The reward for a long life is die without peers to mourn you. So it is our job today, and no doubt for longer, too, to thread back together the details of 95 years lived simply and honourably. To make a statement that a good woman walked through this world and we loved her.
As near as I can figure, it went something like this.
Flora was born on August 31, 1913, the youngest of seven children, to Janet and Alexander Crawford, who lived in a little house on Castle Avenue.
When she was quite young, perhaps 5, her mother took her to Scotland for an extended visit with her family. Also when she was a little girl, she suffered a serious struggle with Rheumatic fever that had her hospitalized and in isolation for several weeks.
As a young woman, still living with her parents, she worked in the shoe department at Eaton’s. In fact, for a period, she was the only breadwinner in her home during the Depression.
Judging by her old autograph book, she was a popular girl, which is no surprise; we’ve always known her to be sociable. She had a couple of girlfriends named Peg and Jean, who had a brother named Alec.
About the only thing I know about the courtship of Alec and Flora is that Janet had cause at some point to chase him down the street with her broom. Presumably he persisted, for they married in 1938 and he became my Grandpa. She wore a royal blue velvet dress that she showed to my sister and me some time in the seventies. We were mystified by how tiny she had been.
Glenn was born in 1940, with Flora living in her mother-in-law’s house and Alec away serving in the Navy during the war. Caring for a baby was no mean feat in those days: she had to rise early to wash and boil diapers, sterilize bottles and cook formula, all before the senior Mrs. Dobbie needed the kitchen.
Now, Flora was an attractive enough lady, but she must have had a special charm; some supplies were hard to come by in 1940, but the grocer secured and squirreled away a whole case of condensed milk for her. She mixed that with corn syrup to feed her baby. Apparently that’s what they did in those days.
Alec came back from the Navy and the three settled in their little house on Moncton, where they welcomed Jim in 1947. In that tiny, two-bedroom house, they lived for the rest of their 50 years together. Flora raised two challenging boys, cared for Mrs. Crawford in her old age, and produced thousands of breakfasts, lunches and dinners in a kitchen the size of most bathrooms—with the same amount of counter space.
I understand there were some wild parties in that house, too. Something about a person named Madame Red kicking her shoe through the front window?
Much of the summers were spent at Alec’s beloved cottage at Betula Lake in the Whiteshell. Grandma liked the creature comforts, and she was never a big fan of the cottage. She had a wide social circle at Betula, though, and spent many pleasurable evenings playing card games—31 and Chase the Ace—with the Perrys, the Pickens, the Forbes, the Gravesteads, the Nicholsons and the Wrights.
During summers in the city, she kept a garden. There was a big bleeding heart by the front door. Along the sunny side of the house, toward Mrs. Lily’s, she planted annuals every year: petunias, snap dragons and pansies. On the other side, where massive trees—well, they were massive by the time I played there—there were tiger lilies and, I think, phlox and Shasta daisies. At the back there were great lilac bushes, a magnificent stand of peonies and a big patch of rhubarb from which she would make rhubarb jams and pies. All rhubarb, not tamed by strawberries. Sweet and tart and delicious.
Flora and Alec were generous parents-in-law. They welcomed Glenn’s wife Dorothy into the family with their own special brand of understated warmth. Jim hadn’t been gone long before Flora started taking care of Lori, their first granddaughter, on a daily basis. Four years later (after Dorothy had me and was able to stay home for a year with the two of us), Flora had two little girls to look after every day. Not long after that, Linda became part of the family, and the ranks at the Christmas dinner table swelled to 8, where it held steady for a few years then increased by three over three years with a second wave of grandchildren: Kevin, Amanda and Melissa.
The milestones after that are numbered by significant celebrations and tragedies. She and Alec celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1988. Alec died, at the cottage, in 1989. I think it was that year at Christmas that we got her a puppy, Patches, who was her companion for the next decade or so—fat, spoiled and utterly loyal to her.
She travelled all the way to Kingston for my wedding in 1990, and I have to say that she was the one who actually sanctioned me getting married away from home. Lori had had a big beautiful wedding the year before, David and I were living in Kingston and had only 3 months to plan the wedding because we were moving to Japan. As well, there were religious differences with his extended family in Winnipeg… it was easier for us to get married in Kingston. But my mom and sister were arguing with me after dinner one night—Grandma was there—and I was reacting petulantly, as only the baby of the family can. Grandma, who never messed in our family disagreements, smoked and listened for a while, and when it was time she offered, quietly, “You just do what you want, Shaun.”
Well, the discussion was over. Though she never lacked an opinion, Grandma wasn’t one to meddle. So when she spoke, gentle as it was, it was a decree and it was heeded. Now, I don’t know if it was the right or wrong decision to get married so far away, but Grandma knew it didn’t matter in the long run but that young brides are emotional and have their whims, and it’s best to give in to those whims.
We held an 85th birthday party for her, hosted by Lori, and a 90th in the restaurant at the top of her seniors’ apartment complex on Oakland Avenue. The guest list of her peers shrank from the anniversary party to the 85th, and more between the 85th and 90th. Now, five years on, the numbers in this room do not begin to tell how dearly and how widely she was loved. They indicate, instead, the determination she had to hang on to life. She was not bold or brazen, neither was she timid or retiring. But she was tenacious.
If old people are birds, Grandma was a sparrow, tiny and fragile but strangely hardy. At the end, there was no fat left in her flesh—I’m not sure there was flesh left in her flesh—and to see her narrow frame under a thin sheet of skin was to shiver at the length of life. But when she was awake, even in these last weeks, her milky blue eyes were bright, and her laugh, low and hoarse, came readily. Although she meandered between truth and fiction in her head, she never missed a joke or ironic twist. And she could fake her way through confusion, like a politician in a crowd: she never would come right out and say, “Do I know you?”
I have been at a loss for rational explanation at the intensity of my grief. After all, there is no better end than a peaceful one at 95. I am both frustrated and awed by the futility and nobility of a long life lived. Incensed that this tiny voice will have been a dim flash in a vast universe. Impressed by how those sparrow fingers, bent sideways with arthritis and dumb with Parkinson’s-like twitches, clung so steadfastly to life. Even as she strained against the soft bandages that bound her wrists to the siderails, anxious to pull away the undignified accoutrements of her endgame, she would not let go until she was good and ready, until she was sure.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Monday, April 7, 2008
Shelter magazines: neither real nor simple
I hate magazines. They make me feel inferior. Every article seems to insinuate: “here’s how you would look, think and act if you were slim, smart and stylish.”
As a magazine editor and publisher, I’m supposed to read magazines all the time, but there’s only one I read regularly: Masthead, a Canadian magazine industry publication. (I read Toronto Life as well, but I don’t want to mention them because we compete for some of the same advertisers. It makes me feel inferior too, but it’s well written.) Other than that, I’m fairly good at ignoring all the magazines that fill my world. And fill my world they do: we subscribe to about 10 at work because it helps keep our advertising sales staff up to speed on who’s advertising where. At home, I subscribe to the Globe and Mail, which means I get an extra five to 15 magazines per month as inserts in the paper.
If I don’t have a novel on the go or I’ve already read the paper before I find myself in a situation with time to kill (planes, doctors’ waiting rooms, kids’ after-school lessons) I sometimes buy a magazine. This puts me in a difficult position. As a good Canadian, I don’t want to buy American magazines; Canadian magazines, however, are my competition, so I don’t really want to be out in public with my nose in one, suggesting that these publications deserve attention from a smart-looking cookie like me.
With gardening magazines, the truth goes a little deeper. With gardening magazines, articles that gloze too quickly over interesting topics make me feel unpleasantly, pompously superior, while articles that I might consider good simply leave me feeling disappointed that they aren’t in my magazine. With gardening magazines, there is no level of comfort for me. I stopped reading them years ago.
When I buy a magazine, I’m most inclined to pick up People. Yes, really. No need to think, plenty of eye candy, and they don’t tend to print hurtful or untrue things about the rich and famous. (With hopes of being rich some day myself, I support the magazine that supports them!)
Well. A couple of weeks ago I had not brought lunch to work and was going out to a restaurant by myself, so I grabbed a copy of a big, fat, popular Canadian shelter magazine. (That’s what the industry calls all the magazines about spiffing up your home.) I’m pretty confident about my home, having toughed out extensive renovations and gone further in to debt for furnishings. I figured I could handle it.
I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be ashamed to admit this, but I don’t have a garage attached to a 5,000-square foot home, and if I did, I just don’t think I could put the time, effort and money into installing ceramic tile in that garage. My closets are serviceable, but if I were to install a modular system—actually, if I were to make my younger daughter move into her older sister’s room and turn the vacated room into a closet with a modular system (closets in shelter mags are huge)—it would not look like the pictures in this magazine. For one thing, I have more than three colours in my wardrobe. The “closet” in the magazine contains the extremely limited wardrobe of an individual who wears only tan, white and light blue. I know it’s staged, but this fictitious person haunts me.
This imaginary individual, I might add, irons everything before hanging it. She probably takes the laundry out of the dryer the moment it buzzes, too. I bet she flosses her teeth every night, always makes nutritious meals for her family, reads to the kids then jogs before going to bed at 10 so she can get up early. Which she does without hitting the snooze button even once.
Me? I iron on an as-needed basis. I turn off the dryer buzzer because it’s annoying, but leave the clothes inside. They have to cool down, right? I floss a couple of times in the week before a dental appointment. I don’t buy prepared food, but I don’t necessarily cook a great meal every night either. My husband reads to the little one, who will soon be able to read to herself and give Dad a break; my bedtime ritual with Claire is watching recorded re-runs of Law and Order. (But no SVU—I have standards.) The only jogging I do is of my husband’s memory when the garbage starts to smell. If I go to bed at 10 I can’t drift off, so there’s no point turning in until I’ve fallen asleep on the couch during Letterman. I try to get up early; I never hit the snooze button—it bugs my husband, so instead I just turn off the alarm and go back to sleep.
About 10 years ago, there was a backlash against Martha Stewart. Normal people don’t decorate cakes with sugared violets and bake their own croissants and stencil a four-colour plate rail in the dining room and freshen the guest room linens with lavender water—certainly not all in one day. Who knows for sure how much of any of that Martha Stewart actually does—she does seem to be quite driven. I’ve got no problem with her being as she is nor with her demonstrating her talents for the public through her multiple media venues. Martha Stewart Living is about being better at everything than anyone else. That’s the unabashed theme.
It’s all these other magazines that purport to have a theme of helping the average Joe or Jane but offer no realistic advice. Why did the backlash against Martha Stewart just seem to drive the other shelter magazines further into fantasy?
The homes covered in the magazine I mentioned were really mansions. How do you achieve a mansion? Not by lying around reading fluff, that’s for sure. And the interior of that garage with ceramic floors? They painted it white. Because, you know, wiping down the interior of your garage is something you do all the time. Then they accessorized the work bench with a palette of apple green tools and a basket of Granny Smith apples. Do you have apples in your garage? Are they colour-coordinated with your watering can? Should they be?
I get that magazines don’t cover the average home because readers don’t aspire to be average. Ontario Gardener doesn’t cover the average garden—we look for gardens that are remarkable, in part because the writer needs to remark on the garden for about 800 words. But the gardens we cover are real, and there is never a shortage of them.
When your garden is profiled in Ontario Gardener, you don’t get a list of instructions on how to prep starting two weeks ahead of the photo shoot. The “team” that shows up for the photo shoot is usually me, though sometimes one of my kids comes along for the ride. I come with nothing but my little $800 Nikon and a spare charged battery. I got a tripod for Christmas, so I guess I’ve got “gear” now.
In polls, consumers say they turn to magazines for information and advice. Obviously, they also look for something beautiful and inspiring. But if the beautiful and inspiring isn’t real, if it’s staged, how much information and advice can you really take from it? And why aspire to something unattainable?
These magazines make me want to give their editors and publishers a shake. The world is a magnificent place and there is beauty and inspiration all around us. Go ahead and make something new and call it art—I love art! But if you call it a magazine, use your power and influence to illuminate the real world.
As a magazine editor and publisher, I’m supposed to read magazines all the time, but there’s only one I read regularly: Masthead, a Canadian magazine industry publication. (I read Toronto Life as well, but I don’t want to mention them because we compete for some of the same advertisers. It makes me feel inferior too, but it’s well written.) Other than that, I’m fairly good at ignoring all the magazines that fill my world. And fill my world they do: we subscribe to about 10 at work because it helps keep our advertising sales staff up to speed on who’s advertising where. At home, I subscribe to the Globe and Mail, which means I get an extra five to 15 magazines per month as inserts in the paper.
If I don’t have a novel on the go or I’ve already read the paper before I find myself in a situation with time to kill (planes, doctors’ waiting rooms, kids’ after-school lessons) I sometimes buy a magazine. This puts me in a difficult position. As a good Canadian, I don’t want to buy American magazines; Canadian magazines, however, are my competition, so I don’t really want to be out in public with my nose in one, suggesting that these publications deserve attention from a smart-looking cookie like me.
With gardening magazines, the truth goes a little deeper. With gardening magazines, articles that gloze too quickly over interesting topics make me feel unpleasantly, pompously superior, while articles that I might consider good simply leave me feeling disappointed that they aren’t in my magazine. With gardening magazines, there is no level of comfort for me. I stopped reading them years ago.
When I buy a magazine, I’m most inclined to pick up People. Yes, really. No need to think, plenty of eye candy, and they don’t tend to print hurtful or untrue things about the rich and famous. (With hopes of being rich some day myself, I support the magazine that supports them!)
Well. A couple of weeks ago I had not brought lunch to work and was going out to a restaurant by myself, so I grabbed a copy of a big, fat, popular Canadian shelter magazine. (That’s what the industry calls all the magazines about spiffing up your home.) I’m pretty confident about my home, having toughed out extensive renovations and gone further in to debt for furnishings. I figured I could handle it.
I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be ashamed to admit this, but I don’t have a garage attached to a 5,000-square foot home, and if I did, I just don’t think I could put the time, effort and money into installing ceramic tile in that garage. My closets are serviceable, but if I were to install a modular system—actually, if I were to make my younger daughter move into her older sister’s room and turn the vacated room into a closet with a modular system (closets in shelter mags are huge)—it would not look like the pictures in this magazine. For one thing, I have more than three colours in my wardrobe. The “closet” in the magazine contains the extremely limited wardrobe of an individual who wears only tan, white and light blue. I know it’s staged, but this fictitious person haunts me.
This imaginary individual, I might add, irons everything before hanging it. She probably takes the laundry out of the dryer the moment it buzzes, too. I bet she flosses her teeth every night, always makes nutritious meals for her family, reads to the kids then jogs before going to bed at 10 so she can get up early. Which she does without hitting the snooze button even once.
Me? I iron on an as-needed basis. I turn off the dryer buzzer because it’s annoying, but leave the clothes inside. They have to cool down, right? I floss a couple of times in the week before a dental appointment. I don’t buy prepared food, but I don’t necessarily cook a great meal every night either. My husband reads to the little one, who will soon be able to read to herself and give Dad a break; my bedtime ritual with Claire is watching recorded re-runs of Law and Order. (But no SVU—I have standards.) The only jogging I do is of my husband’s memory when the garbage starts to smell. If I go to bed at 10 I can’t drift off, so there’s no point turning in until I’ve fallen asleep on the couch during Letterman. I try to get up early; I never hit the snooze button—it bugs my husband, so instead I just turn off the alarm and go back to sleep.
About 10 years ago, there was a backlash against Martha Stewart. Normal people don’t decorate cakes with sugared violets and bake their own croissants and stencil a four-colour plate rail in the dining room and freshen the guest room linens with lavender water—certainly not all in one day. Who knows for sure how much of any of that Martha Stewart actually does—she does seem to be quite driven. I’ve got no problem with her being as she is nor with her demonstrating her talents for the public through her multiple media venues. Martha Stewart Living is about being better at everything than anyone else. That’s the unabashed theme.
It’s all these other magazines that purport to have a theme of helping the average Joe or Jane but offer no realistic advice. Why did the backlash against Martha Stewart just seem to drive the other shelter magazines further into fantasy?
The homes covered in the magazine I mentioned were really mansions. How do you achieve a mansion? Not by lying around reading fluff, that’s for sure. And the interior of that garage with ceramic floors? They painted it white. Because, you know, wiping down the interior of your garage is something you do all the time. Then they accessorized the work bench with a palette of apple green tools and a basket of Granny Smith apples. Do you have apples in your garage? Are they colour-coordinated with your watering can? Should they be?
I get that magazines don’t cover the average home because readers don’t aspire to be average. Ontario Gardener doesn’t cover the average garden—we look for gardens that are remarkable, in part because the writer needs to remark on the garden for about 800 words. But the gardens we cover are real, and there is never a shortage of them.
When your garden is profiled in Ontario Gardener, you don’t get a list of instructions on how to prep starting two weeks ahead of the photo shoot. The “team” that shows up for the photo shoot is usually me, though sometimes one of my kids comes along for the ride. I come with nothing but my little $800 Nikon and a spare charged battery. I got a tripod for Christmas, so I guess I’ve got “gear” now.
In polls, consumers say they turn to magazines for information and advice. Obviously, they also look for something beautiful and inspiring. But if the beautiful and inspiring isn’t real, if it’s staged, how much information and advice can you really take from it? And why aspire to something unattainable?
These magazines make me want to give their editors and publishers a shake. The world is a magnificent place and there is beauty and inspiration all around us. Go ahead and make something new and call it art—I love art! But if you call it a magazine, use your power and influence to illuminate the real world.
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