A Crimson Cord - Let Me Rediscover You

You know, when you pray...you should really ask yourself:  Am I prepared for the answer? 

I went through a spiritual period that you could call a dry spell.  I was reaching out to God for many reasons and He seemed to not be hearing me.  I was bereft in my personal life and marriage.  I had, at one time in my life, sung in choirs and small groups and solos.  Now I was afraid to sing.  Which didn’t much matter because I had become so empty that I could not physically sing anymore anyway.  But when I heard the song “Let Me Rediscover You” on my iPod or sang it at church, I would recite the lyrics as a prayer.  The abbreviated lyrics are below. (Emphasis mine)

“Your spirit hovers over my waters

Your love burns longer than the sun

The skies of thunder echo your wonder

Your praises can't be over sung

The whole universe is witness

To only a part of what you've done

So let me rediscover you

And breathe in me your life anew

Tell me of the God I never knew

Oh, let me rediscover you

You see my weakness, my pride, my blindness

You wield your power through them all

Of all the mysteries, still, the greatest to me 

Is that you're faithful when I fall

How can I say I know you

When what I know is still so small?

Let me rediscover you and breathe in me your life anew

Tell me of the God I never knew

And let me rediscover you..." 

(© Lyrics by Mark Martel, 2011)

It was a prayer - a plea actually - I would lift to God again and again over the course of the next 3 years. And during that time, He was putting some people and circumstances in place. Then, like a room full of dominoes, He let those dominoes fall and started to reveal who He was. I was simply not prepared for how magnificent it was.  

I actually find it a tad comical that I am telling this story. I distinctly remember, as a kid, in church or at camp having listened to so many people tell of their amazing encounters with God - “their testimony” - and thought; "my life is so ordinary, my encounters with God so boring. I have no story."  

God must have chuckled at that moment.  (And yes - God laughs - I know this for certain.)

Unbeknownst to me, God wasn’t finished writing my story yet.  And it held a few surprises. 

Introduction:

My name is Annette. My story started on February 18, 1961 when I was born in a (very) small hospital in a (very) tiny town in the (very) cold Canadian Prairies. Maple Creek, Saskatchewan by name (which, for the geographically challenged, is Canada. Specifically, the province that is the easiest to draw.  Pretty much a straight line from top to bottom and side to side…much like it’s roads).  My family was from an even smaller town...Village?  Hamlet?  Speck!  Gull Lake, SK.  It’s claim to fame is that Roger Aldag - legendary Saskatchewan Roughrider - was from Gull Lake.  

My mother turned 17 years old the day after I was born. Yup. I was the outcome of a teenage pregnancy. My maternal grandparents, Dorothy and Orval Moore, one a shoe store and my paternal grandparents, Loren and Jean Connick, ran the family farm just 11 km south of Gull Lake in the RM of Carmichael.  My conception was - as you can imagine in a small farming community in the early 60's - not welcome news.  A lot of turmoil preceded my appearance on this planet. Not the least of which was the concern of what to do with a pregnant unwed teen. My father and mother were, originally, "going to do the right thing" and marry.  My father would shelve his plans to University and go to teacher's college, which was a one year program. A lot of adults intervened and the long and the short of it was that my father did, in fact, go on to University the fall before I was born and my mother stayed at home to give birth and finish high school. They did not marry. I was raised, that first year, by my mother and maternal grandparents in Gull Lake. Granny and Grandad told me many stories of how, as a very young toddler, I would bring shoes to people in their shoe stores and put them on their feet. My penchant for shoes was obviously nurtured at a very young age and I come by my footwear collection very honestly. I remained in Gull Lake until my mother graduated high school whereupon she moved herself to Calgary, Alberta where she would start a family sometime later.  Sans moi. 

Yes - she moved herself. Solo. I was left with Granny and Grandad to raise. It was not long after my mother (hereafter referred to as Carolyn) moved away that Granny and Grandad packed up their belongings and moved as well...with me in tow...to Vancouver Island to the small city of Courtenay mid-way up the East Coast of the Island.  Granny’s two sisters, Annie and Lillian, both lived there with their families as did her parents (my great-grandparents), John and Louise Bleich.  It was here, in this little community, that I was raised.  It is the community I consider home.  The place where some iteration of family members would get together, at least weekly, to visit, share a meal, play cards, celebrate birthdays or head to the beach for swimming and picnics on hot summer days.  Kye Bay, in particular. 

The place, in fact, where I began writing my story to you so many years later.  Courtenay is the place where my life unfolded.  Home.

Chapter 1

March 1961. Granny wrote the caption.

I have a couple pictures of my dubious start in life chronicled in my baby book. 

One is of met dad holding me when I was about a month old. He had dark hair, as did I.  

There is another of my mother holding me when I was 4 months old.

There is also a picture of the two of them - my mother and father. They were likely both dressed to go to a dance. She with her corsage and him with his bow tie. Both had big smiles and looked happy.  

My mother started my baby book for me.  And in her large cursive calligraphy style handwriting, she took note my first tooth, first smile and so on.  She also filled out a family tree and through that I knew my father’s name and that of my paternal grandparents as well as my maternal grand and great-grandparents. Fairly early in my baby book, the handwriting changed to my grandmothers small, compact script where she took note of my childhood accomplishments.   

We spent many a Sunday at Gramma and Grampa Bleich’s house for Sunday dinners, the kitchen table laden with steaming food and her shiny Fire King Peach Lusterware. I look back on all those family moments and I feel a sense of warmth, community, belonging. The house was always full of people, the grown-ups talking about the old days on the homestead, or the outrageous price of something, their gardens and so on. I would always find the stash of toys behind the big arm chair and play quietly.  Or, if we were at Aunt Annie’s, I would play their organ - with three tiers of keyboards. (Hello!! What, pray tell, does one do with 3 tiers of keyboards! And then there were all the pedals...It was magnificent!)  I had no idea what I was doing for a very long time until I learned how to play piano and could start to translate a little of that knowledge to this impressive beast.

  

Granny in particular cared for me and nurtured me as best she could. She never graduated high school but she taught me about hard work. She taught me the value of a dollar - waste not want not.  She and Grandad had lived through the dirty-thirties and frankly, knew all about conservation and recycling way before it ever became popular. She taught me to cook and to bake. She taught me how to treat people with respect and common courtesy. She was “simple folk” having never gone farther than grade 6. She cleaned houses for people for extra money and had a quiet way about her. She was never loud or showy, nor did she have a sense of humour. And if she did let out some laughter, it was muted and hidden behind her hand. She was a serious woman but not harsh.  And she always, always, deferred to my grandfather.  She never had a driver’s license nor did she ever buy herself a dress without Grandad’s approval. The grocery shopping was done with him every Saturday because he not only drove her to Super-Valu, but paid the bill. You get the picture.  She was completely dependent on him. 

Grandad was...hmmm...he was...well...?  He was nice enough. I guess. He had polio as a kid. And told me stories of out-running the cops when he was a young teen, in his Model A.  A tale that was hard to believe given that he drove unbearably slow now. (“Just because it says 50 mph doesn’t mean you have to go that fast!”). Of course, by the time I joined their lives, he was nearing retirement, so I don’t really remember him working all that much.  For a while he worked at Courtenay Chrysler. Doing what, I don’t know. But I would remember walking there with Granny and sitting in the little tin sided office waiting for him to finish work. At home, he spent copious hours in his yard, full of vegetable gardens, fruit trees, and flowers.  None of which Granny nor I were allowed to touch. We would “do it wrong”. He was fastidious about his yard and to be fair, it was beautiful. The sweet peas would fill one 12 foot long section of fence every summer. The Gravenstein Apple tree was bountiful (from which Granny would make the best apple pies you ever tasted!) and the Rainer Cherry tree was my favourite, just hanging in large, round bunches waiting to be picked, eaten and canned.  He had a way about him too.  He wasn’t all that humourous, but if he found something funny, he would get a wicked grin on his face. We watched a lot of Tommy Hunter, Lawrence Welk and Don Messer.  And his sport of choice? Wrestling.  He would get into it too! His favourite wrestler was Bulldog Brown with his little pot belly squeezed into those tight undies. My favourite was Andre the Giant...also squeezed into much larger undies...and his huge mop of hair and gigantic side burns.  It is no coincidence that as a kid, I imagined every Giant in every fairy tale looking exactly like André the Giant. I expect I wasn’t the only one given that many years later he would be cast as Fezzik in the Princess Bride as, you guess it, a Giant. Grandad also had some mental health issues.  I didn’t really know it then - as a kid you see things but don’t know what’s happening. He spent years taking Lithium (or maybe it was Librium) and had a constant quiver to his lower lip that worsened when he was excited or upset. He attempted suicide at least once that I remember; Granny beside the bed crying and begging him not to leave her.  He survived it. I can’t think of too much Grandad and I had in common. I know he liked me, if not loved me. He would call me ‘hun’ from time to time, and there were moments where I would crawl into his lap and have a quiet moment or two.  

I liked school, read like a demon, and had a talent for music - specifically, playing the piano. I routinely added notes to the Bach or Mozart piece my piano teacher had assigned me since I sincerely believed this little extra part made the song sound much better and not so plain. I had a good imagination, but was never sports-minded. Perhaps that had a lot to do with the direction Granny had set for me. Sports was not lady-like and besides (the comment I would hear dozens of times as I grew up) “I had a weak ankle”.  My one game was tetherball.  All you had to have was a solid stance and a wicked way of whipping that ball.  That I could do.  

Very early on in my childhood, I was also blessed with a "surrogate" family that lived just down the street from my house.  A mom, dad, and two sisters - one older than me and one younger. Lawrence was the Fire Chief in Courtenay and Margaret was a stay at home mom. Darlaine was 5 months older than me and we were virtually inseparable, often dressing alike. It was common for people to think we were sisters. The Burns’ welcomed this shy little girl into their home thousands of times over the years. It was with them that I took my first vacation and stayed at my first hotel. Where I learned to love gardening. Where I learned to keep a spotless house. And where Hockey Night in Canada and playing Barbie’s could co-exist in the same room at the same time. Our Barbie's boyfriends were Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito even though Lawrence was a die hard Canadians fan. They also taught me about Jesus. They took me to church where I was saved as a young child then later baptized as a teenager. They took me to summer camp. They offered me opportunities to play the piano in church and as teenagers, Dar and I just up and taught ourselves how to play guitar so we could lead singing at Young Peoples. We rocked it! 

I had a really good childhood. Dar and I did all sorts of crazy stuff. When I was 10 years old Dar’s little sister joined the fray. (I’m pretty sure Heather spent a good part of her early life wondering “what is going on!?”) It was the age of innocence. We walked or rode our bikes everywhere, never in fear of kidnappings or pervs. Such a thing did not exist in our world. The scariest thing I ever encountered as a child was a room full of holy rollers at a youth retreat (No exaggeration - Dar and I bolted out the door of that church and ran to the police station where we called her Dad to come pick us up!)  I’m not afraid of holy rollers any longer, just so you know.  

Dar’s Dad as Fire Chief of our city meant I spent a good many hours in the fire hall or Mr. Mikes, the Steakhouse down the street from the fire hall where firemen were treated to a regular table and pots of fresh coffee. For me, it was hero worship at it’s finest as I drank in all their stories. I also spent many a meal around the Burns’ kitchen table hearing about the daring rescues and the horrible tragedies of the day in all their gory detail. I was fascinated. And it is without a doubt, the genesis of my weird and somewhat twisted sense of humour.  I also learned a myriad of life lessons from Margaret - things I carry with me to this very day.  She set a high bar which I have always tried to strive for. She was always, always stylish and well dressed. (OK - except her gardening attire... but every other moment, she was put together.) She was so gentle, patient and wonderful with me. She gave this shy little tag-along some confidence. She would tease me about boys while she washed and set my hair.  She smiled and laughed and was the quintessential hostess. She taught me pragmatism and focus. And most significant to me, she taught me to hold my head high - don’t let people look down on you - fight for your dignity. I needed these lessons. Because, around the same time - I had started to become cognizant of one fact...  

  ...I was a mistake.  

Granny and Grandad with me. March 1961