Fire in the Sky

“Mommy, mommy, come quick. The sky’s on fire!”

No! Cale said he would burn the stubble tonight. Had the fire got away on him? I dropped my knitting and ran outside.

“Oh, my!”

Marjorie was right. The sky was on fire. The setting sun was painting the clouds red, yellow and orange, all edged with gold.

I remembered my first prairie sunset, 10 years previous. I had never seen the like in England. A chinook arch, a continually roiling mass of reds and yellows, golds and purples. It left me breathless.

“Oh, my!” We stood still, hand in hand, awestruck.

#99WordStories #CarrotRanchFlashFictionChallenge #FlashFiction #CreativeNonFiction #HighamFamilyHistory #PrairieSunset #MargaretGHanna

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The back story:

We prairie people say there is nothing to match a prairie sunset. The setting sun ushers out the day in a blaze of glory, a spectacle of yellows, oranges, reds and golds, an ever-changing palette that slowly fades into blues and purples and indigos before winking out.

It is never twice the same. It inevitably brings gasps of “Wow!” and “Look at that!” and “Isn’t that amazing!”

It’s guaranteed to cause us adults to drop our adulthood and regain that child-like wonder at the mystery and majesty of the world around us.

What did my maternal grandmother think the first time she saw a prairie sunset? I like to think she did as we all do, that she stood in awe of the spectacle unfolding before her. A glorious welcome to Canada.

The Letter

“Dear Father,”

The start of the lie. Part of the conspiracy. Would he fall for it?

“Emigrating to Canada was a grievous error.”

It was not. Another part of the lie.

“I want to return home, to England.”

No! Her sister Bessie wanted to come to Canada.

“Alas, I can not afford the fare.”

Father could. He had promised to send it. If he did, she’d send it back to Bessie.

“Please send the money. I will be forever in your debt. Your loving daughter, Mary.”

He bought the lie. He sent the money.

Bessie arrived four months later.

#99WordStories #CarrotRanchFlashFictionChallenge #FlashFiction #HighamFamilyHistory #FamilyHistory #LiesAndDeceit #ImmigrantStory #NonFiction #MargaretGHanna

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The back story

This is the true story of how my maternal grandmother, Mary, and her sister Bessie conspired to get Bessie to Canada. I heard it 30 years ago from Aunt Marjorie, the oldest of my mother’s siblings. I’ve heard the same story from my second cousins, the grandchildren of Great-Aunt Bessie, so it must be true.

When my maternal grandmother, Mary Appleton, told her parents she was emigrating to Canada, they all but disowned her. However, her father made the (in retrospect, foolish) promise that if she ever came to her senses, realized what a terrible error she had made, and wanted to return to England, he would send her the fare. That was in June, 1912.

No one knows what prompted Mary to leave England or if what she found here is what she expected. Nor does anyone know why Bessie, one of her younger sisters, also decided to emigrate to Canada. Perhaps the “colonies” held more promise and potential than Mother England.

As the family account goes, Bessie wanted to emigrate but had no money. However, Mary remembered her father’s promise. She wrote him what I assume was a letter of regret and remorse for having left England’s fair shores, and asked him to send her the fare so she could return. When she received the money, she sent it back to Bessie who arrived in June, 1914.

One can only imagine her father’s reaction when he learned the truth. I doubt that neither Mary nor Bessie cared. They were together and in Canada, and that was all that mattered.

My reaction when I heard this story was, “Now I understand why the women in my family are the way they are!” Strong, independent, stubborn, contrary and proud – those characteristics are firmly entrenched in all of us.

That is not quite the end of the conspiracy. On the passenger manifest of the Ascania that brought Bessie to Canada is the notation under “Destination” – “going to married sister.”

Except, Mary was not married! Why the deception?

I suspect it was because Bessie was only 19 and was traveling unaccompanied by either father, husband or older brother. There is some information suggesting it was frowned upon for young (i.e., younger than 21) unmarried women to emigrate on their own – they had to be accompanied by an older male family member. After all, what sort of young woman (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) would emigrate on her own in 1914? Bessie might have run into that roadblock when booking her passage and again upon arrival in Canada. Going to live with a married sister would legitimize her travel because there would be(supposedly) a brother-in-law, i.e., a man, to look after her.

Not that either Bessie or Mary needed looking-after!

In Remembrance

The bedsprings squeaked as John tossed and turned. Tomorrow he was flying his first sortie. Tomorrow he was flying into danger.

He had always wanted to fly, that was why he had chosen the Air Force rather than the Army like his brother. He had trained for this day, and now it was here. Was he ready for the responsibility? Of bringing his Wellington back? Of bringing his crew back? Of the carnage he would leave behind?

Other bedsprings squeaked. John wasn’t the only one fretting about tomorrow. But tonight . . .

He closed his eyes and dreamt of prairie skies.

#99WordStories #CarrotRanchFlashFictionChallenge #FlashFiction #HighamFamilyHistory #WorldWarII #MooseSquadron419 #NonFiction #RoyalCanadianAirForce #PTSD #MargaretGHanna

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The Back Story:

John Brock Higham, my maternal uncle, “signed up” for the war in the spring of 1940. He received his “call” in September, 1940, and began his training as a pilot in the Canadian Air Force. A year later, he received his wings – he was now Pilot Officer Higham. In September, 1941, he was posted to England, a member of “Moose” Squadron #419 of Bomber Command. On his first few missions, he flew as second officer. In May, 1942, he was assigned his own Wellington bomber and chose his own crew. He was not yet 22 years old.

They flew their remaining missions together and, miraculously, all survived. The Wellington was not so lucky. More than once, John brought his Wellington limping home on a wing and a prayer. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross for once such event; King George VI and the Duke of Kent visited on separate occasions and congratulated the Squadron for their service.

In September, 1942, John and his crew were chosen, purely by chance, to go on a cross-Canada tour to raise money for the war effort and to raise the spirits of Canadians, especially those working in factories supplying the war effort. At the conclusion of the tour, he was posted to the west coast where he flew submarine-spotting missions – there were rumours of a Japanese invasion.

In 1944, Trans-Canada Airlines (now Air Canada) was recruiting pilots from the RCAF. John was not about to give up flying just because the war was ending. He joined TCA and trained to fly civilian airplanes. He flew for Air Canada for 41 years before retiring.

John privately published a book about his war-time experiences, a matter-of-fact description of how a prairie ploughboy came to fly over dangerous and deadly German skies. Only once did he describe the emotional toll of the war. One of his crew members had serious moral and religious problems with being the bomb-aimer. John knew if he reported this crew member, he would be court-martialed for “lack of moral fibre” as PTSD was then called. Instead, John reassigned duties among his crew.

Many years later, his younger brother George asked, “Do you ever dream about the war?” “All the time,” John replied.

Pilot Officer (Ret.) John Brock Higham, D.F.C., passed away June 18, 2020, 22 days before his 100th birthday. He now flies safer skies.

Pursuing the Dream

I could read his mind.

Every afternoon he brought home the paper. Every evening, he read it. Always the same section – Farms for Sale

He was looking for a farm. His farm. The farm he’d always dreamed of owning. The farm he’d left England to find. The farm he was saving every hard-earned penny for.

I could almost see the wheels spinning as he read. This one’s too expensive. This one’s too far away. This one’s got poor land.

He never stopped searching.

He found it, eventually. We moved there, raised our family there, lived out our lives there.

#99WordStories #HighamFamilyHistory #PrairieHistory #FarmLife #ImmigrantDreams #ImmigrantStory #NonFiction #SaskatchewanHistory #MargaretGHanna

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The Back Story:

My maternal grandfather, Caleb Higham, dreamed of owning a farm but in England that was impossible; he would have to be a tenant farmer like his father. Instead, he emigrated to Canada under the British Bonus program operated by the Canadian government which offered $10.00 to prospective farmers if they purchased their farms within six months of arriving in Canada.

He arrived in Montreal in June 1913, bound for Regina, Saskatchewan, with $25.00 in his pocket. Unable to afford the going price for farmland, Caleb worked for the Canadian Pacific Railroad as a brakeman, probably the most dangerous job of the railroad industry. He soon quit to pursue his dream, and because he still could not afford to buy a farm, he began working as a farm labourer for Will Grigg, a farmer at Belbeck just north of Moose Jaw. That is where he met Mary Appleton and they married in 1915.

Caleb and Mary moved into Moose Jaw where he worked as a driver for Farmers Dairy, but he never gave up his dream of owning a farm. Still not having enough money to buy a farm and probably unable to obtain a bank mortgage, he started renting farms, first at Keystown about half-way between Moose Jaw and Regina, then Boharm west of Moose Jaw, and finally Mazenod about 60 miles (95 km) southwest of Moose Jaw.

He finally bought his farm in 1924, a half-section (320 acres or about 160 hectares) near the village of Congress. In 1939, he rented an adjoining half-section that had been abandoned by a farmer who was unable to pay the back taxes he had accumulated during the desperate years of the Dirty Thirties. A few years later, Caleb purchased the land. In 1966, too crippled by arthritis to continue, he leased the farm to my father and moved into Assiniboia. Caleb Higham passed away in 1979.

He never did receive that promised $10.00.

The Bones Know

She could feel it in her bones. Something was wrong. She chose to ignore it, avoidance was more palatable than acknowledging.

“Always trust the bones,” Grandma Ferris used to say, but then she believed in fairies and the power of the rowan tree. Old wives tales from the old days.

She pushed the niggling fear to the back of her mind and got on with life.

“What’s that?” her husband said one night; they were in bed.

“Nothing,” she replied. But she knew it wasn’t “nothing.” It was something.

She knew it was cancer before the doctor told her.

#99WordStories #HighamFamilyHistory #BreastCancer #Bones #RadiationTreatment #MargaretGHanna #PrairieHistory #CreativeNonFiction

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Backstory:

Mary Higham, my maternal grandmother, was diagnosed with breast cancer about 1949 and underwent radiation treatment. I don’t know if she had a mastectomy, and those who might have known are no longer alive to tell. The cancer must have gone into remission because she lived another six years, but in either late 1954 or early 1955 it roared back. More radiation treatment followed. Two of my uncles remember seeing nasty radiation burns on her neck which suggests it had mestastasized. She died September 29, 1955.

Whatever fears or regrets Grandma Higham might have had did not stop her from getting on with life that last summer. I’m told she made sure the larder was well stocked for Grandpa Higham when she was no longer around. What my uncles remember most is the 80 pints of strawberries she put up.

I wonder how I would spend my last summer.

A Love Story

It was love at first sight.

She was standing in the middle of the flower patch, hair in disarray, dirt on her nose, waving a pair of nasty shears and scolding me for cussing out the horse. I saw a fire in her eyes — determination, stubbornness — and I knew immediately she was the one. We married three months later. She stood by my side through thick and thin, through good times and bad.

Forty years later, I sit here, you lying in the hospital bed, I holding your hand, watching that light fade from your eyes. My heart breaks.

#99WordStory #HighamHistory #LoveAtFirstSight #FireInYourEyes #TrueLove #TheLightInYou #MargaretGHanna #FamilyHistory

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The backstory:

None of my mother, aunts or uncles knew how my maternal grandparents, Caleb and Mary, met. Both had emigrated to Canada, Mary in 1912 from Cornwall, Caleb in 1913 from Oxfordshire. Caleb was a farm labourer with dreams of owning his own farm. Mary was a domestic servant with dreams of a better life than she had in England. They married in June, 1915.

Their marriage licence states they both lived at Belbeck, a tiny village a few miles north of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. I like to think they found themselves working for the same farmer, Will Grigg, if only because they maintained a life-long friendship with Will and his wife Emeline.

Mary passed away in September 1955 from breast cancer, a few weeks shy of her 70th birthday. My grandfather was devastated. He passed away in May, 1979, not quite 90 years old. Both are buried at Congress Baptist Cemetery, from where you can see the farm that Caleb finally bought in 1924. They both had realized their dreams.

For Want of Water

We watched the slough dry up. We watched the soil blow away. We watched clouds roll in with empty promises of rain. We watched our crops struggle, shrivel and die.

We watched families move away. We watched businesses close. We watched villages disappear.

We feared the well would go dry. We feared rain would never come again.

This prairie that once held promises of bumper crops and full granaries was now only a distant memory, if it had even existed.

And all for lack of rain. For lack of water. For lack of caring how we treated the land.

#99WordStory #ForTheRain #GreatDepression #DirtyThirties #DustStorms #PrairieHistory #HannaHistory #HighamHistory #MargaretGHanna #OurBullsLooseInTown

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The Backstory:
Both my maternal and paternal grandparents struggled to farm through the terrible years of the Dirty Thirties. The rains left in 1929, they did not return until 1938. By then, it was too late for many families and for many towns. Southwestern Saskatchewan alone lost about 50% of its population during those years. They left for truly greener pastures – northern Saskatchewan and Alberta, or back east to Ontario and Quebec.

My grandparents lived in the heart of the Palliser Triangle, a region that Capt. James Palliser in the late 1850s called a desert and that, a decade later, John Macoun called a paradise. The difference: Palliser traversed this region of southern Saskatchewan and Alberta during a drought; Macoun during a wet period.

In 1935, the Canadian government formed the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA) which immediately launched several programs to help farmers deal with the drought. These included dugouts to store water, and strip farming and large-scale tree-planting programs to reduce erosion. Marginal land was turned into community pastures.

The PFRA no longer exists, but it helped transform dry-land farming practices to be more in tune with the vagaries of prairie climate. Perhaps we once again need the PFRA as we begin to comprehend the long-term effects of climate change on this fragile prairie region.

Tea for the Monarch

Mary stood before the glass-fronted cabinet. “I see you have Mother’s silver tea pot.”

“With the dent turned to the back,” Dorothy replied.

Mary chuckled. “Good thing her throw missed Father, she might have dented his head instead of the pot.”

“Remember how she toasted every monarch’s death and coronation with that tea pot?”

“Nothing but Twinings English Breakfast, if I remember rightly.”

Dorothy took the tea pot out of the cabinet. “I think we should revive her tradition, now that we have a new queen.”

“I hear she prefers Twinings Earl Grey tea.”

“With a dash of milk.”

#99WordStory #TeaRituals #TeaPot #TwiningsEnglishBreakfast #TwiningsEarlGrey #CreativeNonFiction #1952 #FamilyHistory #HighamFamilyHistory #Monarchy #MargaretGHanna

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The backstory:

In 1952, Mary, my maternal grandmother, returned to England (Cornwall, to be exact) to visit her two sisters, Dorothy and Clive. This was only a few months after Princess Elizabeth had succeeded to the throne as Queen Elizabeth II.

My maternal grandparents were staunch monarchists. They could list off all the kings and queens and their children and relatives and whom they had married, and they made sure their children (my mother and her siblings) knew all that as well. I assume they learned this from their parents, and my grandmother’s sisters were like-minded.

My grandmother’s mother, Amelia Appleton, did indeed throw her husband out when she learned he had been unfaithful. The story goes, she used language that would make a sailor blush. Whether or not she threw a tea pot at him, if a silver tea pot even existed, is pure speculation. But why let a few facts get in the way of a good story?

The Dare

“Chicken!”

“Am not!” John stamped his foot

“Are too!” Bob poked him on the shoulder.

John looked up at the granary roof that towered over his six-year-old head. All he had to do was jump. Bob and his friends had. He didn’t want to jump but neither did he want to be called “chicken.”

Pride won out.

He stood on the granary roof and looked down at the ground. “Jump!” they cried. John closed his eyes and leapt into the void.

“My arm!” he screamed.

Bob’s face turned white. “Dad’ll kill me!” The boys scattered like chaff before the wind.

#99WordStories #BeingDared #SiblingRivalry #Mischief #MargaretGHanna #AlmostTrueStories

The backstory:

Kids find ways to get up to all sorts of mischief. Farm kids seem to have a particularly wide assortment of opportunities. My brother and I certainly did. The above story is “inspired,” as Hollywood likes to say, by true events and people.

Bob and John were my mother’s two older brothers. Bob, the older of the two, was always getting John into trouble. At least that was John’s version of events.

So far as I know, neither of them leapt off a granary roof but I did, as did several of my friends. None of us broke an arm but I think one went limping home with a sprained ankle. Of course, this was yet another antic that we did only when our father wasn’t around. We knew there’d be h*** to pay if he caught us.

Bonk!

I certainly didn’t see this coming – quite literally – because it hit me from behind. The truck tailgate, that is (don’t ask). I said many words, none of which are fit to be shared on-line.

The doctor observed my speech and movements, did the “watch the moving pen” test, and declared I had a minor concussion. “Get lots of rest, don’t work too hard or too long, be patient. Also, no TV and no computer, the blue light is bad for your brain.”

What? No computer? I live on my computer. How am I supposed to read email? Read the papers? Play Wordle? Revise that manuscript?

“Oh, and by the way,” she said, “it could take about six months to recover.”

What? Six months! Well, two months on, and I must admit, the doctor was right.

The doctor says I have only a “minor” concussion. Minor or not, it had some interesting effects, especially early on in this new journey.

I was not exactly dizzy but my head and body seemed to work in different space-time coordinates, especially if I moved suddenly or something startled me. My poor synapses had to slog through crankcase oil that should have been changed 100,000 km ago. I had very little energy – I no longer ran up and down our stairs – and I had to nap. Nap? I never nap! Never used to, anyway. Now, I had to sleep for at least an hour every afternoon.

And yes, watching TV or doing anything on the computer quickly tired my eyes, which I took to mean my brain was tired, too. I limited myself to five minutes, once a day, on the computer to check for urgent emails that had to be answered. There weren’t many. Now, two months later, I’m up to 15 minutes at a time (like composing this post a few paragraphs at a time) before my brain starts to rebel.

Two months later, my body and head seem to work together, most of the time. But I still have trouble, sometimes, finding a word that I know I know but it just isn’t there. Yeah, yeah, you get to my age and that is normal, but now it seems to be worse than Before Concussion.

I still tire easily, and when I get tired I get cranky, well, even crankier than I used to be when I was tired. Then my brain begins to feel like a bowl of stodgy overcooked porridge. I still have to nap at least an hour every day.

What is really weird, though, is when I am talking, suddenly, for no apparent reason, I stop right in the middle of the sentence. It’s not a case of searching for a word, or trying to remember where I was going with that thought, it’s just suddenly there’s a . . .

. . . pause in my speech, and then I pick up right where I left off.

* * *

Our brain is a most marvelous and yet most mysterious organ. It is the seat of our reasoning, our emotions, our memories, our speech. It receives, processes, sorts through, responds to, transmits, and stores bazillions of stimuli bombarding it from everywhere. Yet, the brain, that organ that receives and interprets pain stimuli from various parts of our body (Yikes! That was hot!), can itself not feel any pain. Go figure!

Kick a bowl of jelly across the floor and watch what happens when it slams into the opposite wall. That’s your brain on concussion.

A concussion is an invisible injury. The brain cannot tell us it is bruised and damaged, or how bad the damage is. We have to rely on proxy symptoms from elsewhere in our body – double vision, dizziness, nausea, mood swings, change of personality, sleep disturbances – to tell us something is seriously wrong “upstairs.”

Even a minor concussion is no laughing matter. But many people have to live with a serious concussion. They endure double vision, constant headaches, a constantly twirling, topsy-turvy world, never-ending brain fog. They may have no idea when they will recover. Some days it must seem they will never recover. They, and their family and friends, may have to spend the rest of their lives living with – or in spite of – an acquired brain injury.

Being an invisible injury, there is no cast, no wound, no stitches to signal to people that this person is living with a brain injury. With no visible sign, they may think the brain-injured person is drunk, or on drugs, or mentally unstable. It can be so unfair.

Fortunately, there are numerous organizations that provide assistance, advice, and support to people with acquired brain injuries and to their families. Emotional support is absolutely vital. Being able to talk with someone who has “been there, done that,” to know that you are not going crazy, that what you are experiencing is normal, that you will get better, that you are not alone in this recovery, is just as important as medical intervention or physiotherapy. Maybe more so.

I’m not suggesting you always wear a hard hat or a crash helmet, although my husband thinks perhaps I should the next time we hitch up the trailer. But do take care of that noggin of yours. It’s the only one you have.

#Concussion #AcquiredBrainInjury #BonkOnTheHead #InvisibleInjury #BrainInjurySupportOrganizations #NonFiction #MargaretGHanna

P.S. What about those manuscript revisions? you ask. Did you abandon them?

Thanks for asking. I had, but a couple of weeks ago I had one of those “Why didn’t I think of this earlier?” moments. I print a chapter, then instead of staring at a computer, I stare at a page and write revisions, by hand, in pencil, in the margins, between the lines, and on the back of the page. How retro can you get? Now, if only I could read my chicken-scratch.

#ManuscriptRevisions #RetroRevisions