I’m trying to watch the Olympics but it’s not doing it for me so instead I’m going to pick a random day from my Calendiaries to write about. For some reason it’s so cathartic to explain my life to perfect strangers.

July 4, 1990

Spent a lot of the day at Judy’s. It was cloudy all day. We are going to Dauphin tomorrow and maybe Brandon if Gramma doesn’t come home. If Gramma comes home it’s only for a few days.

Judy is my Aunty Judy, she lived just down the road, a stone’s throw really, in the same yard as my grandparents. For some reason right from when we were born, my Dad almost insisted we refer to our aunts and uncles only by their first name, minus the “aunt” or “uncle” part in front of it. He said it was too formal and we should just call them by their names. He had/has hang ups about things like that. When we were growing up the phrase “good morning” was never used, again, he said it was too formal and in his words, “phoney”. Later down the road I made up my mind to start calling my aunts and uncles using those nouns and today I still do.

My Gramma was in the hospital at this time, being treated for depression. I think this is possibly the time she had ECT or electroconvulsive therapy (shock therapy). I can’t recall if it worked or not but I remember her being zombie-ish afterwards.

Gramma suffered with bouts of depression for as long as I can remember. At her worst, I remember her sitting at the kitchen table crying for hours, wringing her hands and her face a painful grimace. I felt so bad for her.

Being a kid, I didn’t understand why she was crying. I would ask why and she would say she truly didn’t know herself. She would just sit there and cry and cry. When I got a bit older and tried to pry about what she was feeling when this happened to her, she would say she had terrible thoughts. She wouldn’t tell me what the thoughts were but they disturbed her to the point of crippling her from functioning normally.

She saw doctors and psychiatrists and was hospitalized on several occasions. She was on anti-depressant after anti-depressant but none ever seemed to work. These times when she was in a deep hole that is depression, she couldn’t seem to do anything but sit at the table and cry and it would last for weeks or months. My Grampa was supportive but it wore on him. He would call me to come and sit with her so he could escape for the day and go to town, just get out of the house. I didn’t mind at all.

Then, just as the storm clouds break up and drift apart after a summer storm, and the sun peeks through, her mood would reverse. Just like that. And she was back to being her loving, warm, funny, direct, productive, not afraid of anything self. There was nothing she was too shy to say or point out, she would tell you exactly what she thought. “Carla, put some rouge on your cheeks, your face is too plain.” “Carla, your butt is getting a little big.” Gee thanks Gramma. If she was alive today, she’d really need to rein in her opinions and thoughts. My cousin was married to a man years ago who at the time was quite overweight, she referred to him as “Tiny”. Like oh my god.

In the eighties she wore acid washed jeans and bought an ATV and rode it as she pleased. She didn’t care what people thought or said. I wrote in a previous post how she broke her leg when she was in her sixties because she insisted on trying to ride a motorcycle down a hill. She had a massive garden and at the end of summer she canned anything and everything you could imagine. She kept chickens, sometimes geese and ducks as well, and also cattle. She could bake or cook anything and there was never NOT something sweet to snack on in the bread box.

She fancied herself an independent woman and besides all the work she did around the house and the yard, she at one point cooked and ran a restaurant. Later on she dabbled in selling Watkins and eggs. I loved watching her get her little briefcase ready and would go along with her to town to replenish her customers with their Watkins necessities and at the same time she’d make a few bucks selling her eggs. She was so cool.

She was very involved in our church and I recall that even though she didn’t have the best voice, she sang the loudest. During the holidays sometimes, she would break out her accordian and she and some of my aunts and uncles would play and sing.

She was the gramma with multitudes of hugs, kisses right on the lips, candies, koolaid she called “freshie” and always made time to play us kids in a game of checkers. There was almost nothing she would say no to. She let me try on her false teeth when I was young and she’d let me hold her cigarette when the ash part got long at the end and flick off the ashes into the ashtray. We called it pipping for some reason. “Gramma, can I pip your ashes?” She’d always say yes. It made me feel so grown up. It’s a wonder I’m not a smoker. I remember one time when I was very young she gave me a tube of lipstick and when I put it on and licked my lips it tasted so good, I ate the whole thing. She didn’t get mad.

She was one of my favourite people in the whole world.