product and you’re packing it away and putting it downstairs,” says Eric, “you wonder why you’re doing that. Why not leave it out and add to it?”

This is his first Christmas without his father. His mother died in 2011 and George passed away this past October at the age of 85. 

“Dad is certainly present in the store,” his son says. 

Eric’s favourite part of running the store is the people. 

“I suppose I’m sort of like my father,” he says. “Dad was certainly a great talker and story teller, and he just loved the people.”

Eric considers himself lucky to have a job that lets him play. 

“I’ll be frank with you,” he adds. “I met with people at the beginning of the year because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. You know, I’m not getting rich; it’s a living. But there’s contentment and it’s something I enjoy doing. I’m my own boss and everything’s paid for. As long as I can keep going at it. This is a historic building and it’s difficult to maintain a building of this size. The oil is expensive to heat it. The exterior, and I’ve got a leaky roof back there. There’s not a lot of money to play around with so it’s frustrating.”

 A man comes in looking for an Elvis tree topper. Earlier in the week, someone had hoped to find a Nutcracker snowglobe. One couple has bought each of their children a Christmas ornament here for years. Carrying unique gift items means GJDE Enterprises puts a twist on the building’s long history of being a variety store. 

Eric is well aware that there is a legacy here, both his father’s and A.E. Smith’s as well

“I feel that. I want to honour the history of the building and the people.”

And that means trying to remember the Smiths and the Asbells but he can’t remember who married who or how old the building actually is and he starts to say, “It’s too bad Da -- ”

Perhaps during January’s quiet time of inventory, Eric will be able to hear the whispers of ghosts telling their stories. 

Shining A Light In The Darkness

First published in the Oxford Journal on Wednesday, December 11, 2013, by Sara Mattinson.

All the signs of a dress rehearsal were there: A guy with a screwdriver was working on the inside doors, the choir members were mismatched in their everyday clothes, the house lights were bright, and shouts and screams from the children getting into their costumes reached the sanctuary from the basement.

The next day, the day of the community Christmas concert in Pugwash, shouts and screams from children were heard in Newtown, Connecticut, as a young man walked into an elementary school and opened fire, killing 20 first-graders and six teachers and administrators before turning the gun on himself.

The concert in Pugwash went ahead that evening as planned, as was appropriate, not despite the tragedy in Newtown on December 14, 2012, but because of it. 

We staggered in, stunned by the horrific events of the day, and sank onto pews, sank into the promise of peace and hope, joy and love provided by the sight of an enormous Christmas tree decorated with lights and ornaments, the choir looking elegant, the children costumed and quiet. We needed the sanctuary provided by that space, by that concert. 

A prayer: May the place of my trust be where my hope finds sanctuary. 

On that cold December evening nearly a year ago, it didn’t matter what church you attended regularly, it didn’t matter what denomination you identified with, it didn’t matter if you were deeply religious or only casually spiritual; we gathered as one small community of humans with hurting hearts. We knew we could trust in the people gathered in that place. 

Together we experienced the joy of beautiful music amidst the bleakness of a massacre. One choir member in particular in the choir sang with a look of pure joy on her face. Her face was lit up by a pure enjoyment of the music and the singing. 

The pianist was the vice-principal at an elementary school and also the mother of a Grade Two student. Already running on the hyped-up exhaustion that comes with putting on a major concert, she would not have yet processed what had happened earlier in the day, was not letting herself think about the meaning of it, yet. 

At the end of the concert, Rev. Meggin King spoke the words that needed to be said, a brief acknowledgement of the dark cloud of sorrow under which we’d been celebrating. 

Afterwards, we gathered downstairs for tea and coffee, sandwiches and sweets. Acquaintances and friends chatted. We talked about Christmas plans – one woman admitted she’d stopped counting at 30 the number of family members who would be at her farmhouse on Christmas Day – and we laughed, we hugged, we wished each other “Merry Christmas”.

That is how fellowship, too, was part of the horror and grief of the day. The giving of kind words, the receiving of encouragement, the sharing of joy create bonds in good times that sustain us through the bad times. That is how we keep the light of hope burning through the darkness.

Ben Wheeler was one of the children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. In an interview in the December issue of Oprah magazine, his mother Francine revealed that Ben loved lighthouses. 

“Think of what a lighthouse does,” Francine Wheeler said. “It shows the light so that we can find our way. Now Benny has become our light.”

The candles, the glowing tree, the joyful face of the woman in the choir – those are the lights we found when we came seeking sanctuary, when we came seeking a way through the pain.

When darkness settles around us, and it does, all too frequently, we need to keep going no matter how much it hurts. We need to sing, we need to see children in their costumes, we need to share a laugh over tea and squares. What makes that possible is the kindness we show each other. 

Shining the light of hope and peace, joy and love is our only human defence against the darkness. 

Image from @WeAreNewtown 

Bringing the Christmas Tree Spirit Home

Since it was so cold on Saturday, sunny but with a nasty wind chill, we said, "Why not wait until first thing tomorrow to get our Christmas tree?" Since the snowstorm wasn't due to start in earnest until mid-morning, what could nicer than heading back to the woods to find our tree in the midst of gently falling snow? We'd even thought about doing a fire and cooking breakfast sausages and beans!
But the snow started early -- well before nine -- and once the call came that church was cancelled (we would find Joy in the woods instead), we headed out.
Not far. Just up the lane to our woods on the left.

We took the truck because getting it on the four-wheeler would have meant broken branches.

The woods are particularly peaceful when it's snowing. No wonder my husband spends so much time here. He cut this lot many years ago and the trees are growing up nicely.

I made sure to say, "Thank you, tree," as Dwayne sawed through it. Don't want to mess with the tree spirit!

Now that the December 15 snowstorm is blowing in as predicted (lovely, lovely, lovely!), we -- what am I saying? -- I will spend the afternoon decorating it. In stages. With lots of yelping and complaining. Stages: Allowing Archie the young cat to adjust to the tree. So far, he hasn't tried to climb it. The yelping and complaining? What might keep him out of the tree -- very prickly spruce branches -- will make decorating it a big headache.
Yet as always, it will be worth it when it's completed.
I wonder if the power will go out as soon as I turn the lights on?!?

Congratulations to the Pick of the Litter!

Through Facebook, I've learned that Jane Jorgensen is Litters 'N' Critters Volunteer of the Year.

To know why, read my interview with Jane from a couple of months ago:
http://www.fieldnotescumberland.blogspot.ca/2013/10/in-conversation-withjane-jorgensen.html

Congratulations, Jane! You are very deserving.

In Conversation With...Krista (Orr) Nguyen

First published in The Oxford Journal on Wednesday, December 4, 2013 by Sara Mattinson.

Every week, several copies of The Oxford Journal are mailed out to the United States. One of those papers lands in a mailbox in Eros, Louisiana. 

This begs the question, “Why there?” and when Krista Nguyen (pronounced “Win”) answers the phone, she does so with a strong southern accent, evidence of a life lived in Louisiana almost as long as she lived in Nova Scotia.

“I went to nursing school at the Halifax Infirmary the year before they closed the school,” says the former Krista Orr of Collingwood. “My brother Trevor was in nursing school with me. We graduated at the same time. We went to a nursing job fair and there were people from Louisiana there. It was something about their voices, their accent that fascinated me. They were funny and fun. They kept calling us to come down and interview with them so we did.”

That was in November 1993, when she was 23 years old, and by January 1994, Krista had moved to Louisiana and started working at a hospital. 

(Her brother joined her a month later but he eventually moved to North Carolina.)

“I would have loved to stay in Nova Scotia but it wasn’t possible,” she says. “There were no jobs in Canada at the time. I got a job in home health care but it didn’t pay much and the work was sporadic. There were no benefits. It was hard to live.”

Krista says she planned to go down for a year to get experience but given her initial experience while travelling down, she should have guessed her life was going to get interesting. 

“With all the crazy January weather, there were delays and I got delayed in Memphis, Tennessee,”  says Krista. “It was the weekend of Elvis’s birthday. I had Canadian money but I didn’t have any American money or a credit card so I had to sleep at the airport. When I woke up, all these Elvises were coming towards me. I thought, ‘What have I got myself into?’ “

After working on several different floors of the hospital for eight months, she applied for an opening in the Emergency room -- and that’s where she met her husband. 

He wasn’t a patient; he was a doctor. Krista met him during a night shift. 

“I was the Nurse In Charge so I went up to him and introduced myself and told him if there was anything he needed, just to let me know. Little did I know, he started to like me then,” she laughs. “He just worked weekends and worked residency during the week. One Saturday, he told everybody that we were going to breakfast so when I said okay, he told everybody NOT to go to breakfast. So just he and I met there.”

Dr. Hoa Nguyen grew up in Baton Rouge after his family left Vietnam and came to the US when he was 12. Krista and Hoa (pronounced “Wah”) were married in Oxford in 1999. 

“So I guess if I had found a job in Nova Scotia, I wouldn’t have met my husband,” Krista says.

Nor would she have four smart, beautiful daughters aged 14, 12, 9 and 8.

Krista says there were a couple of things she had to adjust to: the spicy food and the weather.

“The biggest adjustment was the summer heat. You can’t go outside. It’s so humid. Even the wintertime, it’s humid and with the cold, it’s bone-chilling. I remember dry, itchy skin and being dry all the time,” she says, “but I guess that was from the fire being on all the time.”

She’s philosophical about the differences.

“This is what I say: It’s about adaptability. If I can adapt, I can survive. You know? Enjoy your life, adapt to your surroundings. I guess it was an adventure, coming down here. It was not planned out.”

At the same time, it’s not as if Krista went from Collingwood to a big city; she went to a place that is a lot like Nova Scotia. 

“Exactly,” she agrees. “People down here are fantastic and funny. Everyone is so kind. They are very accepting. We have so many friends. It’s a little Nova Scotia.”

But her accent definitely has lost its Maritime twang.

“A few years after I moved here, I went back and was in Halifax,” says Krista. “I met a few friends at a bar and the people that I knew for years said, ‘Where have you been? You sound so weird!’ But I don’t sound any different than y’all.” 

When I point out what she just said, she bursts out laughing. 

“That’s so funny. How y’all doing? That’s the way. It’s friendly here. Everyone is y’all. It’s not ‘How are you doing?’ The only thing that gets me [caught out] is if I say ‘outback’.”

And there it is: the Canadian “oot” instead of the American “owt”.

“That’s the only word,” she says. If I say out, they say ‘Where are you from?’ ”

While she has acquired an American accent, that’s all. She is a permanent resident of the US but, “I still have my Canadian citizenship,” she says.

Despite 20 years in Louisiana, Krista says she definitely still feels Canadian. 

What does she miss about Nova Scotia?

“Oh, I miss the seasons,” she answers immediately. “I miss family and friends, my parents. I miss snow. I miss seeing it fall. The prettiness of that. Just to walk outside and have it hit your face. And I think I miss it for my kids, you know? The snow makes Christmas.”

Her subscription to The Oxford Journal was a Christmas gift from her mother four or five years ago. Krista likes to read the Old Time News, Williamsdale News and Collingwood News. 

“I always know a few people,” she claims. 

Krista drops a bombshell into the conversation: A famous Maritime novel is on the curriculum at her girls’ private school. 

“Oh, yeah!” she exclaims.  “In Grades six, seven and eight, they have a list of classic and contemporary novels that they have to read and do book reports on. Anne of Green Gables is on the list!”

Krista and her family visit Nova Scotia -- home -- every summer and she hopes once all four daughters are graduated from high school, she and Hoa will retire and spend six months of the year here. 

Now, given that I’m speaking with someone living in Eros, Louisiana(four hours north of New Orleans and the coast), it’s time to ask about a certain TV program. When I say, “Now, here’s my Duck Dynasty question – ” Krista shouts, “Yes!  We’re from there! They are from West Monroe. Actually, Phil and Kay don’t live too far from here. They live outside of Eros and we live in Eros.”

Is it real portrayal of country life in Louisiana? 

“It is a little jazzed up,” Krista says, “but it’s fairly realistic.

“And yes, I have eaten squirrel.”    

(Submitted)