New Year's Resolutions - High Or Otherwise

Happy New Year.

I'll start by nagging about celebrating safely. This does not mean encasing your champagne bottle with a condom. A taxi is a hell of a lot cheaper than having your ass sued off - and yes, it can and does happen all the time. Crashing on a sofa is more comfortable than waking up in the tank and that embarrassing trip to court later on, or thumbing it in the freezing cold of winter because you lost your licence and your car is impounded. Nuff said.

On to 2012. Several life-evolving events have taken place recently. Both involved family members, one young, one old. Those were in addition to the toxic stress levels of things happening within three feet of me at any time. I completed school and managed to graduate at the top of, not just my class, but the entire college (kudos for the menopausal fat broad!) and actually land TWO jobs in my field. I'm still living in a construction zone and hope that the next floor quotation will be the last before we start ripping out broadloom. All in all, I have dubbed 2012 officially "The Year Of The Change."

I resolve to begin Change. I do not resolve to lose weight, save money, be kinder to the environment or pay more attention to my health - they all go before me without saying. They are not part of Change but a daily on-going battle. None of which will ever happen overnight. The same goes for world peace, curing life-threatening diseases or giving up chocolate.

I will start with small Change - literally, like emptying my wallet once a week and portioning out my pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, loonies and twoonies (which I think should be spelled 'toonies) into individual jars and tins. I did that for the first time a number of years ago and find that by RRSP deadline, I have a tidy sum I didn't have to scramble for to deposit into my fund.

And speaking of retirement...my mother-in-law, who will be 91 in March, finally resolved to go into a nursing home. It has been rather an emotional ordeal for all of us as, at first, she didn't really want to go, and although no one could make her, common sense prevailed. Not to mention that her two main caregivers both sustained fractures within a week of each other and that left no one to take are of MIL. She lived in a small, French-speaking, fishing village in northeastern New Brunswick, population about 1200. They all know her. That is, they all know her personality and assisted-living needs. Without malace, I state simply that she is extremely hard to get along with. She is a strong personality and very demanding in what she wants. Although her body is failing, mentally she is sharp as a razor. Nothing gets by this old broad! I only hope I will be as stubborn and well-grounded if/when I reach that age. Realizing that we could not longer find someone to drive Miss Daisy, my sister-in-law stepped in and helped to relocate MIL into a senior's facility in Fredericton. For the bargain basement price of $4000 a month, mother gets the best of care. For that price, she should have six Nubian slaves carry her around on a litter. The government pays about half. Those of us planning to retire within the next 10-20 years, take note. This is an average cost. Take the increasing ratio of aging Canadians to available facilities, inflation and a government who are merely serving drinks on the Titanic and by the time I need accommodation in this type of facility, I'll be lucky to get space on an ice flow. I may laugh now but I am seriously considering getting a quote on retrofitting my house with ramps, grab bars and a lifetime supply of supplemental oxygen.

Which brings me to my next Change initiation. A younger member of my family recently experienced a health speed-bump. I am happy to report that this person, whose identity and confidence is sacred, is none the worse for wear. However it has made me stop and think - very hard - about the next half of my life and reflect on all the things I said I would do before I got here. Most of all I think about all those things I haven't done. Yes - I've travelled, I've written, I've loved - not enough of any of them to my satisfaction, but to the extent that it is more than most people I know. Having no children of my own, I will leave only the memory of myself to those dear to me, and a few ISBN's in the Library of Congress. I therefore resolve to finish at least one book this year. I also resolve to begin planning my next travel adventure. I want to go to Ireland, the land of my ancestors. I want to find out what makes me part of every other little red-headed, Guinness-drinking, battle-ready punt with a sometimes crappy attitude. It's in my blood and I therefore claim the God-given right to stagger from pub to pub in the Temple Bar area and puke in the river Liffy. I can quote, ver batum, every line in "The Quiet Man." My great-grandmother came from the south of Ireland and spoke a dialect called Lilt. I believe whole-heartedly that a piece of me is still there.

I want to see London because it's old and, well, a fortune-teller once said I had an old soul. It must be true because I am constantly fascinated by castles, museums and drive my hubby crazy with re-runs of Jane Austen movies. I pant at the mere thought of Season 2 of "Downton Abby." I 'get' British humour. I'll finish the tour in Scotland, because there's scotch. I will tour a scotch distillery or two, (or three, four, five, six...) and attend a scotch nosing, or - well, why repeat the obvious. I do get chills when I hear the pipes. I've never met a haggis I didn't like. And also because ancestors on my mother's side were born there. I have old sepia-toned pictures of stalwart-looking women whose foreheads and no-nonsense noses I see every time I look in a mirror.

I want to see Paris because everyone I have ever known who has gone there has been changed by it. I want to walk thousand year old streets, be rudely snapped at by its citizens and have a bistro breakfast of cafe and a butter croissant before touring the Louvre. I want to tour the outskirts of the city where farmer's fields were once muddy trenches that harboured battle-weary soldiers and wonder from which whorehouse my great-grandfather caught syphillis - seriously. (Treated 3 times during the Great War, I'm surprised he had any time to fight the Huns!) And because I'm into Change, it's going on my bucket list.

I spent Christmas with my mother, who is heading back to the cutting table for joint replacement no. 3. Therefore I'm doing all the above soon before my own body decides to rebel in ways it can never recover. And smoothly this takes me to the next Change...

Yes, I do intend to incorporate better health practices. I want the stamina it will take to fulfill my dreams of travelling. I will put away a few extra dollars any way I can so I can afford to take myself where my heart desires. I will keep writing as long as my brain can function to put words on paper (or the screen) in hopes that some hundred years or so from now, some student or reader will be moved by something I've written and be curious enough about the author to find out if any of those promises she made to herself were the result of the Changes she wrote about on that New Year's Eve of 2011.

Have a Happy and Prosperous 2012 and may your own Changes start something wonderful!

Merry Christmas

December 24, 2011

I usually don’t get involved with
discussions involving politics or religions but I have a certain bee buzzing
around in my bonnet. It has to do with
the de-naming of “Christmas.” Now, I
consider myself to be a fair person of average tolerance regarding Canadian
multiculturalism. From time to time I do
weigh in on subjects that push my feminist equality buttons. This year, for some reason – and I think it
has to do with the number of e-cards I receive which dance around the word “Christmas”
– my internal defence mechanism kicked in by about card no. 14.

So far I have received the following euphemistic
phrases on greeting cards: Happy Yule, Happy Holidays, Joyous Winter
Celebrations (as opposed to cards that enthusiastically announce June 21st
as the official beginning of summer, no “Let’s Celebrate Not Having to Shovel
Cold, White, Shit Out Of Our Driveways For The Next Three Months Or So” – so far
none have shown up in my in-box), Season’s Greetings (that old stand-by),
Winter Solstice, ad infinitum…just as long as the sender doesn’t feel he or she
is offending someone by using the word “Christmas.” Why not go all the way and join R. Lee Ermey’s
Marines by singing “Happy Birthday, Jesus” with all the blind enthusiasm that
prevents getting your teeth kicked in by Gunny.

Who decided Christmas was a bad word? And when did it become so passé to wish someone
“Merry Christmas”? Why did something
that has been so acceptable in Christendom for over 2000 years suddenly become
taboo? Let me think about this for a
moment and I’ll get back to you.

I personally love Christmas. I love everything about Christmas. I like the music, the lights, the frantic
rush, the endless baking, the exhaustion and I love complaining about it. Of
course, I was raised in a Christian household.
My mother was a practicing High Anglican and my father, at some point in
time, went to a parochial school in Montreal, complete with creeping nuns
dressed in black. The celebration of
Christmas was mandatory. Belief was as
unquestionable as the sun rising or the rain falling. My great-grandmother, the reigning matriarch
of our family, had a basic grade school education but could quote the bible
backwards and forwards and had a rather large, worn tome which met with the
back of my head or my rear end more than once in my life. Jesus was the son of God and that was
that. You celebrated his birth on
December 25th, no questions asked.

From a theological point of view, you could
break down through layers of semantics and get to the heart of Christ’s
origins. He was Jewish. So is Adam Sandler and everyone else he sings
about in The Hanukkah Song, which, by the way, I find hilarious everytime I
hear it. While I’ve never heard of Jesus
playing with a Dredl or exchanging chocolate gelt with his Hebrew playmates, I
certainly wouldn’t raise an eyebrow if that’s what went down. He preached the word of God. His disciples brought the idea of
Christianity into play at the risk of being crucified or eaten by lions. Somewhere along the line, Christianity grew
along with the settling of the Western World.
Our English and European ancestors told us that celebrating this day was
important and we’ve all merrily rolled along.
The little Hebrew kid is over 2000 years old now. I really think it’s too late to change the
party invitations.

Now I come to the heart of this blog. Those who disapprove of the word “Christmas” –
DO SO AT YOUR PERIL! If you don’t like
Christmas or feel offended and overwhelmed by it, by all means, use that gift
which the God I was raised with gave you called Free Will and choose to leave
until after New Years. There are flights
out of the country even on December 25th. No one will stop you. Choose not to put up
lights, no one will care. Don’t buy
presents, I didn’t get you one either. Turn
off the radio, Mr. Grinch. Try hard
enough and you can find a station that doesn’t drone on about the most wonderful
time of the year. You don’t have to
watch movies about singing priests, Santa in court or a pregnant Hebrew
teenager on a donkey, that’s what satellite is for anyway. BUT STOP PISSING ON MY PARADE.

I will continue to wish people “Merry
Christmas” with no expectation of reciprocation. I will sing Christmas carols from the top of
my lungs. I will fight with strings of
lights until I am dead. I will put up my
Christmas presents under my Christmas tree.
I will continue to celebrate the birth of Christ until he puts a stop to
it himself.

So, for the potentially offended I say, “put
up or shut up.” If you don’t like it,
then by all means, feel free to opt out of the statutory holidays this seasonal
celebration provides. We’ll even let you
give back the money you get paid by not having to work! And if you feel claustrophobic standing in
line this time of year, consider this - according to their calendars, the
following religions have listed their “holy days” for 2012:

Muslins:
7
Jewish:
23 – 15 of which no work is permitted at all
Buddists – 139, if you take in all factions
of their religion which use one or more days for different celebrations for
deities and prayers
Hindu – 19
Pagans – 5

So, party-poopers, leave our three little
days alone and allow me to celebrate my Christmas, my way.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, one and
all.

A Jackson Family Rememberance

The following is a factionalized account of what happened in Hong Kong 70 years ago today. It is meant as a memorial to a man I never knew but who is entirely responsible for my being here. The facts were gathered from several books, websites and what few family passages were handed down to me over the years:

December 19, 1941

British Territory of Hong Kong

“The Ridge” - An abutment overlooking
Sai-Wan Bay.



D106529

Pte JACKSON A.

"The Ridge", 1941 Dec 22

1941/12/19

Sai Wan Memorial

Column 27.



Private Albert Jackson and three of his Royal Canadian Army Service Corps (R.C.A.S.C.) are taking heavy fire in a hastily hollowed out trench – along with over 1900 Canadian and British troops who arrived in November of that year to support the defence of Hong Kong, the Asian
“Jewel in the Crown” of Great Britain.

Winston Churchill said, “Hong Kong will never fall.” It was a promise he made to President
Franklin Roosevelt at the outset of America’s entry into the Second World
War. It was a promise he could not keep.

When Albert Jackson and the rest of “C” force departed from Vancouver that fateful day October, 27th of 1941, did he know that he had less than two months to live? Did he know that of the 1977 soldiers sent to Hong Kong to defend it against what would be a seismic wave of Japanese infantry, he would be one of the first 290 Canadian casualties to die in the Pacific theatre?

Back in Montreal, Edna Mae Jackson (nee Cavener) appears in the Montreal Gazette as part of a puff piece of war propaganda “Soldier Doesn’t Know About Twin Daughters.”
The article goes on to state that Edna, who gave birth to the twins after her husband departed to Hong Kong, has no way of reaching him to tell him the news. Albert may never know that his pregnant wife gave birth to two daughters, leaving only a 3-year-old son to carry on his name. He would go to his death remembering the infectious smile of a sandy-haired toddler, mugging in front of the camera wearing a miniature soldier’s uniform, including a forage cap. Seventy years later, that smile is still just as infectious in a man who barely remembers a father who went to war and never returned.

Seventy years ago today, a battle raged that changed the course of one family forever.
Pinned down on “The Ridge” with spent ammunition and forced to use hand-to-hand combat, scarce and faded eye-witness accounts would tell of the South-African born and British-raised father of three who took a bullet – probably more than one, - which ended his life. In their fervent rage and haste to overrun the remaining soldiers and staff barricaded in Stanley Hospital, the Japanese would raze “The Ridge” with tanks, burying the wounded and dying as they went.

Private Albert Jackson (posthumously promoted to Corporal) would be confirmed as KIA (killed in action) on December 22nd. His body would never be found. Four days later, British forces surrendered the island of Hong Kong. But before that happened, a massacre of inhuman proportions would take place. In the outlying jungle, on the beaches, in bunkers and in the hospital itself, Japanese soldiers murdered any wounded soldiers they found. Several nurses in
the Stanley Hospital were raped, some murdered, shot or bayoneted as they tried to defend themselves. The remaining troops would be herded onto “Hell Ships” and transported to the island of Japan as slave POW’s and sent to work in the mines. Many would die in captivity – murder, starvation, disease – or simply worked to death. Some would make it through to liberation. The lucky ones would recover and be sent home. Some would say they never left Japan. Most will say that part of them never recovered at all. They would live to envy the dead.

What remains of Albert Jackson’s legacy and service to his country can be viewed at these links:

http://www.veterans.gc.ca/images/collections/books/bww2/ww2033.jpg

http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/collections/virtualmem/Detail/2128678

The man whose name is carved in Column 27 is scarce remembered only by a single living relative now. For those of us who are here because of him, look into that part of yourself which is proud of the country in which they live, that may display bravery in the face of odds and who believe that honour still exists. Never wonder where it came from.

I have been asked if he was a hero. To that I say, “no.” He was however a man who volunteered to serve his country; a soldier who went where he was told and who died doing what he
was trained to do. He was a patriot. He was a Canadian.

The rest of us who are here today and share his blood must never forget he was also a father.