April 17
Your Uncle Only Brother married Aunt Catholic Girl Start Much Too Late today – all together a strange day with your father digging in his heels and saying he was too sick to go. He wants me to stay at home with him but I bought a new dress for the occasion and I am going. We have waited a long time to dance at your uncle’s wedding, you know.
The priest that married them made a point of saying the only the Catholics were allowed to take communion – made me consider… next time around we just bring a bottle of wine (grape juice will do fine for good United Church members) and pass it around for the heathen Protestants in the crowd. Were you upset when I danced to that to stomper? The stiff upper lip Catholics looked at me in disbelief but I never could learn how to tune out feeling when music beckons me to the dance floor.
May 1
The Pretty Little Dutch Girl, your Dad and I go to the Gaspe (where all your ancestors from my side came from) to visit my sister your Aunt The Queen, your Uncle Denis and cousins Joey, Chantal and Sheila. Even though I had an unforgiving flu, you seemed to fall asleep, lulled no doubt by the swaying of the train ride – or were you trying to lie low to avoid the paroxysms of nausea, sabotaging my body?
May 3
How about that snow storm on May 3? Can you believe it – it is so easy for me to forget how we endured winter from October to May, down there – watching the ice caps drift lazily from the bay, off to the ocean sometimes as late as the beginning of June.
May 12
The Prenatal Classes – your Dad refused to participate – an old fashioned, birthing is women’s work type. What are the odds we’ll make it to natural child birth, in any case he rightfully asks? There is only two Mom’s in our class – the other Mom, Christine was hooked up with a biker type. She suffered from epilepsy seizures so her chances of natural child birth rank up right there, somewhere with mine.
Christine looked bad…pale and unhealthy but she had a good soul. I met many moms-to-be on our journey and although she was probably had the least material wealth, part of me thought if I would die tomorrow and there was no family to take you in, Christine, with all her problems yet the ability to see right through people, would be right up there as my first choice.
Christine and I looked forward to the Prenatal classes until we had to sit through, “The Miracle of Birth”. Unfortunately, it was hard to truthfully enjoy as nausea struck, leaving me unable to concentrate on the miracle, as I sat there trying to remember where the closest Ladies’ Room was, so I could get there double quick if these tides swelling over me continued to intensify.