A Crimson Cord;

Christmas was approaching and I knew it would be very different one for me this year. On the one hand, I would not have my kids and grandkids around me.  I was persona non grata at my daughter’s home and everyone would be meeting there for Christmas Eve. My soon-to-be-ex-husband had already booked my boys for Christmas and a turkey at my old home. As much as I would miss them all - and likely would have spent a very sad Christmas otherwise - I, for the first time since Granny had died, had a home to go to for Christmas. I had been invited to my dad’s farm and was immensely grateful for the timing.   Over the course of the year, I had embarked on so many firsts, but I was also, slowly, getting back my confidence in things I had previously been so adept at; one of which was being invited to play piano at my church for the Christmas Eve service. They typically brought in professional musicians from the Regina Symphony to play strings and organ for that service. Those artists...

I visited the farm several more times over the course of the summer, each time spending a little more time around the kitchen table with my half-sisters or with m y dad, exploring the prairie in his truck. I was quickly beginning to love these times together in particular.  Just him and I. He would take this city girl out to check the fields, explaining and showing me what made a good canola, pea, and lentil crop. One of my bosses in the private equity firm where I worked was a died in the wool farm boy. He knew every inch of the province and had turned his passion for farmland and investing into a very successful multi-million dollar farmland investment fund. Over the years he would often regale me with his enthusiastic talk of farming. Crops. Commodities. Harvests. Soil. I would smile and nod and he knew that all I really heard was blah-blah-blah lentil crop. blah-blah-blah secondary land prices. But suddenly, in one short afternoon with my dad, him splitting open the ...

My dad was born July 16, 1942. As his birthday came closer, he emailed me and invited me to the farm for that weekend. If I was free they would have a “family get together and have (an) early birthday supper”. It would be my first visit to their home.  And the first time meeting my half-sisters and other family.    I would  drive the 2 hours to Swift Current and meet Lizzy for lunch and a pep talk before driving the remaining hour to the farm. I was nervous to meet everyone and to stay at their home. Receiving a good pep talk from Lizzy before stepping into new experiences was becoming a habit.  A good habit.  It was around this time that Lizzy also shared one of her own fears as I began this process of meeting my new family - particularly meeting my half-sisters.  Lizzy and I both had different upbringings. She actually had siblings. Sisters and brothers. A mom and dad. A strong German heritage. A...

Father’s Day had always been a very hard day for me.   As a child it was confusing.  The previously mentioned father’s days crafts that were churned out in Elementary school or Sunday school, which were supposed to be a celebration of fathers, made for fathers, addressed to fathers, but then given to a grandfather that freaked when I called him father...it was perplexing.   And over time, painful.  The older I got, the more I dreaded the day.   It became slightly easier when I had kids of my own and they could celebrate Father’s Day with their dad making it easier to ignore my own fatherless state.  Nonetheless I didn’t like going to church on those Sunday’s - who needed to hear about how great fathers were when I didn’t have one.   I didn’t need salt rubbed in that old wound.   Nor did I care to hear about God - the 'father to the fatherless'.   Try as I might, I had never been able to address, communicate or get my head wrapped around God ...