Fruitcake Is Good

I love fruitcake. There. I said it.
I don’t really get all the insult jokes about fruitcake. It’s tasty.
The best part about Christmas was the fruitcake my parents made. Green and red maraschino cherries, of course. Other fruits, too, and nuts. Walnuts for sure, but I don't recall what else. I never had a hand in the creation and it’s been years since I had one of theirs so I can’t say. I think it had rum or brandy in the dough. Maybe both. I don’t know. I just remember it was good.
Seems to me it was put together around December 1 and then tucked away. Weeks later it was unwrapped and we tucked in. I ate as much as I could handle, and that was quite a bit.
I still get to eat fruitcake every year. My husband is a natural baker and really enjoys seasonal baking like Linzer Torte and Lebkuchen. But a few years ago I asked for fruitcake and he found a wonderful recipe that only has to sit for a few days. One year he made two or three of them for me and I would have happily eaten two or three.
So go ahead. Make fun of them. Ignore the amount of work involved and pretend that you’re one of the crowd of fruitcake–haters. Maybe you actually believe all the bad press they get. Good for you. But keep your fruitcake jokes to yourself. I don’t want to hear them.
And if you really despise them that much, then do us both a favour. Give it to me. I promise I’ll give it a good home, albeit a temporary one.

The Hitchhiking Ghost

I saw a ghost in broad daylight.
Mike and I were on our way to Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan and decided to check out Highway 41 as we’d never been on it. It was a clear, blue sunshiny day in June with the near-endless visibility you get out on the prairies. A beautiful day for a drive and not much traffic on the road.
It was right around 2 p.m. We were minding our own business heading south with Mike behind the wheel. The road just ahead dipped a bit, then went up a slight hill with a curve. I don’t know if there was a stream in the dip or not, but there were guardrails.
I saw young man, maybe 20-30 years old, standing on the right-hand shoulder. I think he had a small suitcase beside him. He walked over to the centre line, picked something up off the pavement, and then walked back to the shoulder.
Okay, I thought, we’ve got a hitchhiker ahead. I turned to Mike and told him to watch out for the guy in case he tried to go to the centre line again.
But when I turned back the road was empty. A three or four ton truck came down the hill and sped by us on its way north.
No other traffic. No one had stopped to collect this young fellow. He was just gone.
Mike didn’t say anything. I was at a loss, too.
A ghost in broad daylight. Wonderful.
I haven’t had a chance to take that highway again, but I want to. What’s this guy’s story? Is he waiting for a ride that never showed? Was he killed by a vehicle while retrieving something from the middle of the road?
I’m not just curious. I’d like to help the poor fellow. Haven’t got the first clue how to help a ghost, but I’d like to at least talk to him.

Weird Stuff From The Great Beyond

When we got home Monday night from my dad’s funeral the DVD player was recording.
We hadn’t set it to record, but that didn’t seem to stop it.
I looked at it dully. It was about 7:30 and I was busy transporting some of his belongings to their temporary storage area in the living room.
Just before 8 p.m. the VCR popped on, as it was supposed to do, but the program was a repeat so I shut off the timer. As I did that the DVD shut off, too.
So the next morning I checked to see what we’d gotten. Nothing.
It recorded Battlestar Galactica on Sunday and whatever was in place of Heroes later on Monday. It’s worked normally since that evening.
It’s not the first weird thing. Last Thursday just after I got home from Barrhead the phone rang. I was near the portable phone in the bedroom so I picked it up. Even as I was saying hello I could hear Mike yelling from the kitchen warning that the phone I was on didn’t work.
He’d tried all day to get a dial tone. Nothing.
Deceased folks commonly use electricity to get our attention. There’s an explanation for it that I’m too lazy to look up right now so you’ll just have to take my word for it.
I don’t know why dad-–I’m assuming he’s the culprit-- chose the phone and a DVD player. Maybe it’s because we’d be likely to notice and because messing with them isn’t all that disruptive. It gets his point across without being annoying. That’s a thoughtful spirit.

Great Reward

My dad finally went off to his Great Reward in the early hours of December 7. He'd been in the hospital about a week and spent his last day on Earth zonked on morphine and immobile. Although he slept most of the time, I could sense very strong electrical activity in his brain. No doubt in my mind he was well aware of what was happening around him.
His companion, Ethel, stayed at his side to the end. She said that three times prior to his death he lifted his right arm to the top of his head.
I think he was clearing away all the debris so that the doorway home wasn't obstructed. A new friend from the Absolute Write Water Cooler suggested that he was either waving good-bye or hello or both. Whatever the reason, it was interesting.

Just So You Know

To date only one person has left a comment on my blog. I'm grateful for said comment, but I wonder. Only one? Have I lost my touch? Years ago when I wrote a column for The Mountaineer I routinely heard about it.
Those who agreed said so and I was happy.
Those who disagreed were vehement about it and I was even happier.
A former local pastor and I had some wonderful discussions. We disagreed, but it was all on the logical level of discourse. That was fun.
Others spewed their bile in Letters to the Editor. I was a clearly wrong. And in one memorable letter I was told to get an education.
Sigh. Good, good days.

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Oh Christmas Tree

I love Christmas trees. Don’t get me wrong. The real ones smell great, they impart a wonderful woodsy feeling to a home, and they are lovely.
But why in the world do we have to go out and kill a living creature? This makes no sense whatsoever.
Imagine if Jesus were alive today to celebrate the alleged day of his birth with us. He was all about peace and love. We honour that with destruction. We kill something, dress it up, then toss it out in a snowbank. I think he’d be downright bemused over these antics.
Harvesting trees for lumber is one thing. It serves a legitimate purpose. But the annual Christmas slaughter is an entirely different matter.
If we must tart up an evergreen, can we at least do it to a live one? It’ll suffer the indignity for a few weeks, maybe take a bit of heckling from its forest friends, but at least we wouldn’t have to kill anything for Christ’s sake.

We Only Have Poor At Christmas

‘Tis the Season to . . . overindulge in food and drink, spend a lot of money you don’t have on people you may not even like, and pretend you give a damn about others.
For three weeks and a bit millions of Christians go the whole hog in making an effort to be Christian. Between eating and drinking and shopping and trying not to get caught or kill someone while driving home soused they give a bit to the poor. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s wonderful. A family gets a turkey. A kid gets a present. The poor, or at least some of them, have some semblance of normalcy for a day.
But where are these good, giving people the other 11 months of the year? Poor, hungry needy people are here 12 months of the year. By January, the poor are largely forgotten. If we happen to see one, then we cross the street or avert our eyes.
It’s their own damn fault they’re poor, we tell ourselves. Maybe they’re working off some karma, or simply decided to spend a lifetime outside the main flow of society.
Maybe that’s exactly what these people chose. Good for them. I believe we learn way more in a life of adversity than we do jetting around the world being famous for being famous. But that’s not the issue.
When a soul chooses a life of poverty or homelessness or the like, it is also giving the rest of us a chance to grow. We are being given a glorious opportunity to reach out to another person and recognize that when you help someone you help yourself.
You can help in many ways and not all of them involve money or materials. Even if you can’t afford to give anything at least acknowledge that the poor person shivering on the street is a person. Send a warm thought or some white light his or her way, and a thank you for the lesson that’s being offered.