by Heather Plett | Aug 22, 2005 | Uncategorized
We sealed the deal on the camper last night. It will be moving on to its new owners later this week. Soon, it will house another family, protect them from the rain, keep them warm when it’s cool, give them a place of refuge from the busy-ness of their lives, and hopefully continue to be filled with great memories.
After accepting their final offer last night, I crawled into bed and drifted off to sleep. I woke up during the night, though, with a feeling of deep sadness and almost panic. My first thought was “I’m not ready to let it go!”
We had fun in that camper in the last 4 years. The first weekend we used it, we camped at Hecla Island. Some of my family joined us there, and it was that weekend at the camper that we announced that we were expecting Maddie. I was already 3 months pregnant, but we’d waited until then to tell anyone because we’d had a stillbirth and a miscarriage before Maddie came along and we were, quite frankly, a little nervous.
Maybe that weekend, when her arrival was first celebrated, somehow contributed to the fact that Maddie seems to be our most outdoors-loving kid. The next summer she was just a baby the first time we set the camper up at a seasonal site at White Lake. We took to calling her “beach-bum-baby” because she was by far the happiest when she was lying in her stroller at the beach, or in an inner tube in the water. She had the most adorable tanned chubby legs sticking out of the stroller.
We put alot of work into the camper. When we first got it, I re-upholstered all the cushions (and there are a lot of them), sewed new curtains, and painted some of the walls. The next year, Marcel replaced part of the floor that had rotted, and I put in new flooring tiles. I also sewed each of the girls a special camper pillow with their initials on it to match the upholstery.
Lots of people visited us over the 2 years we had it parked at White Lake. Most of the members of both of our families enjoyed some time with us in the camper. Neices and nephews stayed with us, friends from church camped with us, and we got to know other campers who spent the summers as our neighbours.
We added a screened-in cabana/deck, and enjoyed many evenings there, protected from the bugs and/or rain. I remember lots of laughter in the cabana. I also remember some soul-searching conversations there – like the weeks after my brother-in-law’s first marriage fell apart.
Oh yes, it’s hard to let it go. At the same time, though, I know it’s the right thing to do. We’re downsizing, and the big camper just doesn’t fit into our lifestyle anymore. It’s too big to pull with the new car, and with only one income, we can’t really afford it either. We’ll probably replace it down the line with a smaller pop-up camper, but for now we’re quite content to be tenters again. Like I’ve said before, though it hurts now and then, we know it’s right for us to take a step out of the consumer rat-race and find ways to reduce our consumption and simplify our lives.
It makes me feel a little better to know that the new family who will enjoy the camper seems very nice and appreciative. They’re expecting a second baby, so next summer, the camper will hear the coos and cries of another “beach-bum-baby”, as well as a toddler. No, I’m not much of a capitalist – I’d rather have something I’ve enjoyed go to someone who will love it as much as I’ve loved it than make alot of money off it.
I heard a great story on the weekend of some people who’d bought a house on a private sale, and the people who’d sold it to them accepted their offer not because it was the highest bid, but because they were the family they most felt should own the home. When they took possession of the home, they found a gift for each of the kids that the previous owners had left them in their new bedrooms.
I think I’ll do something like that for the new owners of the camper – leave them a little gift and a letter of “blessing” telling them we hope their memories add to ours to continue to fill the camper with love and warmth. Because in the end, possessions are (should be) like that – ours to use and enjoy for awhile, but then let go and hopefully continue to find a use and bring other people joy.
We’ll still have fun and find joy in other places and other campgrounds, even without the camper. We’ll hang onto the memories it helped us create, and the love we put into fixing the camper up will continue to bring other people joy. Forgive me, though, if I shed a little tear when they drive away with it.
by Heather Plett | Aug 22, 2005 | Uncategorized
After my great find at Value Village yesterday – pants that fit like they’re MEANT for my body rather than the body of someone with no hips, stomach, or butt – I thought I’d try my luck again today when I had a little more time. Well, to my surprise, my luck held and I found THREE MORE PAIRS of great-looking great-fitting pants. Yay!
Unless you’re on a budget as tight as ours, have discovered that EVERY PAIR OF PANTS IN YOUR CLOSET is falling apart at the same time, and you have a lumpy not-made-for-pants body, you probably don’t appreciate how HUGE it is to find four decent pairs of pants for $25, without even having to comb through racks and racks of clothes. And one of the pairs is Ralph Lauren. (Not that I’m big into brand names, but I’m happy to know that my $4.99 pants are well made 🙂
The “second-hand” stars seem to be aligning for me this weekend! Whoopee!
And now, when I go back to work tomorrow after 2 weeks away, at least I’ll be smiling when I glance down at my PANTS!
by Heather Plett | Aug 21, 2005 | Uncategorized
I have a happy heart tonight. It’s late, and I should be sleeping, but the kids are gone for a sleepover (thanks to ccap and her boy for taking them!), we just got home from date night, and my head and heart and stomach are full and happy. We went for dinner at a nice restaurant, and then went to see The Interpreter at the cheap theatres (great movie). It’s nice that, after twelve years of marriage, we still enjoy each other’s company. I hope to say the same in another twelve years, and then twelve years after that, and so on, and so on.
There are lots of other reasons for the sappy headline. Nothing earth-shattering, just lots of warm fuzzies that make life satisfying and fulfilling.
I’m just wrapping up two weeks of holidays. On the way back from Alberta last weekend, we camped in the Qu’Appelle Valley in Saskatchewan. It’s lovely countryside. We had fun tenting with the kids, eating our picnic supper, giggling around the picnic table, and cuddling up on air mattresses in the tent. Yeah, now and then I miss the camper (we haven’t sold it yet, but we’re not using it because we can’t pull it with the car), but I really enjoy being back in a tent again. There’s something so cozy about it. And simple.
When we got back, we set to work around the house. I got most of the painting done (the trim on the outside of the house) and Marcel got the brick sidewalk built beside the house. I also spent some time cleaning the house – not as much as I’d hoped, but enough to feel like it’s a decent start on all this clutter.
Yesterday, we drove up to Riverton (about an hour and half from the city) to visit my brother Dwight, s-i-l Lorna, and their two boys. It was a delightful day. We had a weiner roast for lunch, hung around their yard all afternoon, watched the kids play on the trampouline (sometimes with the sprinkler going underneath), then went next door for pizza. “Next door” are Lorna’s brother and s-i-l, who run an organic bakery, and they have a big outdoor brick wood-burning oven. On the weekends in the summer, they sell the most amazing pizza on the face of the earth. You can watch them bake it in the oven. We go there at least once a summer for pizza night, and usually invite a bunch of friends from church to join us. This year was no exception – a whole gang of them showed up to hang out with us and eat pizza. Yum, yum.
And this afternoon, I had fun hanging out with Nikki and Julie. We went shopping, but thankfully not to a mall. This was the kind of shopping I can handle – Ten Thousand Villages (a very cool store full of fair trade arts and crafts from all over the world) and Value Village (second-hand heaven). To my delight, I actually came home with a pair of pants from Value Village for $5.99 that FIT AND FEEL GOOD! I HATE buying pants (my body just seems too lumpy for the style of most pants), so when I find a pair that I like, it feels like cause for celebration. The amazing thing was, I didn’t even try these on in the store – just decided to take a chance.
So there you have it – my holidays. Nothing momentous, just lots of good moments strung together. As I reflect upon it, I realize that what made the time off so good was that it was full of relationship moments. We didn’t spend much money, didn’t see any amazing sites or come home with any new possessions, but we had a great time connecting with alot of people that we care about. We spent time with all of the members of my family, hooked up with several friends (including some, like Julie and Bruce, that we don’t see often), and most of all, hung out with our girls and enjoyed their company.
I guess that’s what life is all about – finding people to connect with along the way. I think seeing the movie the Interpreter brought that home to me tonight. At the end of the movie, you’ve seen how much pain and despair people have to bear, but you still feel hopeful, because once in awhile, along the way, they (and you) find someone to connect with. And that makes it worth taking the next step. Even when you lose someone you really love, you realize the pain was worth it, because at least you knew love.
D’ya think I should write for Hallmark? 😉
by Heather Plett | Aug 17, 2005 | Uncategorized
This is what I bought in Banff for Peanut, the yet-to-be-born baby of my sister and her hubby. It was too cute to resist. And too cute to hang onto until AFTER the baby is born. I might have been able to keep a secret, but the girls were ready to burst, so we gave it to them already.
by Heather Plett | Aug 17, 2005 | Uncategorized
August 8, 2003 started out like any other ordinary summer day. I’d started holidays the week before, so we were somewhat lazy that week. I had hopes of painting the house, but that could wait until later in the month, since I was planning to take 4 weeks off. The day before, we’d celebrated our tenth anniversary in style – dinner out at a fancy restaurant, and then a cultured evening at the theatre. Miss Saigon was playing in Winnipeg. It seemed a suitable way to celebrate 10 years of marriage. The next day found us still in great spirits after a rare night out with no kids and romance in the air.
My brother Dwight and sister-in-law Lorna dropped off their 2 boys at our place in the afternoon. They were staying with us while their parents attended a wedding. It was a treat having them around. It all seemed so ordinary. We had supper together, and then walked to 7-11 with all five kids in tow. Slurpees at the neighbourhood 7-11 was about as ordinary as a Friday evening could be.
What I didn’t know was that while we were filling our Slurpee cups with the flavours of our choice, my dad was lying in a ditch, breathing his last breath. When we got home from 7-11, we got the phone call that changed my life. First it was the jumbled, frantic voicemails from Mom saying something about a horrible accident, then it was the call from h8s2cln (my sister-in-law), the only person Mom was able to reach, saying Mom was following the ambulance to the hospital in Neepawa. Then, while I scrambled to pack a bag with underwear and a change of clothes, Marcel spoke to the woman at the hospital. Dad was gone. They hadn’t been able to revive him.
My knees buckled under me and Marcel tried to hold me up. “No, no, no!” I screamed. This couldn’t be! My Dad couldn’t just be gone like that – while we were having Slurpees! It was just so wrong!
We broke the news to the kids, and I raced out of the house. At the ball diamond, I picked up my sister ccap, we ran into each other’s arms and buried our faces in each other’s shoulders. We were fatherless daughters. What did that mean? The pain gripped our throats with unfamiliar fingers.
It was the hardest ride of our lives – travelling across the prairies to the farm which now held no farmer. We wept, we gasped, we pleaded for God to let it be a dream. While we drove we watched the dark angry storm clouds rise above the prairie, the sun’s last rays stabbing them with orange light.
Dad died under a baler. In a freak accident that we’ve tried hard to understand, he walked behind the tractor and baler while stopped in a ditch, and it began to roll downhill, crushing him and tearing open his back as it did. As hard as it was (and still is) to accept, in many ways, it was the right way for him to die. He never wanted to get old. He wanted to farm until the day he died. He wanted to die the same way he had lived – out on the prairie with the sky above him and the earth beneath him.
This year, August 8 saw us driving across the prairies heading for Alberta. Though the sight of a round bale in the ditch can still make me wince, and a glimpse of an old farmer hunched over the steering wheel of a small tractor can bring stinging tears to my eyes, my heart still finds joy on the prairie. I still delight in the sight of round bales dotting the landscape, and a field of wheat still makes me feel I’ve come home.
It wasn’t always easy being my dad’s daughter. Many of the things he did in my lifetime brought pain to my life. Growing up, it was often hard to believe that his children were more important than his farm or his animals. He never was the type of father who showed up for baseball games or school presentations. He left most of the parenting up to mom. Sometimes, I hated him for that.
The hate mellowed, though, over the years. When he died, I could only think of all the things I loved about him – his wisdom, his sense of humour, his deep spirituality.
About 10 years ago, I wrote this poem about my dad. I wrote it right around the time that I was becoming a parent – when I was grappling with some of the issues that I still struggled with about the way I’d been parented. I never showed it to dad – I wasn’t sure if he’d be flattered or insulted. Now, looking back, it was rather eerily prophetic.
Father
I know a man
who fights the Prairie
like a Kamikaze warrior
Death at the hands of the enemy
is the shortest distance to god
He writes his anger
in furrows of blood
and chants his lament
in trenches of pain
The Prairie laughs
as it tortures him
with bullets of hail
and red blades of fire
He comes so close to god
(I hated you
that spring
you made me fight it with you
Rising from our beds
to drag half-dead cattle
from icy water
to watch them die
on higher ground)
I know a man
who caresses the Prairie
like a Shakespearean lover
Death in the arms of a mistress
is the shortest distance to ecstasy
He writes his poetry
in long sonnets
of barley and hay
and sings his songs
in wheatfields of gold
The Prairie laughs
as it kisses him
with tender raindrops
and purple rays at sunset
He comes so close to ecstasy
(I loved you
that summer
you let me caress it with you
Sitting on your lap
on that old John Deere
your large hand
over my small one
as we plowed black soil
and planted the seed)
This is him – the man of the prairies. It’s been two years now, and the pain can still steal my breath away some days.
We sealed the deal on the camper last night. It will be moving on to its new owners later this week. Soon, it will house another family, protect them from the rain, keep them warm when it’s cool, give them a place of refuge from the busy-ness of their lives, and hopefully continue to be filled with great memories.
We put alot of work into the camper. When we first got it, I re-upholstered all the cushions (and there are a lot of them), sewed new curtains, and painted some of the walls. The next year, Marcel replaced part of the floor that had rotted, and I put in new flooring tiles. I also sewed each of the girls a special camper pillow with their initials on it to match the upholstery.
I think I’ll do something like that for the new owners of the camper – leave them a little gift and a letter of “blessing” telling them we hope their memories add to ours to continue to fill the camper with love and warmth. Because in the end, possessions are (should be) like that – ours to use and enjoy for awhile, but then let go and hopefully continue to find a use and bring other people joy.