Betty Jull, Oct 24 RIP

I used to send her cards. Not addressed to Betty Jull, but simply addressed to Grandma. She would tease me saying that she didn't know how they ever got to her without her name on it. It was Betty Jull who taught me the importance of names.
Looking back, I can see that everything I ever needed to know about what it means to be family, I learned from Julls. From Barb and Gary and Frank, and especially my Grandma Jull, Betty.
Technically speaking, I wasn't her grandson. We weren't blood related at all. We weren't even legally related. But I never doubted, not for a single moment of my life, that she was my grandmother and I was her grandson. She had a gift for making you feel loved.
My favourite childhood memories revolve around holidays when our house would be bursting with grandparents. Great times full of great stories of forgotten stuffings and misplaced teeth, of phonograph records and kitchen tables cleared for card games.
It was through cards that Betty taught me it's OK to curse at loved ones. If they steal your trick you can call them all sorts of names and trust me, my Grandma Jull called me all sorts of names.
But what she really taught me is that making someone feel special is in the details. It is often the smallest thing that means the most. Like how she never forgot to bake my favourite cookies at Christmas, just because I liked them. Or how she kept toys for me in a special hidden room in the basement. Or how she saved Oor Willie comics, because she thought that I might like them. No matter what, she took the time to make me feel special.
I live on the other side of the country now and on my first road trip out here a friend and I had an old Datsun that we painted to look like a race car: complete with racing stripes, numbers, and sponsors logos. We needed a name for the car and nothing captured her spirit quite like Betty. So in yellow and orange fluorescent on the rear quarter panel, we wrote her name: Betty.
I wanted to call her Betty because it made me feel connected to a her. Sometimes I would be asked if Betty was an old girlfriend and it was then that I felt connected to her youth and a place long since lost that was full of dancing and singing at the Palais.
But mostly, I wanted to call her Betty because my grandma taught me about the little things that count the most. And the littlest thing that counted the very most with me was every Easter my grandma brought me a chocolate egg with my name written on it in white icing and nothing ever made me feel quite so special as that.

Halloween

Here's my pumpkin.

(Stole the basic idea off the web. Thank you anonymous internet poster.)

Singing in Public

On my way home from running circles around our local duck pond, I was not thinking about how absurd and gerbil like it is to run in circles around our local duck pond even if you put in variations in some futile attempt to fooling yourself into thinking that you are not running circles around our local duck pond, but rather I was thinking of little more than how much I would rather be at home, inside, out of the rain. That is to say that I was less distracted than normal and even somewhat alert. Just after I crossed the first of the two somewhat busy streets that lay between my house and the duck pond, I heard the sound of a voice.
I looked up to see a guy in a grey hoodie coming towards me, bouncing slightly as the walked, and all the while ranting. My first thought was that he was likely nutters. He was short on meds and now he was talking angrily to himself, likely of himself, and likely in third person.
As he neared, I could see that under his hoodie he was wearing what on first blush I charming wanted to call a Walkman, but really I all could see were earphones. They were large earphones and not the typical white earbuds that are ubiquitous these days and I suppose that is what made me think that he had a Sony product on the other end that would be older than him.
Actually he was young enough to wear his jeans half off his hip and crumpling around his ankles as if he had left the house that morning several pounds heavier. And as he approached, the ranting melted into a rhythm and that rhythm became rap. None of which is particularly unusual or unique.
What caught me was that at a certain distance, and I can't tell you now if it was five, ten, or twenty feet, but at a certain distance he stopped. He stopped echoing the angry words in his head. He passed me without a break in his stride and then at another, closer distance began again.
I was caught by how similar we were despite outward appearances. Despite me running by him in close fitting run clothes with shorts that are riding up as I run, as if I had the house a little thinner. Despite my being roughly double his age. If I had been the one with headphones on, I'd have done the same thing.