

That Changes Everything!

By

Rose Newman

Smashwords Edition

Copyright@2010 by Rose Newman

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to

My husband

Our children

And

Our grandchildren
Table of Contents

Introduction

1. "Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau"

2. Our Village

3. School Days

4. True Love

5. Across the Ocean

6. Everything New

7. Wedding Bells

8. A Home of Our Own

9. Very Sad, Very Happy

10. Young Family Adventures

11. Trials of Country Life

12. The Big Change

13. We Didn't Know

14. Back to the City

15. A New Vocation

16. Our Visit to Wales

17. Teenage Trials

18. A Proper Vacation

19. 'Til We Meet Again - Twice

20. Two Weddings

21. College and Careers

22. A Test of Faith

23. When I Am Weak, He Is Strong

24. My Purpose in Life

25. In The Meantime, Life Goes On.

26. Our Dream House

27. The Destination
Introduction

This is a true story. For many years I had been told by members of my family that I should write a book. I was procrastinating. My typing skills left much to be desired and I didn't have a computer so I was not looking forward to starting the project by hand, writing it on paper.

I was still going through recovery from Ovarian Cancer when my youngest son thought perhaps it was time I did it. That Christmas, he bought me an old little portable IBM. It was DOS, one colour font on a tiny nine inch screen. Yes, it was a long time ago and our other son still has it in storage. I was so touched by the fact that he cared so much that I should write the book he would pay the price for this gift. He taught me how to use it and the book was on its way.

It took a long time as you can imagine. Actually it was two years later when I had it completed enough to be able to print a copy on paper. I only made a few of them to give to my children. I couldn't afford to pay to get it published.

Now, many years later, we have ebooks and such so it seemed that this would be a wonderful modern venue to get the story done in such a way that even the little ones could have their own copy. It would be so good for them to learn of their heritage and the wisdom I gained as recorded in these pages. Hopefully they will pass it on to their children too.

I have found that the journey of life is full of ups and downs with many aspects of joy, pain, hope, and frustrations as we journey through the multiple decisions and consequences that follow. How we handle those hills and valleys is as unique as life itself. Maybe my story will give insight to many mistakes and perhaps even provide a chance to glean some wisdom from the victories.
1. "Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau"

When I was a young girl growing up in a little village of Wales, hardly any of our neighbours had a car, a driveway or garage. The streets were very narrow, often steep, and winding. We walked as much as we could to get from one place to another and caught a bus when it was too far to walk. The transit system was excellent and many people relied upon it for their travelling needs, especially for work and shopping etc. There were many different bus lines, individually owned, and maintained in excellent condition. The buses came in different colours for special routes. Some were called "utility" buses with seats made from thin wooden slats, and painted yellow on the outside like school buses. Others were very nice with plush seats and overhead luggage racks etc. just as in our modern coaches today.

Only a few children had parents who could afford to buy them a bicycle. Neither my husband nor I ever had one. When I was a child, they were not considered as being in the "toy" category, but more commonly used as a means of transportation for adults. My dad did have a car though, a used one. He had asthma very severely at times and couldn't climb the hills, even from the bus stop. The winter weather was very damp much of the time making the asthma worse. When the sun shone however, the beautiful countryside of Wales was a joy to behold. It was particularly lovely in the springtime when little dots of white baby lambs could be seen all over the green hillsides.

I remember that many wild flowers and fruit bushes grew in abundance among the hillsides every spring and summer. There were daffodils, primroses, foxgloves and bluebells all over the place. Wild blackberry and raspberry bushes were loaded with fruit, all in amongst the hedges around many of the farmer's fields and along the sides of the winding lanes. We loved to pick the wild blueberries that we called "Wimbries". I think they were actually called Windberries, because they grew on the windy slopes of the hillsides, in bushes close to the ground. We would often set out with great intentions of collecting enough to make a pie but usually ate more than we ever brought home. They made our teeth black. Even though they were smaller than the Canadian cultivated blue berries, they were really sweet and delicious.

I didn't know at the time, but I can see now, that as a child growing up, we lived in rather poor conditions compared to Canada today. We made our own fun with simple toys that cost very little, if anything. We played "kick the tin," when there was no ball to kick. We actually played soccer with an old empty can. "Whip and top" was a great game to play if you were alone. Then there was skipping with a small rope that had a carved wooden handle on each end. If we could find some friends then we skipped with a long rope. This needed two people holding each end, while several of us took turns at seeing how long we could skip without getting our feet caught in the rope. We would sing little rhymes for the rhythm that kept us going in competition with each other.

I remember often looking for a small, flat, smooth stone for the "hop scotch" game. We would kick this stone, while hopping on one foot, from one square to the other, without it landing on a line, or putting down the other foot. We would slide the stone to the first numbered square and carry on by kicking it until we finished all the squares. The most difficult part of all was to find a piece of chalk to draw the "scotch" on the road or playground so we could even start to play the game. Sometimes we asked the teacher for small used pieces from the school blackboard. Then after all the trouble to make it, rain would fall and wash it all away.

We made our own kites from large brown paper bags, glue, and thin pieces of wood. If we could ever afford to buy enough string to fly it high, we counted ourselves as very lucky. Another game we played with washed out empty food cans was good to play alone. We attached a long handle made of string fastened through two holes in the top of the can. We put our feet on top of each of these cans, pulled the string up into our hands and walked on them like little stilts. We always made good use of any large empty cardboard box. We would break a large piece from one of the sides or bottom and use it as a flat, summer "sleigh" to sit on as we slid down the grass covered hills. Many times we arrived home with those awful grass stains all over our clothes. It seems we were into recycling things even in those days, without knowing it. I always liked playing with two small rubber balls that we bounced and caught against a flat outside wall. We sang little rhymes to go with it as we played with them. Sometimes, when it was dark outside, we carried little lanterns that we had made from empty jam jars with a candle inside, and a long string handle. You can imagine what happened if the handle was too short, yes, very hot hands. In the winter, we liked to use these as we walked from house to house singing Christmas carols outside each door, hoping to collect some pennies from our neighbours. Sometimes we would go to houses we didn't really know so they would look dark and scary. We would stand singing with fear and trembling, really wanting to just run, but the thought of the pennies kept us singing.

As I look back, I can remember how we sang some of those carols with really crazy words that were far from correct. You see, most of us had only ever learned these songs from listening to others, probably never having seen the words written down. Have you ever sung, "Sleep in heavenly peas?" The "three kings" came from a place called "Orientar" wherever that may be, and "Holy Infant" came out as "all the infants" so tender and mild. I remember that Good King "wens les last" was a real messed up one all the way through.

It seems that we must have learned to sing the Welsh National Anthem, in Welsh, in the very same manner. I remember how the whole school would sing it once every year on March 1st. Saint David's day. We also sang this anthem, at formal functions, concerts etc., and especially at the many cricket, soccer and rugby games. Most people sang such scrambled make-shift words. We all knew the tune, very well, but the words...now that was a different story. Again, I'm sure that this was because very few of us had ever seen the actual words written down on paper, and even if we had, I don't think it would have helped very much anyway. We didn't speak the language in our homes. Very few people in the south, where we lived, had ever been taught to speak Welsh at all. Now that I have since learned this anthem properly, I just have to smile at the awful attempt we had made at trying to sing it, while thinking all the time that we were doing very well.

Of course we loved Christmas. We didn't get many presents but it was a special time for us when we looked forward to a happy time with our families. My mother always made her own Christmas cakes and puddings. We loved to help her stir them up with all the fruit in it, and we got to make a wish. The puddings always smelled so good while she boiled them in a big pot of water on the fire. The batter was divided up and spooned into little porcelain basins, covered with pieces of clean linen, (usually old white pillow slips or pieces of a sheet); with string tied around the lip of the basin to keep it all inside while it was placed in the boiling water. The four corners of the linen cover were brought up to the centre and tied in a knot at the top. This became a loop through which my mother would insert a wooden spoon to help lift them out of the big pot when they were done.

Up until I was about eight years old, my mother never had a regular stove. The fireplace in the kitchen, was our only source of heat in the house, and was also our stove. I think my mom regulated the temperature by the amount of coal that was on the fire, and how red it was. She made an extra pudding for the Sunday before Christmas so that we wouldn't have to wait as long to taste them. We eagerly looked for the silver "thruppence" (three pence - a thruppenny-bit) coin that she had hidden inside each pudding, wondering if it was in the piece we had been given on our plate. That was quite a sum of money for a child. They looked like a smaller version of the Canadian dime. To top it off, we always had steaming hot yellow custard sauce poured over it. Yum, Yum, I can taste it now!

When Christmas morning came around, we woke up very excited to see what we would find around the tree. We almost always had a tree, a real one of course; I don't think artificial ones were even available in those days. We knew not to expect very much in the way of presents, but I never remember a time when I was not very happy with what my parents had bought or made for me. We seldom received gifts from anyone other than our parents, and it was usually a quiet family time at our house. We loved our stockings so very much. Our parents set these out at the foot of the bed for us on Christmas Eve. We were allowed to get into them as soon as we woke up, which was always very early. They most always contained the lucky piece of coal in the toe and then a bar of chocolate, an apple, orange and some nuts. Sometimes a small toy too. Chocolate and fruit were rare items during my early childhood when World War II was going on. I have since realized that those stockings were actually my dad's socks, and quite small compared to the size of some Christmas stockings today, but we loved them anyway and never knew of anything different.

We didn't have the "Easter Bunny" in Wales in those days, but we did have chocolate eggs. For those of us who were fortunate enough to get one they were small, wrapped in silver or coloured foil paper, and usually hollow. We also had regular boiled eggs for breakfast that were coloured by adding food colouring to the water during the cooking. Easter was a quiet church/chapel celebration with a long weekend off from work for the adults and children. The Easter Monday was usually a holiday time when we would visit a zoo, a local park, or fair grounds as a family affair. In those days, the Welsh revival of the early nineteen hundreds was still fairly strong so a big part of our lives involved the community church with large numbers attending every Sunday.

Many of the men worked very hard in the coal mines, starting in their early teens or younger, and sometimes seeing very little daylight in the winter months, working as many as ten or twelve hours a day. They would be literally covered in coal dust and have to take a bath, either in the "pithead baths" or as soon as they got home. We didn't have a bathroom in those days or a water heater, so the water had to be heated on the fire and then poured into a large oval shaped zinc bathtub. This was most always placed in front of the fireplace right on the kitchen floor. Then it had to be carried outside afterwards and emptied down the drain, which was usually near the back door. Many times the coal dust was hard to get out from around their eyes and fingernails. It filled their pores and worse than that, it filled their lungs and made many of them seriously sick. It was very hard, dangerous work, in some awful conditions. Sometimes there would be an underground cave-in, or an explosion, and many would be injured, buried, and even died before being rescued. When the dreaded sound of the alarm rang out, the women would rush to the pithead to find news of their men folk, while the men, who were not working that shift, formed a rescue party to try and get them out. My maternal grandfather was killed in such a mine disaster when I was very young.

People looked to God for His protection and found that prayer was a daily necessity of life for them. Due to their very difficult life, most of the music sung by the famous male voice choirs was hymns sung by coal miners. Even at rugby and soccer matches (games), hymns were proudly sung by the huge crowds, along with any other songs they knew well. Music is and always has been a very important part of the culture and lives of the Welsh people. Today, many of the famous Welsh Male Voice Chorus concerts now include music from Broadway and Movie selections as well.

The coalmines have been closed now though, thank goodness, and many of the black, dust piles and huge mounds of slag have been flattened and seeded with grass. The valleys and hillsides are cleaner and greener now, also much safer for the people to work and live. Other kinds of jobs have taken the place of mining. This is very good of course, in many ways, but because they are not in fear of mine disasters any longer, they don't seem to need to be quite as close to God now, and many of the churches are closing due to very small attendances.

It was different in those days though, and we all looked forward, with great delight to that special time of the year we called "Whitsun" at Pentecost. In the summer, around the end of May, we all bought new clothes to wear for this special Christian holiday weekend. Due their love for music, there was great competition among the choirs of each church. We would practise for weeks ahead of the day with men, women, and children all taking part, getting ready for the big day and praying for sunshine. I remember sometimes it was so hot that the tar on the roads would melt and stick to the bottoms of our new shoes. I can smell it now as I think about it. This black sticky stuff was very hard to remove, especially if some accidentally got on our skin or pretty white ankle socks. My mother would use the hard wax floor polish, and even butter to try and remove it from our skin.

Pentecost Sunday was called "Anniversary" in the chapel, celebrating the arrival of the original day of Pentecost. This also was the special day that we had worked towards for many days ahead of time when we were all to perform in a kind of concert for the congregation. The adults would have a special choir, and soloists, the children would sing alone or in duets, recite poems and sing in a little choir. It was a really happy time for us when we could show our parents how well we had learned it. Some people even had an extra new outfit for this Sunday too, if they could afford it.

Of course, Whitsun Monday was the most special day when we all marched down the streets in our new clothes, singing as we went, proudly representing our own particular church that we called "Chapel", not church. (It seems in those days that the "church" was known as being of the Anglican, Church of England denomination, or of the Roman Catholic faith. The "Chapel" was generally a very broad spectrum of all the other protestant denominations, so people were labeled as either church or chapel, with a very large percentage being chapel. That's how it was in Wales during that time.

The competition was to see who came up with the longest line, of the best-dressed people, who sang the loudest, and the best. The traffic would be stopped along the route as we filled the streets with so many people. What a sight it was! Everyone all dressed in lovely new clothes. The men dressed in their suits, and hats, the ladies wore coats and dresses and even nicer hats. The little girls in their frilly dresses and new shoes, and the boys dressed up as little gentlemen, (with some protest I'm sure). Then later, we all met back at the chapel for a big "tea party" to celebrate our efforts. Sadly this celebration of Pentecost is no longer a part of the Welsh culture today. It seems that a sense of apathy has crept in along with a higher standard of living.

There was another fun time that we loved in the fall of the year. November 5th was, and is still known as "Guy Fawkes" night, or bonfire (fireworks) night. This was a night that had been set aside to remember that many years earlier; a man named Guy Fawkes had unsuccessfully tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament buildings in London. We would go around the hills and fields trying to collect dead ferns, branches of fallen trees and such for a big bonfire. We would try to make an image of the "guy" using old clothes, stuffed with dead ferns. Then we took him around the neighbourhood asking for "pennies" for him, and later burn him on the bonfire. We used the money to buy fireworks. Many times the sky just glowed with all the different bonfires all over the hills and fields. Sometimes it would rain and get everything so wet that it just wouldn't burn, so we only had the fireworks.

On October 31st we had some sort of Halloween celebrations but we didn't dress up in costumes and go door to door for candies. We held what we called, "Ducking Apple Night", and it was just that. We would get a large bowl, or small bathtub, and fill it full of water. Then we put some apples in the water, tied our hands behind our backs and bobbed our heads in the water, trying to grab the apples between our teeth. Needless to say, we would get quite wet most of the time and the water was always so cold. Sometimes we also put some string through the centre of the apples and hung them on a line, about eye level, and then also with our hands tied; we tried to bite the apples. It seems very simple, but to us it was lots of fun.

Usually the people lived very simple, uncomplicated lives in those days. They worked hard for a small pay, weekly, in cash, but were hardly ever in debt for anything more than the daily necessities, living from one pay to the other. Almost everything was bought and sold with cash. If we wanted to save any money, we would buy "savings stamps" at the local Post Office. We put them in a special little book and later, when the book was full, traded them in for a certificate of the same value. Banks were usually only used by large companies, stores and businesses, or by individuals who were fortunate enough to have large sums of money. I never ever saw a chequebook, or even knew that there was such a thing and I barely remember ever going into a bank.

Hardly anyone had a telephone in the home in those days, but there was at least one outdoor public telephone booth in each village. This was usually only used for emergencies. When someone was too sick to make a visit to the doctor's office, a friend or relative called the doctor who would come to the house of the sick person as soon as he could.

Sheep farming was, and still is, the major means of livelihood in the north, with various forms of industry and coal mining mostly in the south. In spite of its small size geographically, Wales has its own flag; with the top half being white, the bottom half is green, and a large red dragon in the centre. The Welsh emblem is a green leek, (yes, a big smelly onion) and the national flower is a Daffodil. St. David is the patron saint and the national anthem is called, "Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau." which in English means "The Land of My Fathers". Yes, Wales also has its own unique cherished language and culture, passed down through the ages by a very proud courageous nation of people. In spite of the fact that English is still spoken throughout Wales, predominantly in the south, the Welsh language has always been kept going along with its culture and heritage in the north and is rapidly becoming more popular in the south now too. When Prince Charles, heir to the throne of England, was crowned as the "Prince of Wales" several years ago, it was said that he actually took the time to learn the Welsh language for the ceremony. It was a very grand affair conducted in Caernarfon Castle, one of the many large castles to be found among the Welsh hills.

Most women stayed at home taking care of the children and doing the difficult household chores. They would have had no time to work outside the home anyway. Children were generally finished school by age fifteen and often married well before they were twenty. Many young couples were forced to live with one set of parents for the first year or so until they could afford to rent a house of their own. Many times it would stretch into several years because there were no houses available. Hardly anyone owned their own home; they were all rented, mostly from the local town council (municipality). There were no apartment buildings anywhere. They just didn't exist.

In spite of these hardships, the people seemed to be very friendly toward each other, happy, and family ties were very close. They worked together and helped each other as much as they could in a real neighbourly manner. Mind you there was much gossip going around, constantly. Everyone knew everybody else's business most of the time, and with no house telephones in those days, it was incredible how quickly news got around from one family to another; even all over town in some cases. They had a very good mail system, but word of mouth was usually the main source of communication. It makes me smile when I remember how it was, fondly of course, but that was Wales, as I knew it in my childhood days.
2. Our Village

It seems a long time ago now, as I look back to the days when I lived as a child among those hills and valleys of South Wales. The house in which I was born is not there any longer. Since I left there it has been torn down and replaced with a couple of garages. Many instances of my early years are only memories told to me by others; yet somehow I do remember much of it quite clearly.

They told me that I was barely three years old when I first attended school. I remember there were small wooden shapes we called "stencils" that we used with paint to make pretty shapes on papers that we took home. One day in winter, we were asked to bring in some small branches from a leafless tree. We used these to add our own leaves made from small pieces of shaped, coloured wax. At Christmas time we made paper chains from small strips of coloured paper with glue covered edges that we just had to lick and stick. There were little lanterns for the tree that we also made from pieces of the same paper.

There was one Christmas season at that school, I remember very well as having to stay home because I had the mumps. When the day came for the little party, I should have still been in quarantine, but my teacher allowed me to sit at my desk, in a corner away from the other children. It seemed lonely, but at least I was there to eat the cake and wear a party hat.

It's very likely that I would have been five years old when I started at the next school, "Cock and Chick". Yes, that's what we called it. Of course it had a proper name, but it was given that name because the boys were separated from the girls. The "play yard" had a big stone wall dividing it in half, so even outdoors the boys and girls were not allowed to mix with each other. Male teachers taught the boys, and female teachers taught the girls, in a separate half of the school.

A vivid memory of that school comes back to me of the time when we used to get the free powdered chocolate. About once a month, we were asked on the previous day, to bring a clean empty can to school. Usually, if we could get one, an empty Cow and Gate dried milk baby food tin was the best. They were large, fat tins with lids. The teacher filled it with a special cocoa that could be mixed with milk, or water, for a delicious, nutritious chocolate drink, if we didn't eat it all on the way home. Many of us also brought a spoon along with the empty can. This commodity was provided for us from the feeding centre in the village. During, and just after the war, the U.S. Army had set up these feeding centres in many areas to help us recover from the terrible shortage of food that was caused by the war.

It was quite a while after the war before we finally were able to do away with the Ration Books. They had different coloured little coupons in them that were required to buy just about everything. Clothing, blankets, certain foods like sugar, tea, and even candies. There were also special little bottles of lovely concentrated orange juice for babies and nursing mothers, along with the famous cod liver oil capsules. These were said to keep away the colds and flu during the winter months. I remember trying to swallow one of these little "footballs" down with my cup of tea. Sometimes it would be too hot and the capsule melted on my tongue...ughhhh! That reminds me; we also had weak tea even as small children. Some little ones even had a drop in their bottles to warm up the milk on a cold morning. There was also the yellow dried egg powder. It didn't taste too awful when used for cooking in cakes but I thought it was terrible for making scrambled eggs. All in all though, we were very thankful for the way we were helped during that very difficult period.

Then there was the time when we had the "big snow" in 1947. That was when many folks my age, in that part of the world, will still remember vividly. It sticks out in my mind, because it was when we didn't have to go to school for six weeks due to this huge snowstorm. We must have been deluged with about six feet of this white stuff over a period of two days. We lived in two and three story; row houses and some of the drifts were up to the bedroom windows. Many of the water pipes burst, due to the freezing temperatures, causing much havoc in our homes. Our school was unable to function because the toilets were all frozen up and almost completely "filled in" with drifted snow. These outdoor facilities were very basic, with many open spaces under a roof made from sheets of corrugated tin.

The streets were just impassable due to the fact that we had no major snow removal equipment in our town. We hardly ever had snow, even when we did it was only a few inches at a time and would melt very quickly. This year however, it was very different. We didn't even have snow shovels; only garden spades. Many folks didn't have a garden so consequently didn't even have a spade. Digging ourselves out of our houses was a major task. To make matters worse, we lived on the side of a very steep hill; part of what we called a "mountain".

In spite of the hardships however, this was a special time for the people of my town, when the true sense of being a neighbour was displayed. Everyone helped each other. Not only to dig themselves out, but with food and bare necessities. Because the roads were closed, the stores were not being restocked and many daily commodities were beginning to get scarce.

Many of the men could not get to work and even if they did, many establishments were non-functional due to lack of manpower and bad conditions, so money was getting short too. Of course, as children, we thought this was a big holiday, whereas it was a nightmare for the adults.

As time went on, the warmer weather brought the rain that melted much of the snow. Many ice patches had to be covered with the ashes from the fireplace. The garbage and ash-lorries (trucks) never came to take them away anyway, and without any sand or salt, it seemed the best thing to do at the time. It was a sad day for us kids when the school reopened, but by this time we were ready to go back, and so were our parents I'm sure.

Later, when things were a little easier, I can still remember going to the corner store for staples like bread and potatoes etc., when my mother had no money for them and the kindly shopkeeper would let her pay at the end of the week, or on pay day, whenever that was. I seem to remember that it was called, "having it on the tick".

I remember that we had all sorts of "aunts" who were not related to us in any bloodline whatsoever. They were neighbours who my mother considered her real close friends. Sometimes I lost track of them and never really knew who actually did belong in the family. When they each borrowed a "cup of sugar", no one really expected to get it back, although there was the odd time when it was returned. Some of our neighbours made a habit of doing this however, and thus made themselves notoriously known as being a "cadger", meaning that they were always " on the cadge". Isn't it funny what silly things come to mind when recalling memories from a long time ago? I also remember though, that for the most part, everyone helped each other when times were hard, and that seemed to be most of the time.

There were some happy times too. I can remember looking forward to the summer and our annual trips to the seaside, usually to Barry Island or Porthcawl. I didn't know at the time but this trip that meant so much to us, was only about fifteen miles away, and it was actually on the coast of the Bristol Channel, but it was of course still part of the ocean. Usually we went on a special bus that had been hired by the chapel for a Family Sunday School Outing. The date would have been set well in advance and whether the weather was wet or dry; we still went to the seaside on that date. There were usually two or three buses hired to take us all at one time.

I remember the excited feeling as we started to climb aboard one of them. Usually it was still half empty and we were able to choose our own seat and keep one next to us for a friend. Our parents would place the bags containing our swimsuits and the carefully packed lunches under the seat or on the luggage racks overhead. We would walk up and down the aisles, anxiously watching for our friends to join us. It was quite something to be able to get on and off the bus with the driver not in his seat and no engine running. He would be off having his cup of tea somewhere close by.

Other times when we had taken a ride on the regular bus, it was different. We didn't know any of the passengers then, but these buses had been hired especially for the trip. It was like they belonged to us for the day and it would be filled with people we knew very well. As soon as it was full, or when it was as late as we could wait for the tardy ones, off we went.

We would be looking out of the bus windows, all trying to be the first one to call out, "I can see the sea." As I look back, I can remember many a time when we sat in the bus, within walking distance of the beach, waiting for the rain to stop. Most times it did clear up long enough for us to at least sit on the beach, and if too cold to swim we could usually paddle our feet in the water. Sometimes we had to eat our lunches in the bus, which was better than getting sand in the food as we spread out the tablecloth on the beach. I have seen photographs of us sitting on the beach wearing sweaters and even coats. I have also seen some of the ladies wearing dresses, nylon stockings and high-heeled dress sandals on the beach. There are even some pictures of a mixture of all three, along with the odd brave swimmer and sunbather.

I also remember the "shows", now that was a different story. This was the fair where we could have rides and win our little "treasures" to take home with us as long as we didn't run out of money first. It didn't matter if it rained while we were at the shows, so it made the trip worthwhile. We always had a certain time to be back at the bus for the trip home. Very often the whole busload of people would be sitting waiting for one or two who didn't want to give up until the last penny was spent.

There was always candyfloss and "rock". The rock was a long, pink, stick of hard mint candy, white in the centre, with the name of the town imprinted in red letters all the way through it. This was usually taken home as a present to relatives who could not make the trip.

On the way home, everyone would start singing all sorts of songs from hymns to popular top hits and everything in between. We ended up taking a hat around the bus to collect a special offering for the driver, as we sang the same old song, "For he's a jolly good driver." We would be tired but happy to have had a good time. There were even times when we came home all sunburned instead of rain soaked.

Another special outing that sticks in my memory was when we all went for a trip with the school to a large famous zoo. This was located in a city several miles away. In fact, we usually had to travel there by train because it was too far for the local buses and also because it was cheaper for the number of people going on the trip. I can remember only ever going the one time, but I will never forget it because that was when I saw a real elephant. We were close enough to actually touch it. This was a "lady" elephant and her name was Rosie. How could I ever forget that anyway? I also know that she was giving rides to the children, but I don't remember having a ride, I don't know why. Perhaps it cost more money than I had.

The rest of the visit is a blank except for the train ride. That was very special. To get to this place, the train had to actually travel underneath a major river by going through a long tunnel. We knew when we were getting close to it because the driver would turn on the internal coach lights in preparation for the period of darkness that came while we were in the tunnel. You can imagine the mixed emotions of the children as the lights came on. Some cheered and shouted in excitement, while others trembled with fear. Some even cried. I remember thinking to myself that we seemed to be in the tunnel for a long time. Then of course there was a huge cheer from all of them when we came into the daylight again and the lights went out. My husband says that he remembers going to that zoo many times with his school.

I remember when I was around five years old; I had a special friend named Maureen. She was from somewhere in England, near London, where the bombs were being dropped during World War II. Hundreds of children had been sent on buses and trains, down to Wales where it was safer. Because these children were actually evacuated from their homes, we called them "evacuees". Maureen was one of these children being cared for by kindly neighbours they never even knew, miles away from their parents.

Our men went to the war and many of the women made ammunition in a big factory in the city. We were close to being bombed several times. We all had special gas masks that we were trained to wear in case of an attack from the air. I remember that mine was shaped like a Micky Mouse head with even the ears. We had strict curfews and orders to be carried out from the local Air Raid Wardens. Of course I was too young to remember much of that. But I do remember when the war was declared as over and everyone was in the celebrating mood. We had big long lines of tables set out in the streets all covered with whatever food everyone could muster. There were decorations and flags all over the doorways and windows and across from one side of the street to the other. There was music and dancing in the streets until well after midnight. No more blackouts and air raid sirens; it was all over. We were free to live as we chose. But then it was time for Maureen to go back to London and hopefully be re-united with her family, a sad day for us but a happy day for her.

A little while later, my dad came home, for good. I didn't know him. He had left for the war when I was still very small. He came home on "leave", as we called it, a few times during that period, but he never stayed long enough to get to know him. I remember that just a little while earlier, he had sent me a special card from Belgium, for my 5th birthday. I think it was the first card that I had ever received from anyone. It was so pretty. It had a big bunch of paper pansies with pink lace around them on the inside page. There was also a little border of gold sparkle stuff around it. I remember thinking that it was so beautiful. I still have it in my memories box, fifty years later.

When he arrived home he had brought a gift for me. It was a lovely little twelve bass piano accordion in its own special case. He had traded it for one hundred cigarettes from a man in France. Later I was encouraged to learn to play it. I didn't keep up with the lessons for very long though; I had to carry this instrument as I walked to and from the teacher's house and it seemed very heavy and a long way to go. The lessons were expensive, but my parents tried hard to provide them for me for as long as I wanted to practise. I still have that too, a little worse for wear of course by this time.

Until then, and for a few years after that, we had lived in the house where my two sisters and I were born. It was a three-story row house that was rented by my paternal grandmother. It was a very strange setting. Due to the fact that it was built into the side of this very steep hill, the horizontal streets adjoining that hill entered on the first two levels of the houses. The top street was at my grandmother's front door, and the next street down the hill was at the back yard level, just below our entrance. It was something like a multi-level house built on a ravine with a walkout basement. There were two very small liveable rooms on each level. Our bedroom was the room adjacent to her front door, but that was considered as being upstairs to us. There were no closets anywhere except for a small wooden wardrobe, which together with one double bed and a crib, were all squashed into this tiny bedroom. My grandparents lived in the room next to it, and in the two bedrooms above. There were two other rooms on the lower level (basement). One of these was used for storage of the coal, our only source of heat for both families. The other room was where we lived. We called it the kitchen. It was so small that we had to have the couch pushed right up against the table so that we three girls could kneel on it to eat our food. There were also two small chairs for the adults. An armchair was sitting in a corner beside the big, metal guard surrounding the open fireplace. This black stone fireplace took up most of one of the walls with a small window and the only door situated in the wall beside it. We had several nails on the back of the door where we hung our coats. There was also a pantry beneath the stairs for the food and dishes. My mother did all the cooking on the coal fire and boiled all the hot water we needed for everything. We had one cold-water faucet, on the wall, in the room that housed the coal. There was a large metal bucket underneath the tap to catch the water and to wash dishes etc.

Of course we also had the necessary little "house" outside. It was dark with the door shut, so as children we would always leave it open a little crack. Of course it was cold in the winter and stuffy and hot in the summer. Our toilet paper was usually yesterday's newspaper until later on when we were given the luxury of having white tissue, but even then it was coarse and stiff. I didn't realize how uncomfortable it was until we started to use the soft stuff we get today. It really is true that we don't miss what we don't have.

It wasn't until I was much older, that I understood the hardships my parents, especially my mother, and our neighbours, must have faced during those years. These were special kinds of difficulties that didn't affect me as a child, but I knew about them. The laundry days, when somehow my mother performed miracles getting the clothes washed and dried. There was a big metal, oval shaped tub that she filled up with hot water that had been boiled on the fire. This was used with the old fashioned "rubbing board" and large bars of soap, all set out on the kitchen table. The eventual clean laundry was usually the result of much elbow grease, raw knuckles and sheer perseverance.

Getting the clothes dry was another great feat. We had a line of rope strung from the back door to a pole at the end of the yard. There was another longer pole, with a "v" shaped hook at the top that was used to prop up this line in the centre, so that the clothes would not drag on the ground. There was no pulley as we see on some country clothes lines today, so without the centre pole to hold it up, the line had to be low enough for her to reach it in order to hang them on the line with the clothes pins. There were many times when those clothes were brought inside, soaked from the rain, stiff from the cold, dirty from the soot descending from the many chimneys, or from being dropped in the mud when the wind had blown down the centre pole. How discouraging it must have been. Very often the same clothes were washed over again and finished drying indoors by being spread out over the chairs and over the large metal guard surrounding the fireplace. Most kitchens had a necessary line of string overhead between two of the walls making an indoor clothes line.

It was the way of life for us, and my mom worked hard with three little girls to care for. There was less than five years between the three of us. Many a night she found time to sit and repair or sew new clothes for us. She had no sewing machine and no patterns with which to cut them out, but she made us the most beautiful dresses I ever saw, and sometimes she even made little matching panties if there was enough material. In the morning, I would run down the stairs from our bedroom to see if there was a new dress hanging on the nail behind the kitchen door. She would have made it for me by staying up until very late at night to get it finished. Often these clothes were made from old garments, sometimes her own, but mostly from hand-me-downs which she had first taken apart to use the material for cutting out the new ones. One time we each had a coat and a matching hat made from two different colour utility blankets because they were cheaper than buying the material by the yard and they didn't need coupons from the ration books.

Many years later, my mother would often tell me about the many times I had fallen down the steps, outside the back door, and cut my chin. It seems that I often fell down those stone steps and each time I landed on my chin, but there was one time it was really funny because of the circumstances. It seems that my aunt, a real one, one of my mom's sisters, had come to live with us for a while to help out while my dad was overseas in the armed forces. We were on our way to town one day. It seems that I was carrying a lovely big, red Canadian apple, very hard to get in those days when as usual, I fell down the steps. Well now, would you believe, both of them ran to catch the rolling apple while leaving me crying on the ground. As they each reached for it, they laughed so hard that their tears ran faster than mine. Of course they attended to me immediately afterwards, as they both realized that each one had thought that the other one would pick me up before the apple. I don't really remember that day except for the scar still under my chin.

There were lots of other things my mom told me about that I don't remember doing. Like the time when they had picked some lovely fresh holly for Christmas with lots of red berries on it but when the time came to use it to decorate the house however, all the berries were gone. It seems that I had heard my mom asking my aunt what had happened to the berries when I calmly told her that I had eaten them. Those berries were considered very poisonous for humans so my poor mom was in a panic. I was given lots of milk along with a large meal of soft bread and castor oil served up with much prayer, fear and trembling. Something must have worked however because I lived to see many more holly branches after that.

I also remember the "thrupenny pictures". I think this was unique to South Wales in those days. Originally, every New Year's Day, there was a cinema in the town which would be rented to show a movie film for certain children only. These children were from families whose fathers were coal miners. The owners of the mines would pay for this treat for them and also give each child an orange and a "thruppenny-bit on the way out. This was actually a coin, the size and shape of a nickel which was officially called a "thruppence" just like we could find in the Christmas puddings only a little larger and not silver. It was worth three pennies, or three pence, enough to buy a couple of ounces of candy. Quite a treat for a child!

The name "thru penny pictures" later applied to the regular weekly Saturday morning movies and all through the rest of the year as well. Only this time the admission price was thruppence for all kids under 12 yrs. old. For those who could afford it, it was a good place for parents to send their children for a couple of hours on a Saturday morning. It was very safe, lots of fun and very popular. The whole theatre was usually packed with kids. For an adult, the noise would be deafening. It usually became a little quieter though once the movie was started and the lights went out. The films were almost always the same kind; action movies of Cowboys and Indians against the Cavalry or Mounties. Sometimes it would be slapstick comedy such as Laurel and Hardy or Abbot and Costello. Then there were films such as the Bowery Boys, Our Gang, and the Keystone Cops etc. The cowboy ones stick out in my mind the most vividly though because I remember the children did funny things while they were watching them. If the hero of the film was in any danger, they would call out to warn him as if he could hear them, or they would shout out to tell him that the bad guy was hiding behind the rock and such. Then they would clap, shout and whistle quite profusely when it was obvious that the good guys were winning, and then boo, equally as loud, when the bad ones had the upper hand. Then there was always a serial film at the end. They would show about ten minutes of an action packed movie like Batman, or Superman, and end it just as he was about to meet his doom. This was just enough suspense to bring them all back for the next Saturday morning just to see what happened to him.

I must have been around eight years old when the local municipal offices had lists of families in desperate need of better housing facilities. Almost all houses were rented with a very large number subsidized by the "council". At that time, my dad had recently come home from the war with a very bad asthma condition and the place where we lived was so very damp. So, that reason, along with the fact that we were living in such awfully crowded, almost impossible conditions; seemed that maybe we would qualify for better accommodations. My parents applied for whatever was available for as soon as possible and we waited.

We couldn't believe it when we received a letter in the mail saying that we had been chosen to occupy one of the new little modern prefabricated bungalows currently being built on the side of another mountain several miles away. We were told to pick up the key on a certain date and move in. You can imagine how happy we all were.

I have realized since that these houses were very small and made from large sheets of solid, corrugated asbestos with steel framed windows and doors. I think the inside walls were covered with some sort of plywood to protect us from the asbestos, I guess. We put wallpaper on them to decorate. There was a built-in metal closet in each of the bedrooms and another living room cupboard that seemed like a very small metal buffet and hutch. My parents kept dishes in the top section, and my dad kept all his mechanics tools in the large bottom drawer. It was very heavy. There was a special cupboard in the hall, between the doors to the bedrooms, which was called the airing cupboard. This was built into the wall at the back of the fireplace which was in the living room. Because of the location, it was nice and warm as long as the fire was going. It had about four wooden slatted shelves that my mother used for a linen closet. It was very good too for airing out the clothes that had been washed but were not quite dry. In the other house, we would often warm our pyjamas in front of the fire and see the steam rising from them before they were dry enough to wear.

There were two bedrooms, a living room, with a small, neat little fireplace and a big window. There was a kitchen with a small refrigerator and a pull down table in the wall plus a large metal pantry for the food. There was a small electric hot water heater that just needed a flip of the switch and a fifteen-minute wait. My mom had her first stove, which we called a "cooker", and there was even a big boiler. This was a cylindrical metal container about the size of a washing machine. It was to be filled with water for boiling the clothes by means of a heater underneath it. This meant that she no longer had to heat up the water on the fire or have to wash the clothes entirely by hand on the kitchen table. However it had no agitator or means of wringing or rinsing. Maybe it wasn't really that much help after all, but I do know that she was very happy to have it. There was an inside bathroom with a porcelain hand basin, hot and cold faucets, and a lovely big modern bathtub. It even had a little medicine cabinet. There was an adjoining, warm, little room with a light, a window, and a lovely modern toilet.

This was a dream come true for us all, especially for my mom. We didn't even care when we found out that it was to be house number thirteen and that most of the houses weren't completed yet. The mud was absolutely a mess for quite a while. But it was so very much worth the inconvenience and the wait. It didn't take long for us to make new friends with our neighbours. My mother spent much of the second or third night with a lady across the street. She was alone, delivering her third premature baby.

A little while later, my dad's sister and her family came to live near us and my mother had a cousin who moved in with her family, just up the street.

We had made friends of many neighbours by the time we became the proud owners of one of the first television sets to be seen in our area. I don't know how we ever could afford it, other than the fact that my mother also worked out of the home by this time. It was a small 12-inch screen, black and white of course. I remember we were so excited to have it all hooked up in time for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth ll of England. This was such a wonderful time for us all. There were about 25 to 30 people all crammed into our tiny living room. Talk about wall-to-wall people, they were wall to floor as well, but such a "never-to-be-forgotten" occasion. There were parties in the streets, houses, stores and in almost every public place, all decorated for the festivities; truly a "once in a lifetime" experience. At school, we were all given a special cup and saucer bearing a photograph of the Queen in her coronation robes. I wish I could remember what happened to them. But I will never forget that day when I saw the whole thing on that little black and white TV.

Those were nine happy years that we spent in that little bungalow. The air was clean, the grass was green, and we loved it. We found that many stray sheep were also our neighbours, often feeding on our flowers and grass after they had jumped the chain link fence, or came in when the gate had been left open on our way to school. Everything was all so new. It seemed like a fresh beginning for us and it was, in many ways. Of course, we had to go to a new school and make new friends there also. It was a long walk up and down that very steep side of the "Rhiw" to Aberbeeg School and often it was raining, cold and windy.

As time went on though, we were changed to another school a little further down the road because my parents found out that it was better for us academically. These two little public schools were only a few miles from each other but they were right on the border line of two different counties geographically. I didn't realize at the time however, that this change was a major event in what was to be my future.
3. School Days

I don't remember very much about Aberbeeg School, we were only there for a year. The new one was called "Ty'r Graig" Junior Mixed School. This meant of course that the boys and girls were integrated, a big change for us especially as we had no brothers at home. This was the school where I received my first and only "cane". A form of punishment received for bad behaviour, being late, or for skipping class etc. I remember this part so well because I didn't think I deserved it at the time. Although on looking back, I guess I was just as guilty as the rest of them.

There were some men working on repairs to the school and they had all sorts of equipment in the play area of the schoolyard. There was a huge wooden ladder and a pile of wood. Someone had the notion to put this ladder on the small pile of wood and make a "see-saw" upon which about thirty students straddled each end. Most of them were already on the thing when I climbed on it but seconds after that, we heard a loud "craaack"! Yes, we had broken the ladder. We all ran in different directions, scared to death! Of course, when the teachers heard what had happened, all the students who were on the ladder had to line up for "the cane".

For those of you who have never received such punishment, I will explain. The cane was a long piece of bamboo, probably a little over half a metre long or eighteen inches in our day. It seemed much longer to me at the time. The student was to stand next to the teacher with his\her arm stretched out, palm side up while the teacher proceeded to lift this thing over his head and thrash it down on the outstretched palm. If you moved your hand at the last minute and it missed, it usually came down a little harder for the second time. My, oh my, was I scared! But, I was on the ladder when it broke and most of the other kids knew who was on it too. So I had my first, one and only "cane".

Most other memories at that school were only vague. I do remember learning to knit with two wooden meat skewers and a ball of household string. We all made a small dishcloth to take home. I also remember a male teacher who was very kind to me because I was polite and did my work well. He entered my name in a handwriting contest in a local newspaper and I won a certificate of merit. I was so surprised. I liked school and actually looked forward to going every day, except some days when I didn't like the long walk up and down the hillside to get there and back home.

This was also around the time when I was really interested in what we called concerts and ballet and tap dancing. There was a famous dancing school down in the valley with a lady called Marian Gill. Every little girl in the whole valley dreamed of being her pupil, if your parents could afford the lessons. Every three months or so, she would put on a show for all her pupils to get dressed up in the fancy little costumes and display their talents. I finally did get to join it for one season but then when it came time for the show, we found out that she didn't supply the costumes without a personal cost to the student. Needless to say, that was the end of my dancing career. My parents could barely afford to pay for the lessons. But you know, I can still remember the music and the little ballet routine I learned and even some of the tap steps. Although it was very brief and I was so disappointed at the time, I was so happy to have had the chance to belong to it. That was an experience I have never forgotten.

I really enjoyed going to Sunday-School too. The main church building was down in the valley but one of the ladies had arranged for permission to hold a weekly class for us in a little hut very close to my home. This was a small, wooden, one room structure that was owned by the village council. It was used for Boy Scout and Girl Guide meetings mostly and occasionally for council members to meet. This dear lady, Mrs Watts, would carry all the necessary things she needed every Sunday. There were songbooks, pictures, Bible story materials, music, and stickers for us when we learned our memory verses. She showed up with all this stuff, faithfully week after week never seeming to tire.

I can still remember some of the songs we learned and lots of the Bible stories. I still have a sticker that I received for learning some verses that she taught to us. It's pasted on the front page of my first Bible. I was given that Bible for my fifteenth birthday from my mother's youngest sister, many years ago. I still have it today. There must have been a dozen or so children in that class, three of which were from my house. At Christmas we would all take part in a nativity play at the "big" chapel down in the valley. Our parents would come to see us perform. I remember when I was the angel who spoke to the shepherds. I had all the words memorized so well that I can still recite them even today.

I loved to play school at home with my two younger sisters and be the teacher, preparing and marking their work and giving them grades. I had great visions of being a teacher one day when I grew up. This would only be possible though if I passed the "11+" entrance exam. This was a special test to see if the student met the academic standard required for the Grammar School.

Throughout Britain in those days, there was no High School system as we have in North America today. At age eleven, all students sat this special exam under scrutiny of the local education authorities. It was well executed and fair. Because the outcome would form the future education and employment opportunities for each student, great importance was placed on this exam. This was sad in a way though because many students failed the test simply because they were so nervous about it. I failed it the first time around. Not many were given a second chance either. I was able to sit it again the following year because my birthday just happened to be within the guidelines but also because my teacher, who felt I should have passed, suggested I have my eyes checked for vision problems. As a result, I was given glasses to wear and yes, I did pass the exam on my second try.

The result of passing this exam meant that I now qualified to enter the Grammar School for that county. Because I had changed from the Aberbeeg Public School earlier, I would now be attending the Grammar School DOWN the valley instead of UP the valley. If I had gone to the other one, I may never have met the young man who later became my husband. The lower part of the valley was all new territory to us but I was due to become much more familiar with it very soon.

I knew that I would have to travel quite a way to this new school. Because I lived on the borderline of the county, I probably had the furthest distance to go. Along with a few other students from my area, we had a special bus to take us there but I still had to walk quite a way down the side of the mountain to get to the bus. It actually stopped right beside my current public school.

The only time we liked living so far from the school was when the snow fell and the buses didn't come for us. We had very little snow removal equipment in those days because we didn't have the very cold temperatures where the snow lasted for any length of time. It usually melted very quickly. But sometimes, even a six-inch fall would be enough to stop the buses from running up and down those winding, hilly roads of the valleys. We would wait for about half an hour extra and then head down to the railway station.

The trains would almost always be running even when the snow was too bad for the buses. We just loved a train ride. We would get half the kids on each platform, on opposite sides of the tracks, and throw snowballs at each other while waiting for the train. Then, as soon as we heard it coming, we would rush like crazy over the bridge to the other side. Of course by this time we would be very late for school and some students never made it at all. We thought it was very good of us to try so hard to get to school on such a nasty day so we had no fear of being punished for being late and of course it was also much more fun when there were only a handful of students in each class. Then there was the trip home afterwards as well, more fun on the train.

I was so excited to be going to the Grammar School. This meant that I had a very good chance of becoming a teacher later on, if I worked hard. I remember shopping with my mother for the uniform, the satchel, and the stationary etc. required to fill it. I can still remember the smell of the new leather of the satchel and the new clothes. The school colours were navy and gold. The girl's uniform consisted of a white blouse, a gold and navy diagonal striped tie, a navy tunic that we called a "gym slip", a navy cardigan or blazer with a school crest on the top pocket, white ankle socks and black shoes.

During the winter months, while we were travelling to and from school, we wore a navy all-weather topcoat that we called a "Burberry" and always the compulsory navy beret (tam) also bearing a small school crest. We also had one of those long woollen scarves with fringes at each end. This was knitted in navy and gold alternating very wide stripes. Many a cold, frosty morning I would wrap the scarf around my head over the top of the beret in an effort to keep my ears warm. I also wore it this way sometimes in the rain, trying to keep some of the curls in my hair after I had spent the night sleeping in very uncomfortable curlers to produce them. I liked the mornings when it was frosty because the mud was frozen and my nice clean shiny shoes would stay that way. Sometimes when it was really a full wet day, we had to wear knee high black soft rubber boots that we called our "Wellies", (Wellingtons). If we forgot to take shoes to change them, we had to wear these silly things all day long. They were so hot when worn indoors and yet so cold out in snow. There was no fur lining inside them.

In the summer months, May, June and half of July, the girls were allowed to wear the specially ordered blue and white checked, gingham dresses. We all looked the same of course, but they were quite pretty actually. The cuffed sleeves were short and puffed at the shoulders with a rounded, shirt-style collar, a bodice buttoned to the waist and a full skirt. I was thankful that they were blue due to my red hair. They looked very nice with a navy blue blazer or cardigan.

I remember that as we arrived on our first day in class, we had all been split up into what they called "houses", each with its own special name and colour. Along with one quarter of the students in my class, I was chosen to be in the red house called Tintern. There was also a blue house called Chepstow, a yellow one called Monmouth and a green one called Raglan. These were the names of famous castles or abbeys in Wales. We never changed from one colour to another and were very proud of our "house". We worked hard towards the academic and athletic achievements that were used to add up the points needed to become the top "house" for each term of the school year. We proudly wore a special button showing to which house we belonged.

Our teachers all wore the black gowns they had received during their graduation from university over the top of their regular clothes. Unlike most of the other schools in the country, these teachers were all required to have university degrees to qualify as a teacher in a grammar school.

We had lots of homework every night. Our timetables were very rigid with no spare classes or study periods. We had many compulsory subjects with no commercial or technical subjects offered, other than sewing and cooking for the girls and woodwork for the boys and even then, only for the first two years. We had no clubs and had very few extracurricular activities and no social gatherings. School was very serious business in those days. We did have an annual track and field day and indoor gymnastics. The girls took field hockey and tennis. The boys had cricket and rugby classes. When the lesson was over and it was time for the next class, the teachers moved from one room to the other while the students stayed in the same place. The only time the students moved around was for the specialized classes such as the gymnasium or cooking classes etc.

Believe it or not, but some of my strongest memories of that school were of the lunches. Because we lived far away from the school, many of us were given the opportunity to pay a small sum of money each week for a noon hot meal. The tables were arranged in rows in a specified lunchroom. There was a centre row of tables for the teachers who kept us in order while eating their lunches too. I think they ate the same food as we did but probably had more of it. It was always hot and for the most part, fairly well cooked right on the premises. The bad thing was that we never knew what we were getting until it was served and even if we didn't like it, there was nothing else. I very quickly learned to like foods that I had never eaten at home before. We would have to be there on time and sing the "grace" all together before we could eat. As the dishes were being passed along the table, we would watch and hope that there would still be some left at the end of the row. There was usually a senior student at the end of each table to make sure we all at least had something from each dish. There were no refills.

We had little sayings and songs that we made up about certain types of food. I can still remember the one about the Semolina pudding. This was served as a warm desert dish, like cream of wheat for breakfast, but they put a dab of strawberry jam in the middle to make it sweet and to add a little flavour. In the song, along with some other carefully chosen words, we lovingly referred to this jam as "a dead cat's eye." It was more than enough to turn our appetites completely off this nutritious desert, I can tell you. Seriously though, the food was good and for most children it was the most important meal of the day.

Talking about food reminds me of the lovely little bottles of milk we used to get every day. Apparently, the Coal Board Miners' Union were concerned about the children not getting enough milk so they paid for us all to have a little one-third of a pint bottle every day at school. There were no refrigerators but sometimes in the winter, the milk became frozen and the ice would push up through the little cardboard caps on the top of the bottles. They came in little crates of twelve which the teacher promptly placed beside the fireplace to thaw them out. Most times, the milk was still quite warm by the time we got to drink it. Along with the warmer weather during the rest of the year, it's not a bit of wonder that I still love my milk warm even today.

I vividly remember the first day of the second year when I spent the day with a very painful foot. Every morning for the first fifteen minutes of the day, we always had a special assembly of the whole school in the gymnasium. A big tarpaulin was spread out to cover the lovely polished wooden floor so that we could all stand on it, in rows, while still wearing our outdoor shoes. During this time, all the teachers would be sitting on the stage in front of us. One of the senior students would read a small passage from the Bible and then we would sing a selected hymn followed with a prayer by the headmaster. This was also the time when any special announcements were given to the students. We had no public address system as in schools today.

When it was over and time to go to our first classes, we all marched in single file starting from the front row, youngest ones, towards the back of the gym and out the door. I remember that I was wearing new black leather shoes with a raised tongue section at the front. As I started walking behind the student in front of me, up the long path towards the door, I suddenly felt this awful pain between this tongue and the top of my foot. I couldn't stop walking because there was a big line of girls in front of me and the others were marching behind me. In my pride, I tried to act as though nothing was wrong. As soon as I got out of the door though, I took off the shoe to see what was wrong. As I did, I saw a huge squashed wasp on my sock. I don't remember whether or not I received any "first aid" for the sting that day, but I sure remember the pain.

During the next five years that I spent at that school, I really enjoyed it and did very well in my grades. I have four special books I received as prizes that were given to me for attaining a high standard in my class for four years in a row. My social life had suffered somewhat though because of the distance from my house to the school, most of my friends lived so far away from me. We never had school dances or any other social activities outside of school hours other than the annual school play.

It wasn't completely a loss though. Gradually I became very friendly with a girl in my homeroom class named Ann. She was very nice to me. Knowing that I lived in a place that was rather isolated from all my friends, she invited me to spend the weekend at her parents' home. They were very kind too and allowed me to visit with them whenever I wished. Over the period of the five years at that school, I ended up spending many weekends with them. Many a Saturday night we would lie awake, laughing and talking until the wee hours of the morning exchanging thoughts and ideas about all sorts of "girl stuff".

She was a very pretty girl. I remember that I really liked her curly hair and the way she used to do it all up in bobby pins every night. I remember wishing that I could do my hair like that but it seemed so difficult for me. One weekend when I was there, she let me wear one of her dresses. This particular one was a very special dress because she had worn it when she entered for the May Queen contest, and won. Every summer, each town held a "May Queen carnival" very similar to the Santa Claus parades only on a much smaller scale. Each little community would choose a queen and her court to ride on a float (truck) at the front of the parade. Ann had been chosen queen of their village during that summer. Many a girl dreamed of being a May Queen. It was like winning a beauty contest. I remember feeling so special myself when I tried it on. It was as if I felt that the dress had made her win. I thought it was so nice of her to let me wear it.

She took me to her chapel on Sunday mornings and then to Sunday-School in the afternoon. We had an excellent teenage class that I really enjoyed. I already knew most of the students from school. There was also another service in the evening which was most always followed by several of the group taking a walk among the lanes and fields of the pretty surrounding countryside.

We also had a drama class on Tuesday nights and I was so happy to visit as often as I could. We did a few stage plays at a local church hall, very amateur of course, but to us it was a big production. We actually wore the old grease paint make-up that had a very distinct smell to it and was very hard to remove, even with cold cream. But it was so much fun and it seemed that we were very good at being actors too, or at least we thought so.

It wasn't long before our large group started to split off into couples, as we got older. By the time I was sixteen, and in my fourth year of the grammar school, I found out that one of the male members of the group really liked me. We had known each other for a quite a while by this time so he was no stranger to me. I had never had a boyfriend before so I was quite thrilled to accept his request to date. It all came about after a bus trip we had taken with our group to a lovely spot on the south west coast called Rhossili Beach. We had a lovely warm sunny day and the beach was almost empty of people except for our "gang". We were enjoying the water when every so often the waves became very high as the tide was coming in. I remember facing the shore with my back to them when a huge one came in over my head. I was not a swimmer at all and I was in such a panic that I shouted at him for not warning me about the wave coming at me. He was so good to me, took me by the hand and seemed to really care about me. He sat next to me on the bus on the way home. I can still remember feeling so very happy and knowing such a warm glow of young love for the very first time.

I remember there was a really special time for us later that summer, just two days after my sixteenth birthday. We had arranged that I would meet him down in the valley at the place where the bus stopped and then walk together up the side of the mountain to my home. I had hurried to finish my homework in time to get down to the valley before he got there. I was wearing my summer blue and white gingham dress. I tried to make my hair as pretty as I could and fairly ran all the way down that mountain. When the bus came, my heart sank a little to see that he didn't get off with the others as it left to go to its next stop. I was so disappointed. I wasn't sure whether he had missed it or if he had changed his mind about coming. Hardly anyone had telephones in their homes at that time and I had no way of knowing what had happened. I was just turning to go back home when I saw him walking towards me. This seemed strange but he was smiling at me so I knew it was all right. As we started walking home, I found out that he had been patiently walking up and down the street waiting for me, for an hour. It seemed that one of us had made a mistake in the time, probably me. I thought he was to arrive on the 7:30 bus and he thought I had said that I would meet him from the 6:30 bus. We laughed about it and never really did figure out who was right. Somehow it didn't seem to matter. We were just so happy to be together.

I remember the long walk up the winding pathways to my home, and that we stopped about half way up the mountain to rest on a wooden bench. As he had missed my birthday, he had brought me a small box of chocolates. We opened them and ate some of them for energy to finish the climb. Of course neither one of us really needed them, our energy came from the sheer delight of being together and secretly we both felt the same way. I was very pleased to find that my parents liked him. That evening was duplicated many times after that, minus the chocolates and the extra hour of course.

We spent many happy hours walking the hillsides near my home and also in the little village where he lived. Ann and I stayed good friends for a long time after that, but I spent my weekends with my future family instead of at her house. We all stayed at the same chapel, and still enjoyed many happy times with the group, even as couples.

I found out very quickly that I was loved and accepted by his parents too, they were a very special family to me. The more time I spent with them, the dearer to me they became. I had started to call them Mam and Dad long before we were married, it just seemed so natural to be that way. Little did I know at the time, that I would not be seeing them very much at all after we were married.
4. True Love

We had been dating for a few months by the time we came to our first Christmas together. I remember my mother taking me shopping to buy a gift for him. We didn't have much money but we did choose a very nice grey sweater. When I opened his gift for me I was so surprised but very happy. He had bought a lovely Avia wristwatch for me. I had never had a watch before, it looked so beautiful, and I knew that Avia was a really good brand name. He was working by this time, so I knew that he would be able to buy a more expensive gift for me, but I never expected it to be a watch. In those days a watch was a very expensive gift that not many girls my age would have owned. Although it is now quite old and not working any longer, I still have it in my memories box.

In the months that followed, we shared a very special relationship, getting to know each other better. As I look back, I can honestly say that they were the best days of my life. No responsibilities, no hardships, no troubles or pain. We both just lived for the time when we would be together again. I still had lots of homework every night, but I made sure I finished it all before he came to our house to spend an hour or so before the evening was over. He must have spent almost all his money on bus fares.

We had a special bus that we always looked for on our travels up and down the valley. It was a red and white bus with a number on the back - U953. It seemed that this particular bus was used regularly on that route and it became almost like a good friend to us. Probably the driver was getting to know us very well too, as I still spent the weekends at his parents' home.

We always went to the chapel where we met on Sundays, sometimes two, and even three times in the day. Somehow we enjoyed the evening service the most. It was so nice to stand singing the hymns in harmony together, from the same book, and holding hands while we prayed. I remember wondering at one time, how could I love God with all my heart, as I had said I would during my earlier confirmation, when I also loved this young man at my side, with all of my heart too? It wasn't long before we both decided that if we gave our hearts to each other, then we could jointly be committed to our pledged love for God. That little chapel meant a lot to us, being a big part of our new found lives together. I wish we could have been married there.

Our dates were very simple. We went to a movie once a week, and walked the hills and valleys, when the weather was good. We talked and enjoyed the company of each other in a very "proper" relationship, but we loved every minute of it. We would sit on the hillside looking at the different shapes in the cloud formations and imagine all sorts of things from them. One time we heard a branch crack in a nearby tree, and then followed by some female squeals. It was my youngest sister, who would have been around eleven years old at the time, "spying" on us. Goodness knows how long she had been there, or how many times she had done this before, she never told us. We stopped at each "stile" entrance from one field to another, for hugs and kisses, and talked of our future together and the children we would have one day. We wanted a boy and a girl, of course, in that order. We even had names picked out for them...Michael and Susan. We just loved being with each other so much. He was always so gentle and kind to me. I'm sure that he remembers how there was many a night when the last good-night kiss would cause him to have to run down to the valley, barely making it in time for the last bus home. This meant that he had to walk the last two miles up the hill, but I knew that he really didn't mind at all, at least for most of the time anyway.

A little while later that year, we decided to go to a special portrait studio in the city to get a photograph taken. We didn't have a camera, and neither did many other people in our families at that time. It was quite common for people to go to Jerome's for a photograph. It was a very popular place for all sorts of occasions. We got all dressed up and were very excited as we travelled on the bus, down the valley to Newport. It was almost like a sealing of our relationship as we were photographed together in an official capacity. We only had the one pose taken, but two copies, one for each, of a small 4 by 5 inch black and white photograph. It was such a very nice picture; we both cherished it. They are now preserved in our family album.

We both have very fond memories of the little building situated in one of the towns up at my end of the valley called the Market Hall. This was a room that was probably used as a banquet hall, where some adults would run a Saturday afternoon dance for teenagers. There was a big ball in the centre of the room that was suspended from the ceiling. It was made of tiny little squares of mirror glass. They would turn out the lights and shine a spotlight on the ball. It was set to revolve and shine pretty lights all over the room. We had never seen such a thing before so we thought it was very special. Maybe it seemed special to us because that was when we usually did the slow dances, when we could hold each other close and enjoy the moment together. It was also a learning time for us as well.

There was a mixture of what they called modern dancing as well as the old English ballroom dancing. The instructor would call out the steps and show us how to do it. The ballroom dancing was really nice and we learned quite a few of them. It was very well attended without being rough or rowdy. We were allowed to buy pop, chips and chocolate bars to provide the energy we needed to keep going for a couple of hours of what became quite vigorous at times.
5. Across the Ocean

Sadly, this special time for us only lasted a little while. Somehow, my dad found out during one of our conversations, that my boyfriend had an uncle and aunt in Canada. I had known for quite a while, since my dad had come back from overseas, that he had been looking for a change, a new start in life. We were almost on our way to Australia a few times. Many people were emigrating from Britain in those days. Well, before we really knew what was happening, it seemed that we were all on our way to Canada. It happened so quickly, and seemed to be very exciting at the time. It wasn't long though before we realized that this meant a parting for a while. My dad had decided that it would be better if he went along ahead of us, to find work and a place to live, and we were to follow them as soon as possible.

There were medicals, vaccinations, passports, boat tickets and such, all within a few weeks. My dad had persuaded my boyfriend that maybe he should go ahead too, as it was his family that they would be visiting for the first week or so. This was a very important stage of our lives. We decided that perhaps it would be a good idea to become engaged to be married before he left. So we did. It just seemed like the logical thing to do. There was never a question as to whether or not we would ever get married.... ever since that first date we just both knew somehow that marriage was inevitable. I don't even remember him asking me to marry him, but I do remember the day we bought the ring.

We were in a shopping area in the town of Newport, looking for new clothes for the annual Whitsun celebrations. We never intended to buy a ring that day, at least I hadn't thought of it, but we stopped to look in the window of a famous jewellery store called Samuels. The rings all looked so beautiful but also very expensive. Somehow I knew to not even look at those, I knew he didn't have much money and it really didn't matter how much it cost anyway. The only problem was that even between us, our new clothes money wasn't quite enough for even one of the "less expensive" rings. I remember him plucking up enough courage to actually ask my dad to lend him some money, and got it. I'm sure my dad thought it was to be used for his new clothes. As I tried on the one we had chosen, it was a perfect fit. I was so happy, and in my heart, it was the most beautiful ring I had ever seen. We only bought very few items of clothing that day, and left to go home on the bus, instead of in the car with my parents, as we were both still floating on cloud nine. We went to a movie that night and he officially put the ring on my finger. That was probably when he asked me to marry him. I remember looking at it when the lights came on during the intermission, and seeing the "diamonds" sparkle in the light. When we got home from the movie, we knew that we should get permission from my parents to be engaged because I was only just a little over sixteen. My mother was thrilled because she could see how happy we were. We weren't too sure of what my dad would say though; he was the strict one in the family, so we asked my mother to ask him for us. Of course he gave us his permission and it became official, just a few weeks before they both sailed for Canada.

It was such a new thing at my school to have a student who was engaged. I remember having to request special permission from the Head Mistress to be able to wear my ring. The school uniform did not allow for jewellery of any sort to be worn at school. She looked at my ring, said how beautiful it was, and then she congratulated me, smiled, and gave me her permission to wear it. I didn't realize at the time that she was being very gracious in her comments about its beauty. Anyone who was aware of such things, as I'm sure she was, could easily have recognized it as being an inexpensive imitation diamond. We had no money to buy anything better, but it was very real to us, and that was all that mattered. It was a few years later before a real diamond ring replaced it. The one I am still wearing today.

Time seemed to go by so quickly between the talk of going to Canada and the time to actually leave. It was cheaper to go by boat than by air in those days so the tickets were booked on the Empress of Scotland. This was a huge ocean liner of about 26 thousand tons. It was due to sail from Liverpool, England on May 25th. I don't know how it came to be on that date though because that was also my fiancé's eighteenth birthday. I remember the goodbye to all our friends and a special farewell at the chapel where we had become members and well loved by all. He was presented with a lovely black leather bound Bible to take with him on the journey. There were tears all over the place.

My dad had arranged for them to go early up to Liverpool by train, so that they could spend that day and night close to the docks for the early morning sail. The train left Pontypool station at about two in the morning for the trip to Liverpool. We were all there to see them off. I remember waving until the train was out of sight with my heart just breaking at having to part and for such a long way to go. My mother and I got home tired and sad, hoping to get some sleep before morning. Somehow we got through the day that followed wishing that we had all gone together instead of us "girls" following later. It was just after dinner when a knock came at the kitchen door...I opened it and was shocked to see my boyfriend standing there. I didn't know what to think. I was so pleased to see him yet wondering, why... what... where... He came into the kitchen and was just beside himself. We sat and listened as he told us an incredible story.

When he and my dad arrived in Liverpool, they had looked for a place to have lunch. My dad had ordered fish and chips and got a small fish bone stuck in his throat. It seemed that while the doctor was helping my dad, my young fiancé was out in the waiting room getting cold feet about the trip to Canada. In almost panic, he ran from the hospital all the way to the station. It just so happened that the train for Pontypool, Wales, was in the station waiting to leave. He ran to get the ticket and was on his way home before my dad even knew that he had left. Then as the train arrived in Pontypool, he took the connecting bus to go to his parents' home. But...call it fate, an act of God, or whatever you wish, he got off that bus at the valley junction and changed to another bus going in the opposite direction. He had chosen to come up to my house instead of going home.

We found out later that his father didn't really want him to go to Canada, and if he had gone home, that would have been the end of it. He was the youngest in the family, the only son, and had never been away from home before. They were a very close-knit family. He was loved very dearly and missed so very much. Even though he was to be staying at the home of his mother's brother, they barely knew each other. It was a really big move for someone so young.

So now, where was my dad and what were we going to do? After much talking and tears, it was decided that my uncle, who had a car, would drive him back up to Liverpool and try to find my dad. By now it was late at night again and the boat was due to leave early the next morning. In the meantime of course, my dad had been waiting at the hotel and looking for him. I'm not sure how it all came about but they found each other and they were on the boat before it set sail. He spent his birthday on the ship to Canada.

We wrote to each other every day and I would hurry home from school to see if there was a letter for me. He hardly missed a day. Most of them were very sad. He missed us all so much and still wasn't too sure that he wanted to stay in Canada.

He was able to get a good job fairly quickly and seemed to like it. His cousin, who was the same age, tried hard to make him feel welcome and took him around everywhere in his car with him. That was a very long summer for us all.

I had a really sore arm from my smallpox vaccination. It was swollen, red and hot from my shoulder to my elbow and so very painful. It was during this time that I had to study and sit my final exams from high school. Needless to say I was far from being able to perform at my usual standard and I didn't do nearly as well as I should have. It was disappointing to me, but I had done my best under the circumstances. I have to admit that my thoughts were almost totally on Canada during that summer.

We soon learned that my dad had found a job too and an apartment that was very close to the house where my fiancé was living with his uncle and aunt. They were all set for us to follow them when we had to tell them that we were having trouble getting tickets for our trip. There was a crisis in the Suez Canal area at that time, and all oceanic vessels were called into the docks until it was over. My mother had sold up most of our furniture and stuff that we couldn't take and we were living in our little rented bungalow with bare minimums.

It was October before we finally received our tickets to sail on the Empress of Britain. We had our first thanksgiving dinner on that ship, half way across the ocean. We had missed a few meals prior to that one though when the ocean was very rough coming through the Irish Sea. It caused us to be a whole day late at the end of the journey. Sometimes the waves were very high, washing up on the glass deck about twenty feet up, making it rather scary at times too. We now found out what it was like to be seasick. It seemed that we were fine as long as we didn't smell the food on the way to the dining room. We found out that we could walk while holding our noses until we got there. The dining room was beautiful and the food was very well cooked and served as if we were in a fancy restaurant.

Then there was the overwhelming time when I stood out on the top deck, looked all around in every direction, to see only water, as far as the eye could see. Then the very next day it was the same again. This made me feel very small and I realized how big the world must be if this was just one small part of it. Most of the trip was very good. We really enjoyed being on this big floating hotel.

Coming down the St. Lawrence River was so calm and beautiful. We could see all the little cottages with white siding and coloured roof tiles. The trees were so lovely showing the fall colors blending in with the radiance of the sun. Everything looked so clean and so pretty, we were just awestruck. We loved Canada immediately. Of course, the fact that we were soon to meet our men had much to do with our overwhelming sense of joy. It would be so good to be together again after what seemed like an eternity.

How different was my landing on Canadian soil compared to his. I had my parents and my two sisters plus the man I was going to marry and with whom I would spend the rest of my life. I wanted so much for him to be happy too. I was sure that now we were together again, all would be well. We could really make this Canada our home and raise our children here in this pretty, clean, very large country.
6. Everything New

We had a long train ride from Montreal down to Toronto. It seemed like forever. It was the last leg of our journey to be re-united after five months of waiting. When we arrived at Union Station, our joy was complete...tears and hugs, hugs and more tears. We were all so happy to be together again. His uncle and cousin drove us all to their home where we met his family, and a lovely meal was waiting for us. They made us feel so very welcome and seemed happy that we were finally all together again.

My dad took us to our apartment. I was very pleased to see how close it was to the house where my fiancé was staying. The apartment was on the top floor of a three-storey building. It was on the main road running through that part of the city and very close to a major highway. At night we realized just how close. The noise kept us awake for the first few nights until we got more used to it. The weather was so warm for October. They told us that it was their Indian summer. It was nice to see so much sunshine.

Soon it was back to work for the men, time for my sisters to get to school, and for me to find work. My youngest sister had a very hard time adjusting to the new lifestyle and new friends. She missed her old ones so much that she was determined to go back to Wales as soon as she could. She was only twelve years old at the time. My other sister was a little older though, and she settled in much more easily. I didn't have to look very far for work. Just up the road within a few minutes' walk from our apartment, was a bank with a sign in the window saying, "Clerk Wanted." Math was my favourite subject and I did well in that one at school so I applied for the job. I was so happy and surprised to be called in to work on the following Monday morning.

It was my first ever job and I was scared and happy all at the same time. The employees were very good to me but they teased me about my obviously strong Welsh accent. I took it as being funny and we all got along fine. They would send me to walk to the local restaurant every morning for their much-needed coffee. I had to remember how many were to be black, with or without sugar etc. I brought them back with the lids all marked telling me which was which. I carried them on a large cardboard tray, at arm's length, because I couldn't stand the smell of coffee. We had only ever drunk tea in Wales. The same trip was repeated in the afternoon. This went on all through the winter too, until they bought themselves a coffee machine for the office.

Other than being the coffee "gopher", they had me adding up lists of cheques on an adding machine and calculating interest and writing balances in savings books for the customers. After a while, I was told that I needed to get some experience with the money so I was taught to roll coin, using the small flat sheets of paper. They would order the coin from the head office, all loose and in large bags. Some days I would roll as much as five hundred dollars' worth of coin of all denominations. Needless to say, I became very good at it, quickly. Soon it was time to learn to count the bills and start learning the duties of a teller. I liked this very much and I did well at the position. It wasn't too long before I became the head teller. I worked in other areas too and I became the supervisor of the whole savings department. I loved my job and was very happy there for quite a while.

My fiancé liked his job too. It was only a little further down the road from the bank. He had saved enough money to buy his cousin's car when he was buying a new one for himself. Having never had a car before, we thought it was great. My dad taught him to drive and before long we were out in it all over the place.

We had been in Canada about three months when one afternoon, he called me at work saying that he was going home early because he was feeling sick and his stomach was hurting. I looked for some antacid tablets when I got home and took them to him. When I got there, his aunt told me that he was at the doctor's office. It was appendicitis and very acute. He was to go straight to the hospital for an operation. I remember waiting in the waiting room with his uncle, watching the clock and praying that he would be okay. I was beginning to realize how precious he was to me, all over again. He had never been in the hospital before and it was hard for all of us. He recovered fairly quickly though and was back to work in good time.

We seemed to adjust to the Canadian way of life very well. I remember when we came to our first Halloween night. We were not familiar with the custom and my parents didn't buy enough candy, so my younger sister was going out collecting it, in her costume and bringing it home for my mother to give back out to the other children. We all thought it was rather funny. Oddly enough, she did too.

Our first winter was something special. We loved the dry snow and the beautiful sunshine even though it was cold. We went for winter picnics at one of the many conservation areas around us and we learned to skate on a frozen pond nearby. None of us had ever even owned a pair of skates before. It was quite an experience, especially for me. I took a long time to learn how, and never did do it very well. I loved the fresh air and being outdoors though, even if it was only for walks.

The following summer we loved going to the beach and sitting around the campfire on the warm starry nights. It was like what we had seen in the movies, something that I never dreamed we would ever experience. We went fishing for the first time in a small boat with two friends. It seemed okay coming all those miles on a very large ocean liner, but in a small fishing boat I was scared. I don't remember catching any fish but we had a good time. I have a photograph taken of us sitting in that little boat wearing grey dress pants and a little suit jacket with a black velvet collar. Not exactly what I would wear on a fishing trip today of course, but it seemed quite appropriate for me at that time. Something like the dresses we used to wear on the beach back in Wales. They seemed appropriate at the time too.

I finally learned to swim that summer, as I taught myself in the shallow edges of the shore of Lake Simcoe. I'm still not a good swimmer but at least I can have fun in the pool, even if I do only stay in the shallow end. I like to be able to put my feet on the bottom whenever I feel I need to. In Wales, there were only outdoor public swimming pools and they were never heated so swimming didn't appeal to me at all. Even now, I love to have the water warm whether it's outdoors or inside. I guess I'm just chicken when it comes to shivering, both in the pool and as I get out of it.

We liked going for a drive in the country. We would park the car beside the road and walk like we used to before in Wales, but it was never quite the same. The sunshine was nice though and we loved the warm weather. When we were out in the country, he would teach me to drive. We used to have learning permits for a period of 365 days back then and I took the whole year to learn how to drive. He was a good teacher, but I was very slow because I didn't drive on a regular basis. I also tried to drive on empty parking lots of stores and other commercial buildings when they were closed. I did actually pass the driving test, eventually.

As time went on, we realized that we should be saving for our trip to Wales. When we left, we had promised his parents that we would be back for a holiday in two years. That time was coming up very quickly. We left our car in the parking lot and walked wherever we could to save on the gas money. We had restricted our social life to the bare minimum to save as much as we could. That winter, on Saturday nights, even though it used some gas, we would sit in the car, all bundled up and listen to the ice hockey games on the car radio. We were real Toronto Maple Leaf fans in those days; they were very good too. My parents never watched the hockey on the TV but sometimes we would watch it at his uncle's house. Most times though we just enjoyed being alone, and being cold in the car gave us a good reason to "cwtch" (cuddle) close to each other.

Early into the spring, we finally had enough money saved to book the tickets with the Cunard Line boat called the Saxonia. It was to leave from Montreal at the end of May. We both applied for two months leave from our jobs so that we would have six weeks over there, and two weeks travelling time. This all worked out really well. My future in-laws were very excited that the time had come when we would keep our promise and they would see us again. I was wondering how my parents would feel about us going over on the boat like that, with us not being married yet. I guess they just had to trust us.

It turned out to be no problem at all. We were booked into a four-birth cabin, each with three other passengers in the same one. It was funny actually, because as soon as our cabin mates found out what the situation was, they went out of their way to make sure that there was never a time when we would be alone in either cabin. It was a big joke to them. The meals were in two shifts, and of course they made sure that at least one person was back in the rooms at the same time as we were. We really didn't mind at all. It was a good plan actually and we really enjoyed our quiet moments out on the top deck in the evenings, under the stars in the warm summer breezes. The weather was perfect and neither of us missed a meal or experienced a hint of seasickness. It was a very happy time for the both of us, but especially for him of course with the excitement of seeing his family again.

When we got to Wales, everyone was so pleased to see us and was very glad to know that we had settled down okay and were getting along so well. Of course my future family was thrilled to have us home again. Their house was rather small and there was no room for us to sleep in separate bedrooms. Again, it worked out very well. They had arranged for him to sleep with his dad in the one room, and I slept with his mother in the other one. How kind it was of them to give of themselves that way so that we could spend those six weeks in their home. I often thought since that only in Wales and during those years would parents ever do that.

We realized afterwards, when we got home, that we should have been married before we left Canada. What a wonderful honeymoon the trip would have been. Oh well, even though they say hindsight is always one hundred per cent, we really couldn't afford to do both. We had saved so long and hard for the trip as it was. While we were there though, we did go to visit the same jewellers again where we had bought my ring two years earlier. This time we had enough money to buy a "real" one, almost exactly like the other one. Now I had a real diamond engagement ring.

We really enjoyed seeing all our friends and families again. But very soon, as all good things do, our trip was coming to an end. The time had gone by very quickly. Before we left however, we found that couldn't decide whether to have a really simple service and get married in the little chapel where we had met; or to wait until we got back to Canada and save some more money. I really wanted to have my sisters as bridesmaids and my father to walk me down the aisle. But that was being selfish on my part, because his parents would not be there if we were married in Canada. They decided for us, however, and very kindly told us that we should be married in Canada, in a proper wedding when we had saved more money.

They were such precious people. I loved them dearly and now it was time to say goodbye again, but we promised to make another trip very soon or to have them come over to visit us. There were many tears and it was very hard to leave them again. It helped us though to know that we were making the trip together this time and we had each other.

Travelling back to Canada was very much the same as it was on the way over to Wales. It was lovely weather, good food, three cabin mates each and the same fun and games as with the other ones. We spent another lovely week on this large floating hotel.
7. Wedding Bells

When we arrived home it was very hard to even think of having to scrimp and save again to get enough money to get married. How much did we really need anyway? The wheels were turning in our little minds as to how much, or how little we really had to save. How much longer did we want to wait before we could get married? It seemed like we had been engaged for such a long time already.

During that summer while we were in Wales, my dad had started to build a bungalow on the property that he had bought earlier in the spring. We were so surprised to see that it was half finished already. They had worked very hard and were hoping to move in at the end of August. My dad had worked for several years as a carpenter in Wales so he was very good at building houses. The only thing that bothered us was that it was so far away from their apartment. They had chosen a spot in the country because the land was cheaper and they didn't like the busy city very much. But this place was at least a 45-minute drive, one way, from where we worked and currently lived.

We spent the next few weeks helping them to build the house and to make it liveable for when the lease would be up for the apartment. It was amusing as we looked back, recalling the time when we decided that we should sleep up there on the Saturday night so that we could get an early start on the next day. The framework was up and the roof was on, we were applying the fibreglass insulation to the interior walls. As it grew dark, we tried to find a comfortable place to put our sleeping bags on the floor. My fiancé decided that he was going to sleep in the bathtub. It was about two o'clock in the early morning when he woke us all up because he was in agony. He had chosen what he thought would be a lovely soft mattress for the bathtub. A large new piece of brown paper covered insulation. He had no idea that this was glass wool material, or that the covering would not protect him from its awful itch. That's a classic demonstration of what it is to learn the hard way. He had great respect for that stuff after that, I can tell you. Poor guy, he had an awful time trying to get rid of it from his body. He couldn't get in the shower until he got home on Sunday night. I'm sure he never forgot the incident either.

During this time, we were wondering how we could get enough money for a wedding, when they were putting all the money that they had into the new house. We were also thinking that we really didn't like the idea of me having to live so far away if I continued to live with my parents when the house was finished. That seemed like the cruncher right there. We shopped around for prices of things. Added up the details of how much it would really cost for us to get married. We knew we wouldn't have much, but we figured out that we could manage it all if we kept it very low key. We decided to be married on August 30th, just before my parents were due to move out of the apartment.

I was paying room and board to my dad; my fiancé was paying the same amount to his uncle. If we added these two amounts together it was enough for rent for a basement apartment and food for two people. Then we saw an amazing sale advertisement in a furniture store flyer for a three-room group setting. It seemed that along with the furniture, they were adding bonuses of supplementary items to go with each room. With the kitchen table and chairs there was cutlery, dishes, glasses and linen from bathroom towels to potholders. A sheet set and pillows were added to the bedroom suite and even a pretty blue blanket. There were end tables and lamps to match the sofa and chair set and even coasters for them. All this was for a very reasonable price and we could even pay for it on a monthly basis if we had to.

I had been collecting pieces of a lovely new line of stainless steel cookware and I had the whole set now. The people at his work presented him with a very nice electric frying pan and I had several small kitchen items from the folks at the bank. We shopped around for a place to live and found a basement apartment with a very nice couple, not very far from where we both worked. Yes, it was being rented for the amount of money that we had both been paying out for our room and board. This of course, meant that I would not have to be living way out in the country with my parents after all.

Now, what about the wedding? Well I liked to sew and was pretty good at it. I had made lots of clothes for myself already. So I bought some material, white satin, tulle and many yards of lace and made my wedding dress and veil. It took me three weeks to make it but it was lovely. I also made the dresses for my two sisters to be bridesmaids from blue and green taffeta and organdie. There was a little six-year-old girl who lived in the house next to the one my dad was building, so I made another dress for her in yellow to be my flower girl. I must have been sewing all day and all night. But I did get some help from my mother and my sisters. My fiancé had chosen a new blue suit with a matching shirt and tie. His best man, a close friend, did the same. I don't remember if we even had any ushers but I know for sure there were no tuxedos.

A dear lady, who worked with me from the bank, had told me of a greenhouse belonging to her mother-in-law where she could probably get me some flowers for a good price. We decided to buy some fancy paper doilies and make little bouquets for the girls and a larger one for me. She suggested roses and carnations which was very acceptable to me. I didn't realize at the time how very wonderful this offer would turn out to be.

We had no photographer, but we asked several people to take some pictures for us. My mother arranged for the wedding cake to be made by a friend of hers. The reception was to be in a little restaurant near the location of my parent's new home and it was to be a lunch meal around 12:30 pm. A salad and cold cuts buffet with tomato juice and ginger ale for twenty-five people.

There was a little community church across the road from dad's new bungalow that looked almost exactly like the little chapel we had left behind in Wales, especially on the inside. Up until that time, we had great difficulty trying to find a church that was anywhere close to being the same as that little chapel. We were so pleased. It seemed to be the final touch that we needed to complete the wedding arrangements. We planned for an 11 o'clock wedding to coincide with the noon lunch. All this was put together from the middle of July to the end of August and my parents were due to be out of the apartment by September 1st.

We ended up with ten dollars left in the bank on the day that we were married. There was no mention of a honeymoon. We knew for sure that there was no money for that. We had to be back to work on the Tuesday after the Labour Day long week-end anyway. We had used up all our vacation time already in our trip to Wales.

Wow! Was this possible or not? It all sounds so crazy now, but believe it or not, it really did happen, just like that.

As it happened, August 30th turned out to be a very memorable day for us in many ways. The morning started out as being very hot and humid. The Fahrenheit temperature was in the high eighties even at nine o'clock in the morning. I had been up since at six o'clock already putting the finishing touches to my sister's dress. We had arranged for all four of us ladies to get our hair done early that morning. When we arrived at the hairdresser's however, she was not there. She told us later that she had never overslept in her life before. Well, you can imagine what followed. Or can you? I still don't know how we ever made it to that church on time. To top it all off, do you remember how far away we were from my dad's new bungalow? Yes, forty-five minutes by car, at least.

As the time slipped by, I was beginning to think that we would never make it. We hurried home from the hairdresser's to get ourselves dressed. It was almost chaos. There were four of us using one bathroom and so very little time. With no air-conditioning in the apartment it was so very hot and humid. It seems that I had others helping me with my veil and zippers and such. It all seemed a blur. I can't even remember looking in the mirror to see if I looked "all together" before getting out of the building.

I was so happy that my friend from the bank had helped me to make the flower bouquets on the night before and we had put them in the fridge to stay fresh. I had one dozen each of lovely red roses and white carnations. She had provided two beautiful multi-colour rose corsages for my mother and his aunt to match their dresses. There were carnation buttonholes for the men, as well as the three bouquets for the girls and she had given them all to us as a wedding gift. I was so thankful for her kindness to me. As I look back now, I am thankful too that there was no-one there waiting to take photographs. That would have been a real nightmare.

Finally, my mother picked up the cake and travelled to the church with my soon-to-be husband. My sisters left in another car with the best man, I think, to pick up the little flower girl on the way. At last, my future uncle in his lovely big car picked up my dad and me and drove us to the church. I think that was when I finally realized that this was my wedding day. Even though I was completely frazzled, I was so happy. He was a very good driver but I'm sure that he was far from keeping within the speed limit on that trip because I was amazed to find that I arrived with one minute to spare. One minute to stop long enough at the door of the church, to catch a deep breath and start walking down the aisle. I wasn't nervous at all, just so thankful to have actually made it and even on time. I've been to weddings since when we had to wait quite a while for the bride. Punctuality is not one of my strong points either; it must have been sheer determination along with the grateful co-operation of everyone else in the frenzy of that morning.

The service was simple, but very nice. Everything went as it was supposed to go and we were on our way out of the church as husband and wife. As soon as we started to go through the door however, we were met with very large raindrops. This was the beginning of a badly needed thunderstorm to clear up the dense, humid air. Everyone started running to the cars as we told them to head for the little restaurant down the road. No one was going to be taking any photographs in that weather for sure. When we got there, the sky was black and the rain was just pouring down. The lunch was already prepared in advance so the change in schedule was not a problem. We had a very nice reception lunch that lasted about an hour. By the time it was finished, so was the storm. The sun started to shine and the sky was blue. It was so much better than when we had left the apartment that morning, the humidity had gone with the rain. We all went back to the church and had some very nice photographs taken in the lovely sunshine.

It was sad not having his parents, two sisters and their families there to join in the celebration with us. We missed them very much. They had sent cards and telegrams along with best wishes and loving words of encouragement.

We had the long drive back again down to the apartment. They blew the horns of the cars almost all the way. What a noise! My parents hadn't packed everything yet, they still had another day to go, but most of their belongings had already been moved to the bungalow anyway. They still had a few friends to the apartment to celebrate that evening. My sisters had made a "just married" sign for the back of our car and attached it with old tin cans to the bumper. They were all going to watch us leave so we wouldn't be able take them off the car until later on down the highway. I soon changed out of my wedding dress and it was late afternoon when we left for Niagara Falls. No one knew that we hadn't booked into a hotel so we let them think that we were off on our honeymoon for a few days. Even though it was only a long weekend, we couldn't afford to stay there for even one night without any money. We did go to Niagara Falls though, and we stayed until midnight to see the lights on the water. It was lovely. The evening was warm and we were so very happy. Everything was perfect.

We had already paid rent for our new little apartment and we had put it all nice and tidy when the furniture had arrived a few days earlier. We had even put some food in the refrigerator knowing that we would be spending our "special expensive honeymoon" there. It was sort of neat in a way because everyone thought that we were still in Niagara and the next morning I was able to make his first breakfast in our own little kitchen. It didn't matter that we couldn't stay in the hotel. We were together and in our own "home" at last, and that's all we needed.

The apartment was very simple and bare minimums, but we didn't even notice what was missing at all. Well we did notice that we had only a small hotplate instead of a stove, but the electric frying pan from his workmates was put to good use. The landlord's laundry tubs became our kitchen sink, and the bar was now our kitchen.

We stayed there for a few months until just before Christmas and paid off the cost of the furniture. By that time, we had even saved up enough money to buy a TV and now we figured that we could afford to live in a regular apartment. It wasn't difficult to find the place where we wanted to live; there were lots of vacant apartments around where we both worked.

As of December 1st. we moved. It was a lovely little one-bedroom place on the bottom floor of a three-storey building. Our living room window looked out to the street level where there was a bus stop at the curb. The kitchen was all equipped with fridge and stove and of course a lovely sink with a large counter top and lots of cupboards. It was perfect.

We were so close to the bank where I worked that I was able to come home for lunch and prepare most of our supper for the oven. Every Saturday morning we cleaned right through and did the laundry in the place provided in the utility room. All I needed were some quarters and the detergent. So very different from the way my mother did the laundry during her first year of marriage. I felt very blessed and thankful for what we had.

Only a year had gone by when the lease was up and we had decided that we would move a little further down the road. We found a place where the apartments were a little nicer and on a higher floor. We didn't realize at the beginning of the previous year, how much that bus stop at the ground level would bother us. So our second Christmas was spent in the new place on the third floor. It was closer to my husband's work place, but I couldn't walk home to lunch now. Again, we were very happy there at first, and it was very nice.

After a few months, my husband's brother-in-law came out to Canada from Wales and had brought his brother along with him. They stayed at my parents' home for a while and drove to work with my dad. They all worked in the city even though my dad still lived out in the country. Their families were to follow later, just as we did, when they found work and accommodation for them.

One winter morning, while they were looking for a place to live in the city, they called in to visit us and to thaw out after the long journey. I remember that we had been shopping for food when some oranges rolled off the kitchen counter onto the floor. Immediately there was a bumping noise on our floor from the apartment below us. My dad was still being protective and felt that he should look into this problem for us. He went to speak to the tenants below and told them not to be so tough on the young couple above. Maybe they had been troubled with previous neighbours being very noisy but we didn't know who they were. It was nice to think that he was looking out for us. We never did hear from our downstairs neighbours again.

Nothing much happened during our stay at that apartment but we were ready to move once again when the lease was up. I don't remember why. I think it was the location again this time. We found another even closer to work and this one had a balcony and music piped in through some special wall speakers if we wanted it. There was also a security system at the front door. Now this was a lovely apartment. Again, we spent our Christmas in yet another place.
8. A Home of Our Own

This next year was much more eventful. Our brother-in-law was able to bring his family over from Wales and there was a lovely re-union for us all. My sister had finished high school and was visiting us quite often as she attended teacher's college in the city. We had been persuaded by my dad to buy a piece of property in the same little sub-division where they lived. He hoped to build another bungalow soon, for us this time.

It seemed that we weren't becoming parents very quickly so we decided I would continue working and try and follow up on his offer. We had very little money left after buying the land, and we had also bought our first new car recently. We found out from the bank that we could build the house on a mortgage plan and receive the cash in stages, according to the progress of the building. This worked out very well. It was so exciting when we saw the large backhoe digging out the basement on my birthday, just before our third anniversary.

Of course we still had to wait until the lease was up on our current apartment so we travelled up on weekends trying to help in any way we could to get the house going. We hammered nails in the floors, walls and roof during the warmth of that September. I particularly remember when we put all the nails in the floor. It was a very hot day, so I made sure I wore a big hat to keep the sun off my head and covered my arms and legs with lotion. Later that evening however, I was appalled to see and feel the amount of sunburn on my face. I didn't understand. My head was facing the floor for most of the day and I did have my hat on. But that was the problem. The bright new wooden planks were reflecting the sun up into my face, just as if I had spent the day in a boat on the lake. I guess I learned the hard way too, just as my fiancé had done with the bathtub ordeal earlier. He still had a few more adventures coming too.

One of these was when we were ready to put the drainage system around the base of the outside foundation walls. This had already been dug out and small tiles needed to be laid down. The night before however, we had a very heavy thunderstorm and this little trough had now become full of mud. He put on his rubbers and started to try setting down the tiles. Well, not only were his feet getting stuck in the mud but also he was stepping on all kinds of hidden frogs just under the water. Some were trying to jump out of his way, but many others were victims of his boots. He said that the very thought of it even was enough to turn his stomach. He very quickly decided that it was better to wait until the mud had dried up.

After many hours of hard work, we were able to close in all the walls and have the roof on it just in time before the winter started. We were even able to get the men needed to have it all bricked up on the outside too.

When November 30th came around, the lease was up again but our little bungalow wasn't ready. We moved into a spare bedroom at my parents' home so that we could be closer to continue working on the house. The extra money that we would not have to pay out in rent was to help us to finish it earlier. We had the furnace installed and put our furniture in the basement. Specialized craftsmen were hired to do all the work that needed such skills. I remember watching the men install those long narrow strips of hardwood for the living room floor. What a job that was. Then a little later we were able to watch as a very skilled craftsman cut and measure all the lovely field-stone for our fireplace and see it all fit into place. The plasterer made fancy patterns around the light fixtures on the ceiling and a pretty moulding all around the tops of the walls.

Before long we were able to move into it even though the plaster was barely dry. We laid the vinyl floor tiles in the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. We helped my dad with all the doors, trim and kitchen cupboards. We continued to work on the inside with all the finishing touches and the final inspection passed the house in March 1962. This was such a happy day for us. It was so nice to be in our own finished house after all the work was done. It made it all so worthwhile. We were very grateful to my dad for pushing us to make the decision to build and for being such a big help to us in the actual construction.

The work wasn't quite over yet though. There was painting to be done, inside and out. We had three bedrooms so we made one blue, one yellow and one pink. The long driveway needed lots more gravel and the grass needed to be laid. Now that was a feat in itself. We had hired a man to dig the well for our water supply and we thought it was great. It wasn't. We seemed to use hardly any water during those summer months when it dried up on us. We waited for the water to start running back in, but to no avail. How on earth were we going to lay grass on such a huge lawn with no water? The ground was so hard and like clay. We ordered the grass and hoped that it would rain. After carefully laying it all as best we could, we were all so dirty, dusty and dry ourselves and the grass was in just the same condition. Someone came up with a brilliant idea. Hopefully, if we could borrow a few empty 45-gallon drums from our neighbours, we could take them on a trailer down to the village pond and maybe get enough water to keep the grass alive. So, after lots of hand hauling buckets being filled from the drums, we finally had to give in to exhaustion and the falling darkness. The grass did survive through some miracle but it took a few more years before it actually looked like a lawn.
9. Very Sad, Very Happy

Now that our house was finished, we realized that we had room for my husband's parents to come and visit us. Earlier that year, we were very upset to learn that she had to undergo major cancer surgery. The doctor had said that a vacation would be good for her, so we made all the arrangements for them to stay with us for three months. It was June, July and August. We had a wonderful time. I took the time off from work and my husband had his summer vacation for as long as he could. We took them to all the highlights around the province and they enjoyed it very much. We showed them the church where we were married and the places where we worked and such. They loved being in our little bungalow and were very pleased to see that we had done so well in the short time since we were married. It was all over too quickly though and soon it was time for them to go home again.

It was the summer of 1964 when we heard that my dear mother-in-law was going through another bout with cancer. This time there wasn't very much that could be done for her. In the December of that year, we were told that we should make a visit to see her as soon as we could, probably for the last time. It was very devastating for us as we made arrangements to fly over to Wales. When we arrived, she was in the hospital down the valley and we went to see her. It was such a pity that it couldn't have been a more joyous occasion. I don't think she knew that she was dying, so no one mentioned it. We could only stay for a short while. We had taken time off from work without pay and the trip was expensive because it hadn't been planned ahead of time.

I remember that it was December 14th when we had to say goodbye to her, knowing that we would never see her alive again. By this time, she must have known that things were not good because of the urgency of our trip and not being able to even stay for Christmas. She never let us know how so very sad she must have been as she gave us her usual warm, loving hug, and that smile that never seemed to leave her face. Such a brave wonderful lady! Such a very sad day! We didn't want to leave.

Weeks passed by and they sent her home with nothing more to be done for her. In an attempt to try and bridge the gap between us, my father-in-law mailed a cassette tape to us which included a small portion of the message from her. She told us of a beautiful room in which she had been at the hospital during her stay there. She described it as a lovely garden with beautiful music playing and such a wonderful sense of peace there. My father-in-law had inquired at the hospital to see this room. The doctors and nurses were baffled. They said that no such room existed, yet she was so sure of it, and described it in such detail on the tape. Some said it was hallucinations under the drugs, but my father-in-law said that it happened quite a while before she was under the really strong medication. He believes that she saw a brief glimpse of heaven and that's why she was not afraid and displayed so much peace of mind and courage. She loved God very much. I know that for sure. I'm also sure that a few months later on, in February 1965, she went again to that lovely garden and is enjoying that beautiful music and peace. I will never forget that lovely lady. I wish I could have spent more time with her.

Well it was now early spring and we decided that we would put our names in to adopt a baby. There had been several times when I was so sure that I was pregnant but it was only false hope. I was getting so upset about not being a mother. We had both been checked over several times by the doctors and there seemed to be no reason for this plight. By July our names were on the list with the local Children's Aid Society and we were told to get the baby's room ready. A few months earlier, I had asked to be transferred to a bank closer to home. I figured that I could stay until we were told that they had our baby ready for us. Our income was rather small and we would need all we could get to be debt free before the baby arrived and I could be a full time mother.

We were only on the list for a week or so, when I fell down the stairs at the bank and broke my right elbow. I didn't just break it, I smashed it. I spent a week in the hospital after sixteen stitches were used to sew up the incision required to clean out the chips and reshape the bone. It was in a soft cast until the stitches were removed and then in a regular one for the next six weeks. I had never realized before just how much I needed my right hand and arm. It was a very trying time for me and of course I couldn't work.

It was sort of nice being home though, getting the room ready for the baby to come. I almost forgot about not being pregnant for a while. I had lots of time to rest and I was feeling that being home all the time was nice. Time was going by and it was time to get the cast removed. It turned out to be just in time for when I was to be matron of honour at my other sister's wedding at the beginning of September. My arm needed much physiotherapy and looked like I would never get it straight again. It was very painful trying to get it moving again and the scar was so ugly.

The worker from the Children's Aid came to see how we were coming along with the baby's room and clothes etc. I tried hard to make sure that she didn't see the state of my arm but it was hard to hide its obvious incapacity.

I never expected to get the baby so quickly anyway but she wasn't too pleased about continuing with the procedures until it was much improved. As she left that day, I assured her that it would be better very soon. I worked hard at trying to get it back to some sense of being normal again and I was ready to try going back to work. I had only been back for about two weeks when we got the long awaited phone call to say that they had a baby for us. We were so excited. We couldn't wait for ten o'clock the next day. Was it a boy or a girl? What would he/she be like? I was going to be a mother at last. I was so very happy.

It was October 12, 1965 when we first met our dear little baby girl. She was only six weeks old and about nine pounds in weight. She was crying because her breakfast was late. The lady asked me if I would like to give her the bottle. She was all dressed in pink and white. She looked like a beautiful living doll. We signed all the papers and received so many instructions regarding her schedule and formula etc. They told us that we could take her home with us that morning if we wanted to keep her and to expect a visit in a few weeks' time to see how we were doing. We were so happy to have this dear little child as our very own. As we took her in the car, she looked so cute in her little pink bunny-eared bunting bag I sat looking at her all the way home. Of course our families and neighbours just couldn't wait to see her. They gave me a baby shower and I showed her off as any proud mother would.

I was so pleased and excited, I watched her so closely, especially when she was awake. She didn't sleep through the night for quite a while, so I was up giving her a bottle at two o'clock in the morning and then again at six. My days started early but were happy and exciting. She was a good baby and slept well in between her bottles.

Before very long she was due for a visit to our doctor for a check-up and to get her first immunization needle at three months old. As the doctor and I were saying about how lovely she was, he said I looked rather tired. I told him that it was because she didn't sleep through the night yet. I knew that I was due for a check-up soon anyway so I made the earliest appointment. Maybe my iron was low or something. I was feeling a little drained".

Well now, you would never believe what he told me was the reason why I looked so tired. He was smiling all over his face, pleased as punch, as he finished my examination and announced to me that I was three months pregnant. He was sure, and said that when she was nine months old, I would be delivering my baby. I was actually pregnant! After all those years of waiting, it was true; I was really pregnant. I left his office with my head in a whirl. I still couldn't believe it. I had been so busy taking care of my little daughter that I had completely forgotten about everything else, including me.

It seemed that during the time when I was home from work with my broken elbow, I had been forced to rest and not having to travel to work every day must have made me relaxed enough to get pregnant. Also because I was getting my adopted baby, I had forgotten about my obsession to be a mother. Anyway, whatever it was that made it happen didn't matter anymore. I really was pregnant at last after being married for seven years. When I got home and told my husband, he was just as surprised and happy as I was. It actually took quite a while for it to sink in, for both of us, but of course it soon became quite evident. Our families were so pleased for us too.

The next six months went by as usual for a new mother. A little difficult at times though, with a big tummy and another baby to care for at the same time. That must have been about the hottest May I had ever remembered, at least it seemed that way to me. My husband was so very good with us and helped me whenever he could. I spent my first Mother's Day with one baby in my arms and one in my tummy. I felt that there was no question of my motherhood when my husband gave me my first Mother's Day card and a lovely electric mixer for the kitchen. I guess he felt that I was going to need all the help I could get now.

It was around this time that my father-in-law had come to spend another visit with us, so he was at our home on that night of June 8th when our baby was born. I was wishing that my mother-in-law could have been there to see him too. Yes, it was a baby boy, just over eight pounds. A really big one for my little body I can tell you. But I soon forgot about the labour when I was able to hold him and take him home. I was so happy to be able to present a son to my husband after all that time of waiting. It had worked out well too, as now we had a girl and a boy, just as we had planned when we were still in Wales. We really didn't care that the order had been switched around a bit. The girl was supposed to have been second.

He wasn't quite such an easy baby to care for. He was awake more than he slept and seemed to cry so very much in between. He was always hungry, at least that what I had figured. I think now that he had a tummy ache for most of the time. Probably the formula didn't agree with him. He was also very sensitive to noises. It was quite a struggle with these two little ones being so close together in ages. We had the two cribs in the same bedroom for quite a while so that I could keep my eye on the one baby while I was caring for the other. But we were very happy with the little family that God had given to us.

It was exactly two years later when I realized that another baby was on the way. I was sure of it myself this time and very pleasantly surprised after having had to wait so long for my first one. I had a much easier time carrying this one now that the other two were at least walking and talking. I remember them putting their little hands on my tummy to feel him moving in there. They were anxious to know when he would be "coming out." I knew that he was due to be born in April so I told them it would be when the snow was all gone. Sure enough, the last little bit was melting as the Easter weekend was coming up.

I remember that he was two weeks late, according to the date that the doctor had calculated, so I was told to take some castor oil to try getting him moving. Well now, that was a laugh. I stood there at the kitchen sink, with this glass full of orange juice and about a quarter of an inch of castor oil floating on the top of it. I tried so hard to pluck up enough courage to drink the stuff but it was taking so long. The oil would not mix and it was the first thing that touched my lips. Ughhhh! I don't know even now, how I ever did it. Anyway, that was nine o'clock at night. By two o'clock in the morning I was sitting in the bathroom saying how I would never take that stuff again. My poor stomach was rumbling around like a bubbling volcano about to erupt. The pain was so bad that I was doubled up. My husband woke up and came to see how I was doing. I didn't realize that he was watching the clock while I was complaining about the castor oil. He very quickly advised me that he had been timing my groans from the stuff; they were very regular and less than five minutes apart. If he had not been there, I probably would have had that baby in the bathroom. I had been in labour for almost forty-eight hours with my first one, but I never knew that these were labour pains too. I had taken the castor oil for him as well, but it never was like this before. Anyway, I got to the hospital by three-thirty or so and he was born just two hours later. It was quite different from the first baby delivery and I sure appreciated not having to be in labour as long this time.

It was April 2nd. I remember that I was in the hospital for Easter Sunday and I had a lovely Easter lily sitting on the table beside my bed. He was such a precious little bundle. He was a good baby too, not without a few little problems though. Both of my other children had really bad head colds when I brought him home from the hospital. He caught it from them very quickly. After that, he had several nasal and chest colds that seemed to last for a long time. But he was pretty good generally and the two older ones seemed to be quite happy with their new baby brother.

Now we had two boys and a girl, all within four years. Quite a handful of course, but again, we were very happy. Our children were very precious to us and still are today. We had each of them Christened in the little church across the street and as soon as they were old enough, we took them to Sunday-School too. It had played a very important part in our lives as children, so we wanted them to have the same opportunity to get to know about God. My sister, who was now a schoolteacher, was the Sunday-School teacher as well. She and her family had also built a house, with the help of my dad, right across the road from ours. They had two little boys by this time and the cousins all played together. I was the only one with a daughter and I felt that we were very privileged to have her. My youngest sister eventually had three boys too, so we still had the only girl.

We thought we were going to lose her one night though. It was New Year's Eve when she was just over a year old. She had been stuffy with a head cold and I had just put her to bed, when I heard a strange sound coming from her room. We rushed in to find that she was just about choking on the mucus in her throat. My husband was so fast. I was beginning to panic. He picked her up and held her by the feet while pulling all this junk out of her mouth. I tried to help him hold her and I was patting her on her back hoping to dislodge what was stuck in her throat. Then she started crying and seemed to be breathing properly again, but she was burning up with a fever. We called the doctor and wrapped her up in a blanket to take her to his office, five miles away.

All the way in the car I was watching and listening to see if she was still breathing. When we got there, the doctor was still in his party clothes having left in a hurry to meet us at his office. He examined our little girl and gave her a penicillin injection because she had a very bad ear and throat infection. He listened to her chest and told us that her daddy had probably saved her life. The crisis was over and with some fever reducer in the needle she should be okay. That was one New Year's Eve we remembered for a long time after.
10. Young Family Adventures

Soon it was time for the older ones to go to school, that was quite an event. The school bus stopped outside our driveway ready to take them all to the country school about six miles away.

Later, one early summer afternoon, our daughter and her friend decided to walk home instead. I was almost in a panic again when our elder son told me that she wasn't on the bus. We called the school but she wasn't there either. After we had been searching for an hour or so, up and down the bus route, she phoned us from a farm, half way between the school and home, to tell us where they were. They had no idea how far it was from home to the school. It seemed so close when the bus took them. They were tired of walking and please could someone come and pick them up. I was so angry with her for doing such a thing and yet I was so glad to have her home again.

It wasn't long afterwards that I began to realize that because the boys were born to me and she wasn't, my love for her seemed to be a little different. I had been wondering about this. It bothered me very much and I didn't want it to be that way. I was also going through a time of searching as to where God was in my life, so I decided to find out. Since I left Wales, it seemed that I had lost track of Him somehow, when I used to feel quite close. I remember praying one night, "If You are really there, and You really care about me and my family then make my love for her the same as my love for the boys." Nothing changed immediately and after about three weeks had gone by, I had forgotten about it.

Then one night, while I was checking on them before going to bed, I bent over to kiss her goodnight, as I always did, when I felt such an overwhelming sense of love for her, I just started to cry. I didn't want to wake her, but I took her in my arms and hugged her close to me. As I lay in bed that night, I remembered my prayer and realized that He had done what I had asked. Not only did He prove to me that He was there, and really did care for my family and me, but He had given me that special kind of love for her that I felt was missing before. I was so happy and grateful to Him, and that special love for her never went away.

As time went on and money was tight on one wage, I decided that I would try driving a school bus. My youngest son was about three years old at the time, and the other two were at school all day. To my amazement, I applied, passed the test, and was given a route to share with a farmer up the street. When he was too busy with his chores, then I would take over his route. It just happened to be the one around my own little area and my own children's route.

It was good for a little while until the winter came. Then those country roads proved a little nerve racking for me, especially the hill that made a sharp turn at the bottom to avoid plunging into a frozen lake. It was okay while the weather was co-operative but I was not a very good winter driver, even in a car.

When I gave up the bus driving, I took my youngest son to stay with my mother for a couple of days a week and I went to work part time in a bank close by. This was working out fine for a while, until I became very sick. I had a sore throat for about two weeks. I had gone for penicillin but it wasn't working and instead of staying home to rest, I kept pushing myself to keep going to work.

We had bought a little wading pool with a vinyl liner and steel walls and put it in the back yard for the children. Summer was coming and it needed to be cleaned out after the winter. I still wasn't very well at all, but I decided to get the job done while my husband was at work. The cleaning chemicals I was using were very strong. The instructions said to wear rubber gloves but I didn't have any and told myself I really didn't need them anyway. I was very tired when I finished the job and went to lie down for a while. I had a really bad headache and I felt so very weak.

The next day I was much worse, but I still kept going. I was reminding myself that we were due to start our vacation on the week-end and I would get lots of rest then. Finally, my body could take no more. The next morning I woke up and thought I was going to die. My head was hurting so much I could barely lift it up from the pillow. My eyes were swollen so badly that my whole face was a huge blob with slits where the eyes should have been.

It was Saturday, July 1st, the long weekend. Somehow my husband got me dressed and over to the doctor's office. He was very upset at my condition. He told us to go straight to the hospital, not even to go home to pack a bag. I was suffering from several different conditions, each one of them serious enough to put me in the hospital. I had very dangerously high blood pressure, fluid on my lungs, a rapid heartbeat, a high fever and a very bad throat.

My husband and my sister told me later that they all thought that I had Meningitis and that I was going to die. I was in the hospital for ten days of total bed rest and intensive care. They said afterwards that it was some sort of unknown virus. I never thought to tell them about the pool chemicals; it didn't seem relevant at the time. I figured out later though, that along with the virus, I probably was suffering from a very bad chemical reaction, as this liquid must have entered my body through the pores in my hands, or the vapours in my lungs, maybe both. I'll never know.

It took the next three months of almost total rest at home before I regained some measure of strength again. I was feeling so badly that I had really messed up our vacation and caused a lot of worry, strife and hardship for my whole family. I never did really recover fully from that one. For years after that, I was never the same bubbly, energetic person that I was before. That summer of 1973 was a real disaster for me, regarding my health, and to think that I brought most of it on myself due to sheer stubbornness and stupidity.

There were lots of fun times to follow though, as I slowly got well. We had joined the church Couples Club. We had monthly social meetings together. I particularly liked the square dancing in the community hall, although my favourite time was when we did the drama. I remember being in a play called "The Truth Machine." This was when I had to play the part of a big lady who was over two hundred and fifty pounds. As I was only about one hundred and ten pounds at the time, it was quite a laugh. Somewhere they had found a very large dress for me to wear. I had to have thin pieces of foam rubber folded over my arms and legs and tied up with masking tape. Then I had to wear queen size panty hose to cover the foam and a cardigan over the dress to cover my arms. I also had a cushion stuffed inside the front and back of the dress. I could hardly move, but I really looked the part. It was very hot too, but so much fun.

My husband did a miming act of a singer movie star. He had to have his face all covered in black make-up of some sort with big white lips and white gloves, as he did a lip-sync to the song "Mammy." He also did a similar mime to an Elvis song called "You ain't nothing but a hound dog". He was very good at it too. Again, it was lots of fun.

Our family was quite involved in the little church across the street by this time. We both sang in the choir, I had joined my sister in teaching Sunday-School, and my husband was chairman of the Board. The five of us would often sing together on a Sunday morning, plus we joined the mid-week choir practises as well. We were well known there and kept very busy with it all, but we didn't mind, it was good for us and for the children. We did lots of things as a family and we were always very close.
11. Trials of Country Life

I remember one winter when we were really close to each other; literally, we had to stay near each other to keep warm. There had been a January ice storm causing the hydro wires to break. We were without heat or electricity for almost a week. We had a camp stove for cooking, candles for light and the living room fireplace for heat. At night we dressed the children in their snowsuits, built up the wood on the fireplace and all huddled together on mattresses on the floor beside it. It seemed like forever getting back to normal. That was a very bad winter, but then most of the winters were severe in those days.

One night my husband phoned me from the little town five miles away. He said he would be home in a few minutes. That was around suppertime. I was standing at the window, watching the snow an hour later because he still hadn't come home. I was beginning to get really worried by this time. I tried getting the children ready for bed to keep myself busy. They knew that he should have been home by now too. As time went on I was beginning to think that for sure he was in big trouble. I called my parents to see if my dad had made it home. He had been home for a while but he said that the road was becoming blocked with snow. As it happened, I found out later that this almost caused them all to freeze to death. On the advice of his passenger, they had decided to try another route a little further north. They were doing fine until they came to what looked like a huge snowdrift across the road. One of the passengers suggested that they make a run at it. They were just about to do that when a man appeared from somewhere on the other side, waving his arms to stop them. His car was inside that snowdrift. He had tried to go through it also, and got stuck in the middle of it. They were trying to figure out what to do about it when after a while; a stranger came by on a snow mobile. Seeing their problem, he decided to help by giving them a ride out to the main road, one at a time, on the back of his machine. The cars had to stay where they were. My husband then phoned my brother-in-law who also had a snow machine, to ask if he would come to where he was waiting and to bring him home. It was a good ten minutes by car from that spot and he was not properly dressed for such a ride. My husband had to sit in a warm bath for a while to thaw out his legs, but we were so grateful to that man for getting them out of that almost impossible situation. It was three hours later that evening when he finally got home. I was so glad to see him alive and well. It had been quite an ordeal for the both of us. I don't remember how they finally got their cars home, I guess the snowplough must have unblocked the road and they dug them out with shovels.

Talking of shovels! Our driveway was almost one hundred feet long and wide enough for two cars. It was quite an ordeal to dig that one out. It wasn't just digging out the driveway either. Before we could get out to the main highway, each neighbour also had to dig out a section of the road in front of his house. The snowplough usually didn't come until long after the men had left for work or sometime after midnight.

I remember one evening when we were trying to clear the driveway so that he could put the car into the garage for the night. We had dug out most of it but there was ice underneath in patches and was making the wheels skid. He almost always backed it up into the garage so that he could drive out in the morning. It was still skidding so he decided to take a run at it. I stood at the side near the snow bank to let him pass. As he started up the driveway however, I slipped on the ice and fell right into his path. There was no time to try and get up.... the car would have knocked me down again and probably run over me. I tried shouting to tell him to stop ... he didn't hear me. For some reason, I put my legs up straight out in front of me. I think I must have thought that I could stop the car with my feet. Still shouting to tell him to stop, my feet came in contact with the bumper then I could feel the car pushing my body backwards along the ice towards the garage. I don't know whether he heard me, or what happened, but the next thing I knew was that the car had stopped and he was picking me up. We both stood hugging each other for several minutes. I think he was shaking more than I was as he realized that he could very easily have killed me. We never did put the car in the garage that night.

Yes, the winter was full of adventures but not all bad. The children had lots of fun building huge snow houses in the back yard. The toboggan rides in the park and skating on the pond. I had the joy of dressing them all up in their snow suits, only to have to undo them again, five minutes later, because they needed to go to the bathroom, just when I thought I was about to get a few minutes peace and quiet. Or they would come in all soaking wet because the snow was melting but they still wanted to play some more. I was always glad to see it all melt away and welcome the warmer weather.

Our old well never did improve on the water supply, and always in the springtime the trouble would start. As the snow melted, the dirty muddy water would seep in through the tiles and make the water look and taste just like the mud coming in. So when there was lots of it, we couldn't drink it. Even in the bathtub it looked like mud. I've heard that mud baths are good for your skin ... ugh! During the summer, it wasn't long before we would be ordering the water to fill it up again, and again, and again. Taking a bath was lots of fun for the children. While they were still small we would have the "bath brigade." We had the system down pat. I started with the youngest, washed him and handed him over to be dried and dressed by his daddy, then the other two in the same manner; every night, all in the same bath water. Sometimes they all went in together. They thought this was real fun. The toilet was another story, but the same really. "To flush or not to flush," that was the question! There were times of very little water and times of plenty. The unfortunate part was though that the times of plenty were always a major disaster because that meant a spring flood.

We had a sump pump in the basement that was designed to pump out any excess water that ran from outside around the base of the foundation walls. Those tiles that my husband set out where the frogs were collected, was for the drainage that ran into the sump hole. It usually worked very well except when the electricity was out or if the water was coming in faster than the pump could get it outside again. Maybe the sump hole wasn't deep enough, I don't know, all I do know is that this happened at least once a year.

I remember going down to the basement one morning to find six inches of water, all over the floor. Small items were floating and other things were just buried under it all. We put on our boots, called my parents, our neighbour, and my sister and her husband to seek their assistance in getting this water out. There was a real bucket brigade going on. The children thought it was a game and were having a great time. We had two people at the bottom, two on the stairs, two at the back door and the last two as far away from the door as possible. All carrying the water back outside. It took such a long time. We never could get all of it out and the basement smelled so damp for weeks afterwards.

One year we had actually put some rubber backed carpet down there. We made the mistake of thinking that it would dry out if we left it for a while. Have you ever smelled wet carpet that was left to dry out on its own? It took weeks to get rid of the smell, even after we got rid of the carpet.

The summer was always a special time. Those were the days when we would have weeks of sunshine all in a row, very hot and dry. We almost always had some kind of pool in the back yard for the children. As they grew bigger, so did the pool.

One summer's morning, I was watching them through the kitchen window, when I saw what looked like an article of clothing, half way up one of the trees at the back of the yard. Thinking that one of them had thrown it up there, I walked up to it hoping that I could pull it down. As I got closer to the tree, I thought I saw it move a little. It wasn't windy at all, how could it move? I slowed down my steps a little, very curious, yet by now a little apprehensive, trying to see what it was. I came to within ten feet or so when I could see that it was moving. I was horrified to see that it wasn't a piece of clothing at all. It was a huge mass of swarming bees. The children were so close to it. I wanted to get them away but not to startle them, or the bees. I can't remember how I got them into the house but I was so relieved to shut the door. We knew a farmer down the street who kept bees. I thought perhaps he would know what to do about it. Before long he came to our house wearing his protective clothing and went up to inspect the tree and its brood. We all watched him through the kitchen window. He had one of those smoke machines and he was blowing it at them. He waited a while and then came to ask for a small saw and permission to cut out that branch from our tree. I was so thankful to get rid of it. He could have cut down the whole tree if necessary. The children watched him cut it down then carry the branch and the bees down to his farm.

After all the excitement was over, it wasn't long before they were back in the pool again. We found out later that the bees actually belonged to that farmer. Apparently the queen had left the hive and all the bees followed her. He was very grateful to have them back. He said that a queen bee was very valuable.

One summer I remember that we had a small tornado go through the fields at the back of our house. It was getting very dark. The wind was really blowing and the rain was very heavy. I heard a high-pitched whistling noise through the bathroom window. I dismissed it as being possibly the storm window not quite closed properly. When the wind and the rain stopped, we answered the phone to hear our neighbour tell us that our TV antenna was sitting in his driveway. When we went out to take a look, we could also see that the huge TV tower that was once on the roof was twisted like a pretzel still attached to the antenna. It had been wrenched from the chimney, breaking some of the bricks. The neighbour on the other side came to tell us about his garden shed. It had been lifted up and thrown down again several feet away with some of the bolts still attached to its patio slab foundation. The wind had picked it up, concrete slabs as well. It was all twisted and torn apart. Further down the street, we could see how the wind had torn off huge sections of the siding on several of the houses. Its path of direction and trail of destruction was very clear. We took some photographs of it all. I could really see how a larger tornado could do so much damage. We were very thankful that it was such a little one.

We took our first "far away" vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We drove down in the March school winter break. It was great. We stopped off in Washington DC and saw some of the historic sights there. We all had a very good time; we didn't even realize that March break was one of the busiest times to go there.

One of the days we were in a panic. We couldn't find our younger son. They all went to one of the many arcades to play those games they love. It seemed that the other two had started to walk back to the hotel without making sure that he was with them. When they arrived without him, we went straight back to find him. It took a little while but we found him. He was so busy playing the games; he didn't even know that they had left. We all loved the mini-golf and the many tee shirt stores. The beach was great and the weather was so nice, we were sorry to leave when it was time to go home. Our next-door neighbour had told us that it was a nice place to go for a vacation, now we knew why they liked it so much. We went several times after that, we still like it now and go back there as often as we can.

The boys liked to play soccer. My husband was a very good soccer player. Every Saturday we all went to the town park to watch him play. The children usually played on the swings etc. while the adults watched the game. I remember one particular game that wasn't very pleasant at all. We only had the two children at that time; I was about three months pregnant with the other one. The game was going well when my husband's opponent jumped up to head the ball. As he did that, his elbow came down and hit him in the face. I saw my husband fall to the ground with his hands on his cheeks. His face looked like it was caved-in on the one side. I got the children into the car and drove him to the hospital. He had broken his cheekbone and had to have it operated on to put it right. He recovered okay but I think it spoiled the games for him after that. He was always fearful of getting it hurt again. Later he became a referee and also coached a children's team for quite a while after that. Our younger son was on his team. They still have the trophies they won.

Our daughter took piano lessons. She was very good at it too. She had a very special touch and definite talent that seemed to be inherited from her birth mother. I should tell you how we came to own our piano, a story all its own, and the beginning of a very important chapter in my life.
12. The Big Change

During one summer when I was working at the bank, I just happened to mention to one of my customers that I was taking July and August off from work to be at home with the children. This meant that I would probably have to give up my job, and later try to find something on a part-time basis instead. He worked for the County School Board and asked me if I would be interested in a job that was with the school, making it possible for me to be at home for all the school holidays. This sounded too good to be true, but I had missed my chance at being a schoolteacher, years ago, before the children were born. I told him that I was interested, but banking was all that I knew, so I never expected to hear anything else about it.

It was late August when, much to my surprise, he phoned me at my home, and asked me if I was still interested in that job. It seemed that he was responsible for filling a now vacant position in a local high school. He briefly explained to me that it was for an Audio-Visual Aide, and that if I wanted the job it was as good as mine. I told him that I didn't have a clue how to do that sort of work, but he insisted that I would receive adequate training if I was willing to give it a try. He even made an appointment for me to see the principal of the school, and told me that if he was willing to let me try to do the job, then it was settled. I was very curious. Either he was being very nice to me, or he was desperate to fill the position...I was hoping that maybe it was for both reasons.

Well, this was already the end of August and school was due to start at the beginning of September. I really didn't know what to do. I wanted to be home for all the school holidays but would I really get the job? Could I even do the work? Would the principal let me try? Yes, yes, yes.... He was willing to let me try, I was given the job, and before I knew it I was in this messy, crowded equipment room, with a very knowledgeable young man who had been assigned to teach me a crash course in audio-visual techniques.

We spent the first two days cleaning up and organizing the equipment. Everything was dirty, dusty, and all over the place. While we were cleaning the machines, he was briefly showing me how each one worked. The teachers were allowed to sign-out the film projectors and televisions etc. and I was to keep track of them all, store and keep them clean, and in good repair. I could send them to him to be fixed if I couldn't handle it myself.

I was told to order and keep track of the educational films, and make sure that they were returned on time. I was also in charge of showing videotapes for the teachers and recording them when the program was on the TV at a time other than during class time. It would be my job also to make multiple copies of paper hand-outs, as they were required on a daily basis, and to help out in the office with exam papers. I could see that I had my work cut out for me, but the thought of being home with the children, was very much an encouragement for me to give it my best effort.

Somehow, within a week, after many hours of very hard work, we got that room ship-shape and ready to go in time for the beginning of school. I was so nervous on that first day; in fact for that first week or so I think I operated on a wing and a prayer. I must have phoned that young man several times a day. He was very patient with me and even came up to visit when I was desperate. As time went by, with the kind understanding of the staff, I started to build up confidence in my ability to actually do the work. I even enjoyed it.

It was quite an experience in itself, to be in a Canadian High School. It was so very different from the old English Grammar School that I had attended so many years earlier. The students were much different too. I felt so out of place walking through the halls during class changes, and having to pick a path between the masses of teenagers coming towards me. It was very strange for me at first, but I grew to love them after a while and most of them had much respect for me. I helped many of them with photocopies, running projects, and even making video films of their special classes. The teachers learned to rely on me for help, and sometimes I even surprised myself that I could actually do most of the work they gave to me. It was so rewarding to be able to help them when they were pushed for time and needed something done in a hurry. They seemed to be so grateful for my help. I was really enjoying my work and was very thankful to those who had been willing to give me the chance to try something new and even precarious at the time. I didn't know even then, that this section of my life had a deeper meaning and reason for my being there.

A really funny thing happened to me one day in the fall of the following year. At least the staff and students thought it was funny. I was walking up the stairs from the office to my room, when I saw some of them turning their heads and smiling, or even giggling at something to do with me. I couldn't figure it out.

Lunchtime came around and I walked into the teacher's staff room only to see one of the office ladies burst out laughing, while looking at my feet. I looked down too, and immediately saw what was so funny. Believe it or not, I had left home that morning wearing one black shoe and one brown shoe... so obvious to everyone but me...how silly I felt but I had to laugh too, of course, it was funny really. They were both the same style of shoe, just odd ones. I had hurriedly put my feet in them at the back door while I was rushing out at the last minute for work. It took quite a while to live that one down, but I never did it again.

The main assembly hall was just across the corridor from my room. It was quiet one late afternoon when I heard someone making a noise on the piano in there. As I went to investigate, thinking it was a student; I could see that it was the piano tuner. There were two pianos in that big room. The one that he was tuning was fairly new, and the other was an old one that the students had really wrecked. As I stopped to speak to him, he told me that they just didn't make pianos like they used to any longer. He went on to say that this new one wasn't a patch on that old one. It was such a pity that the students had treated it so badly. The front had been taken off, and some of the hammers were been broken. The keys had lost some of their ivory and the alphabet had been printed on the rest of the keys with a black marker pen. There were gum and candy wrappers all down inside where the strings were, and they had used a spray can of paint to write names all over the back of it. Most of the woodwork was badly scratched and gouged around the edges and corners. It sure was a sorry sight.

I had always loved piano music, and would have loved to own one, but they were expensive. I knew too, that our daughter had asked us if she could take piano lessons. I would have really liked to give her the chance to try. I asked this man if the old piano was worth fixing, and if so how much etc. Well, it sounded possible. He could recover the keys with some sort of plastic coating, replace the broken hammers, clean it up and tune it all for three hundred dollars. I was happy at the thought of the cost being so reasonable, but would they let me buy it? I made enquiries and found out that they had been waiting to get rid of it. I was told that as long as I could provide the transportation out of the school and to my home, the piano was mine.

My brother-in-law had a boat trailer. We asked a few friends to help us and somehow we got that piano home. It was so very heavy. The soundboard was solid brass. It was an upright grand. The piano tuner was true to his word and made it look so much nicer. He said that the touch and tone was one of the best he had seen or heard for some time. We polished and repaired the woodwork as much as we could and made it fit for my daughter to learn to play. We were so happy with it. As time went on, we all had many happy memories of that old piano.

I remember my days at that school, some were very funny, and others quite nerve wracking. One time I remember being asked to please park my car on the gravel part of the school parking lot because the gas leaking from the gas tank was melting the asphalt. Then there was the time when they all laughed when I told them how this old car got its new coat of paint.

It was a very nice new car when I bought it and I became very attached to it, as it got older. The rust was getting bad though and I knew that something had to be done. It was at least eight years old by this time, but the engine was doing so well. I had the whole summer off, but not having very much money; I decided that, being an avid "do it yourselfer", I would try a little bodywork. I hammered out as much rust as I could, and filled the holes with newspaper. Then I covered the now filled holes with pieces of fibreglass gauze that had been dipped in some plastic metal compound. I sanded and covered, sanded and covered until it was beginning to look like the holes were gone, and the plastic metal was very strong. I really worked hard on it for that whole summer.

When it was finished, I decided to paint it. Well now, those silly little spray cans of paint only covered a very small patch, and the drips and runs were very frustrating, so... I bought a large can of hunter green auto paint, a few brushes and a roller and tray set. Yes, I painted it like a wall or furniture, and I did a very good job too, honestly... it looked very nice; at least I thought so. I was sure it would last for another few years at least. How was I to know that the rust had spread to the gas tank? I was so sorry to have to finally let it go to the junkyard.

Some of the not-so-nice memories were of the driving back and forth in the bad weather. I remember some really scary times when the snow would blow in whiteouts and the roads were icy. The ditches were deep at the sides of the highway and driving was quite an ordeal, even though it wasn't very far away. Our winters were very severe in those days, but the summers would more than make up for it, and living out in the country was reward enough for having to withstand the bad winter weather.
13. We Didn't Know

Well as time went on, our daughter was doing really well at her piano lessons. We became good friends with her teacher who lived in the next village. She had heard that we sang at our church as a family sometimes, and wanted to know if we would come to sing at her church too. Of course we said we would go. When we were there, we noticed that her church was a little different to ours in a few ways. They all took Bibles with them, and read them. We both still had our Bibles that we received from the chapel as farewell gifts when we left Wales, but they were hard to understand so we never read them. Their hymns were much happier and a little faster than ours. We liked it. They liked our singing. We had a good time. They were having some sort of campaign going on to do with the TV and Campus Crusade for Christ. We didn't understand what it was all about, but they were very excited about it so we promised to watch when it was to be on the television.

I had almost forgotten about it, when during the next Sunday afternoon, our older son came up from the basement to tell us that the program was on. I knew that she would ask me about it so I figured I should at least watch a bit of it, as I did promise her that I would. My husband came down too and the three of us watched what was left of the program. It was just ordinary people telling how their lives had been changed or turned around by God, as they had given their lives over to Jesus Christ to be their Saviour.

This was all new to us. These people were just like us, but they seemed to be so much closer to God than we were. They were peaceful and happy about letting God be in control of their lives, and trusted Him to take care of them. They told of how God had brought them through some really tough circumstances in their lives, giving them courage and strength beyond what they thought was possible.

It seemed that there was so much more to being a Christian than we had even thought of before. As we watched, and listened, we liked what we saw and heard, and wanted that same peace of mind that they had. God had proved Himself to these people and it seemed like a good thing to do. We talked about it for a while, and the three of us decided that we were going to say the prayer that they told us to say. This was to simply ask Jesus to forgive us for our sins, to thank Him for dying on the cross for us, and to ask Him to take over our lives and to give us a sure place in Heaven for eternal life with Him. They said that there was nothing that we could do, or needed to do, to earn our way into Heaven, because Jesus had already done that. All we had to do was to personally accept His payment for our sins and accept Him as our Saviour, just like it said in the old hymns. I had sung them many times, but never really understood what the words actually meant before.

I remember thinking to myself that we really didn't have anything much for which we needed to be forgiven. I was sure that our son didn't have any "sins"; he was only eleven years old. I knew my husband pretty well too; he was a very good man. We had been quite involved in the church for years, but we all seemed to feel that it was the right thing to do at the time. So we did. We never felt any different and I never saw any immediate changes in our lives that were significant. Our other two children were outside playing at that time, so they knew nothing about it.

We went to the piano lesson the next week, and sure enough, she asked us did we watch the program. I was so glad to be able to tell her that we did, as I told her what we had done. I really didn't understand at the time, why she seemed so very happy. She actually had tears in her eyes and hugged me like a real good friend. Since then, I have really learned how very grateful I am to that lady for allowing herself to be the instrument God used to bring us so much closer to Him. She offered to start a weekly Bible study with us at her home, and showed us so many answers to our questions. She told us that instead of just listening to others, we should read it for ourselves. She showed us where and how to look in the Bible for our own answers.

Little by little, our lives did change. My husband confessed later that he used to be quite a different person at work, than he was at home. His choice of words was not exactly fit for the ears of women and children while he was there. A few other things in his life at work were not exactly pleasing to God either. I didn't know until sometime later that he had found God to be very real in his life a lot sooner than we did.

Somehow, even the very next day after we had prayed in our living room, his language was completely changed, as if God had done it overnight. His buddies at work couldn't figure out what was happening to him. He was so surprised even to himself. He had to stop and think of some new vocabulary to fill in the places where the other words were before because they were just gone. Little by little some of the other things were changing too, and he was actually very happy about it. His friends soon stopped asking him to go to those places with them during the lunch hours, but he said that he didn't miss it anyway. Somehow his desires had changed. He was able to concentrate on his work better, and he was so pleased to be rid of all the guilt that he felt about being different at work than he was at home.

Sometime later, our son went to the minister at our church and told him that he wanted to be a minister too, when he grew up. He was almost twelve years old by now. It was at his request, that we dedicated him to God and His service. He was always such a clever yet sensitive, gentle little boy. Never gave us any trouble. Very easy to raise and love.

What of me? Well, I still felt that I was plenty good enough the way I was before. I figured that I would take my chances on going to Heaven, like everyone else. How could anyone really be sure ahead of time anyway? I decided to just let it ride for a while, thinking all was well the way it was. It wasn't until much later that I found out just how very wrong I had been.

It was early April and the weather had just started to get nice, when we woke up to yet another snowstorm. It wasn't too bad getting to work but coming home was another story. I left early because I could see that the temperature had dropped and the wind was really getting strong. As I ventured out of the schoolyard, I knew that I was in for a tough ride home. I was wishing I knew for sure that God really was taking care of me. I was getting very nervous and scared. The wind was blowing the snow so much that it was worse than fog. I couldn't see a thing and the road was very icy. I was going so slowly on this major highway, not knowing if I was on my own side of the road or heading for one of those deep ditches. The snow was covering the road so much that I couldn't even see the shoulder. I was gripping the wheel so tightly, afraid to even move it. I knew there had to be other cars on the road, but where were they? Coming at me, or behind me? The tears were welling up in my eyes making it even harder to see. I found myself praying, "God if you really do care about me, then please get me home safely and I'll do anything you want me to do, I promise." I didn't even know if He heard me, but I had to try, I was getting desperate. I knew deep down inside that I had not been sincere in my prayer, when the other two were, and I was beginning to regret that. I needed His help, and quickly. I was afraid of dying on that road, realizing that I was not really sure where I would end up if I was killed that day... It's strange what goes through your head when you feel that maybe your time is up and you're so helpless to do anything about it.

Well, He must have heard me because a few moments later, the wind shifted directions and I saw a glimpse of a yellow dotted line that was just about a foot off to my left. I was so relieved to see that not only was I in my own lane but even away from the ditch. I was moving at such a slow speed though; I knew that I could easily get bumped from behind, so I tried to go a little faster. Then a few minutes later I could see the red roof of the little church across the street from my house. I was almost home. I thanked God over and over, as now the tears were of relief and joy instead of fear, but I was a basket case of nerves. I had only been on the road for about thirty minutes, but it seemed like forever. As I pulled into the driveway I was so weak, I could hardly walk into the house, but so very glad to be home. What a journey it had been. I was actually rather glad that I would not have to make that trip in the winter any longer.

There was no more snow after that, and I knew that spring was on the way for another year. We loved the summer living out in the country. It was so good to watch all the cars going up to the cottages to get away from the city and knowing that we lived in the country all the time. We had a lovely big back yard and so much room in the fields nearby for the children to play. The only drawback to living in the country was the fact that we had to drive the children to town for everything. They were beginning to realize that we were rather isolated in our little subdivision of only twenty houses, five miles from the nearest town.
14. Back to the City

Over the years, some of our families had moved from Wales to live near us. There was my mother's brother and his family, my dad's sister and her family along with my husband's older sister and her family too. Actually, my brother-in-law brought his two brothers and a sister also with all their children. Before very long we had quite a sizeable bunch of relatives here.

My dad's sister lived quite a bit further south than we did, in a little suburban town near Toronto. It has since grown to be a part of the huge city of Brampton. We often went to visit them because the children really liked it. Before long we were talking of moving there. It was a big decision to make.

It would be much closer to where my husband worked, and a lot less wear and tear on the car and on him. We really loved our little bungalow. It had been our home for about fifteen years now, but we realized that the children were growing and their needs were changing.

I would be sad to leave my job at the high school; I had really become comfortable in my little A.V. room. There was one teacher who had grown to be quite a good friend to me. She was a very nice young lady. She used to spend some of her break periods in my room with me as we watched a daily half hour Christian TV program. It was during that time, I began to realize that I was very far from being the perfect person I had thought I was. I decided that I too needed to say that prayer, sincerely this time, to ask God to forgive my sins and take control of my life. So I did. Right there in my little A.V. room. She helped me with many things I was confused about, and I was gradually learning that if I expected to spend eternity with Him, then I should try to get to know Him a little better, ahead of time. It was through her recommendation that we eventually ended up at our new church in Brampton. This was important to us because we would really miss our little church across the street. We had made many friends there and much of our lives revolved around it and the local community.

We tried a few times to decide on a date to move etc. but it was very hard for us. We helped to build that house; it was part of us. We knew that we would never put it up for sale in the summer so we decided to go to the real estate agent in January. It looked very strange to pull into the driveway and see the "for sale" sign on the front lawn. It made me very sad at first. Then there was the enormous job of packing.

It seemed like an almost impossible task. Sixteen years of items collected for our family. Where should I begin? The basement needed a good clean out anyway, so we tackled that place first. What a job. All those things I was sure that I would need one day, were now being packed in boxes to be delivered to the Salvation Army. The other stuff that we should have sold in a garage sale went out to the garbage. I took about a whole month to go through it all. The house was sold early in March. We still hadn't found a place to live yet, so during the school winter break of that spring, we all went down to find our new home.

A few weeks earlier, we had visited a lady at a real estate office in the area where we wanted to live. We had told her what we were looking for and she offered to look around for us. Before we went to her office, we decided to take a look at what was for sale by ourselves. We drove around near the school area and asked God to guide us to a house that He knew would be good for us. After a little while, we saw one that looked very nice on the outside and in the area that we wanted, but we would need the real estate lady to show us the inside. We drove to her office to ask her to arrange for us to see it. She was all excited about some lovely house that she had picked out for us too, and wanted us to see that one first. We decided to let her show us the one she had chosen so we followed her in our car.

You can imagine how excited we were to see that she was heading towards the one that we had chosen too. It turned out to be the very same house. When we looked inside it, we were even more excited. The kitchen was beautiful, and so big. The rest of the house was just perfect too. Even the decorating was almost as if I had chosen the colours myself, except for the master bedroom. There was wallpaper on the one wall with huge yellow daisies on it. I couldn't believe my eyes. How could we ever sleep with those things over our heads? I knew that it wouldn't take much effort to change them, and if that was all that was wrong with it then we were happy. There was a lovely big back yard for the kids and it seemed to be in a very nice area. I noticed that there was a dishwasher in the kitchen. I didn't know enough to request it in the offer, or that it would have to stay if it was built into the counter. I just hoped that they would leave it there for us if we bought the house. Well the price was right and the closing date was perfect. The end of June was just when school would be finished, so we set it for June 26th the same date as the new owners were to move into our house.

We were very happy as we left for home that day. The children were so excited. They really liked the idea of having to go upstairs to bed and have a separate bedroom for each of them too. They didn't seem to feel the sadness about leaving our little bungalow as we did, but we still had a few months to prepare for it.

It was well into spring by now, but there was still quite a bit of snow in the ditches beside the roads. I never knew that the time would come when I would actually be thankful for the snow in those ditches. One Saturday afternoon not long after that, our daughter and her friend called from the town bowling alley to say they were ready to come home. Her friend's parents had taken them there earlier, but they were still busy in town so we were to bring the girls home. I was in the kitchen just putting a pie in the oven when the phone rang. I picked it up and heard my daughter say, "Mom, you have to come and get us, some stupid nut made our car go into the ditch." I stood there for a minute, trying to grasp what she was saying. I figured she must be okay because she had walked to a place to phone me and she was talking to me. Then I thought of her dad. I asked her if he was okay. She said that he was fine and that he was sitting in the back of the police car, but they couldn't drive our car because it was in the ditch. I took my little Volkswagen that we had bought to replace my old green car and headed to the place where she said they were.

What a strange feeling it was to drive past and see our car in the ditch, all mangled up. I was so thankful to see them and know that they were okay. Actually they did have some minor injuries. She had badly bruised hips from the seat belt; her friend had a nasty scrape on her elbow as it had sheared off the little button that locks the door. My husband had a badly bruised chest from the impact of the seat belt. It appeared that those seat belts really saved them from very serious injuries. Also the snow in the ditch saved them from possibly even a worse disaster.

I found out later that a station wagon was coming from the north, on a little side road, as they were coming from the west on the main road. The station wagon slowed down at the stop street and then kept going. My husband saw that he wasn't stopping but he was so close to him that even when he applied the brakes, it was too late. The wagon hit our car full force into the front end, driver's side. The engine took most of the impact, right up to within a few inches of the driver's door. They were going slightly up hill, and as the car got pushed towards the ditch, my husband tried to steer it straight while the deep snow was cushioning the impact. The front wheel was totally twisted and bent, so was the whole front end of the car. As I looked at it in the ditch, it was obvious that the snow had really done a great job in "breaking the fall" so to speak. My husband said that my daughter was so angry with the young man who hit them that she wanted to punch him. She was reacting from the shock and trauma. She was only twelve years old. They were all really shaken up for a couple of days.

My husband was not too happy to be driving for some time after that. The amount of damage to the car looked like they could have been very seriously hurt. They were both still sore from the seat belt injuries, but very thankful to be alive and well.

As time went on, the packing was gradually looking like we were about to move; boxes all over the place and bare walls. We hired a truck and tried to work out the schedule to be sure that everything went in order. It was June by this time and the weather was getting really warm. We loaded the truck on the Friday and left it in our driveway overnight ready to leave early on the Saturday morning. We were to pick up the key for the new place before noon. We just left out the mattresses from our beds and put them on the floor in the living room where we slept that night. The bedrooms were smaller and so much hotter than out in the area of the dining-living room where there were more windows to open. It was so strange to be sleeping in an empty house that had been our home for the last sixteen years. Needless to say, I fell asleep with very mixed emotions. That house was very special to us, but our new one was very nice too and maybe they had even left the dishwasher.

Early Saturday morning we loaded the mattresses on the truck with the rest of our stuff, and headed for the city. The boys rode in the truck and my daughter and I rode in the car. Our other car was parked at the truck depot waiting for the return trip. The piano went down on my brother-in-law's boat trailer, just the same as when we had brought it home from the high school.

As we arrived at the new house, the children were so excited. We were a little upset. The hot weather had also meant very little rain and the front lawn was totally brown. The grass looked dead for sure. We parked the truck in the driveway while my husband went to pick up the key to the house. He came back saying that there had been some sort of delay and the real estate agent would be bringing it to us around two o'clock. We had also arranged for a new fridge and stove to be delivered to our new home that day, but we didn't know at what time. It was a little frustrating not being able to get into the house and the truck had to be taken back before dark. We started to unload as much as we could and then had to spread it all out on the front lawn. Time went by and still no key, and no fridge and stove.

The trip to return the truck was a good forty-five minute drive and it was getting late. Finally, about four-thirty in the afternoon, we were able to get into the house. The first thing I did was to see if the dishwasher was there and of course it was. I was so happy. Then also, almost as soon as we opened the door, the truck came with our new appliances. It seemed that things were going to be all right at last. We returned the boat trailer and the truck as soon as it was all empty. By the time we got the beds assembled and made up, it was more than time to hit the hay. We were happy but thoroughly exhausted. It took the next few weeks to get it all into place.

I was so happy with my lovely big kitchen. We had to put the piano at one end of it, near the back door. It was so very heavy that we couldn't get it any further. It actually was a good place for it though because it was in the centre of our living area and was used much more than if it had been put in the basement family room. We had the piano tuner come to check it over after being transported on the boat trailer again. He told us that it hardly needed any work at all. Those old pianos were built so well. We were very pleased.

As the summer continued, the grass actually did show some signs of life after we practically nursed it back to health. The back yard had some grass too but half of it was a huge patch of weeds. We found out from a neighbour that the previous owners had made a vegetable garden back there during the previous summer. This year, of course, they didn't plant anything. They didn't need to plant the weeds; they just grew, and grew. The soil was so hard we could hardly break the ground to even try to get rid of the weeds. With many hours of hard work, we finally got them out. Then we prepared the soil for some sod. We ordered a whole bunch of it to be delivered early on the Saturday morning. It was dumped in the driveway; we had to lay it ourselves. There were five of us, and the children were big enough to be able to help. Before long though, we were very happily surprised to see two young teenage boys, brothers, from up the street coming to help us. That was very nice of them, and they worked really hard. We were very thankful to them. It wasn't until a little while later; we found out that they really came to help so that the older one could get to know our daughter. It seemed that he liked her as soon as he saw her.

We had arranged for my husband to have summer holidays for two weeks during the middle of July. We figured that we should be settled into the house enough by then, and we would be ready for a holiday after all the stress and strain of the move. Nothing had been planned or booked up ahead of time, so we were trying to decide where to go. There wasn't much money but we really needed a rest.

I remembered that my school teacher friend at the high school had given me a brochure of a Christian Conference Centre north of the city. It looked like a place where people could spend some time in the lovely country atmosphere near a lake. There were all kinds of programs for the children and little cabins and cottages to live in for a week or two. There was a dining room for meals and a very safe quiet place to spend a holiday. She had been there herself and said that it was very nice.

It was already into the first week of July, so I found the telephone number and called to see if they had room for us for July 16th. When I talked to the lady, she told me that they were all booked up, and had been so for several months earlier. I was really disappointed; she could sense it in my voice I guess, so she offered to call me if there were any cancellations. I really didn't expect to hear from her after that, but I know now that God must have wanted us to go there. It was just two days later when she called to tell me that a family of five had cancelled out for the week beginning July 16th. I couldn't believe it. I was stunned and yet so happy all at the same time. We packed some clothes and such and got ready for the well-earned vacation.

When we arrived, we were very pleased with our little cottage and the grounds were very nice. The lake was just a short walk away and there was tennis and horses to ride along with many other activities for the children. The meals were delicious, and all for a very reasonable price. The children were safe to be left without us having to watch them all the time. It was good for them and for us. We all had a really good time.

While we were there, we met some people who had been attending the very same church that my teacher friend had recommended we visit at our new location. They too seemed to think it was very good. We realized later that somehow this was all in God's plan for us as we ended up spending the next ten years at that very same church. It was there that we learned that true Christianity was not really a religion at all, but a relationship between us and God, through His Son Jesus. I was very grateful to my teacher friend. We came home after the two weeks were over, feeling rested and ready to face the next step in our lives.
15. A New Vocation

Before long it was time to go back to school. They settled in very well. The two older ones went into grade eight and the little one was in grade four. The schools were within walking distance and they could come home for lunch. This was quite a change for them. There were many things to get used to. The transit system was very handy as the bus stop was just at the end of our street. It was only a short ride to a big shopping centre. We found that many things were close to us. It was such a change from having to drive them everywhere before.

While they were at school, I decided that maybe I could get a job in one of the banks, on a part time basis, and still be home for them. So I applied, and was able to get a position for Thursday and Friday evenings and all day Saturday. This meant that my husband could be home with them while I was at work. It worked out quite well for a while until I found that I wasn't very happy with the hustle bustle of city life and all that goes with it. The bank was situated in the middle of a very large shopping centre. My customers weren't the same laid back, friendly people that I knew so well in the small town bank. They were all very busy here and seemed to have no time to chat or even to be friendly most of the time. I had been away from banking for the four years that I spent at the high school and many things had changed. I didn't enjoy the work any longer, so I left.

There was another similar position advertised in a small Trust Company in the centre of town. I thought maybe it might be the same as it was in my other bank in the country. In the meantime, I had been telling a friend of mine at the church about how I had left my job in the shopping centre. She told me that they needed people at the place where she worked, and that I should put in an application. If I got the job, we could drive together because she lived near me. I knew that the work would be different again. It was at a Christian Humanitarian Organization that collected money from all across Canada to send to their offices in Third World countries to help the people to survive. It seemed like a very worthwhile job so I went to apply for a position, not even knowing what I could do for them. As it turned out, they had a banking section and needed people to make up deposits and issue receipts and such. I was told that they would call me at the end of the week. I was also told by the Trust Company that they would call me at the end of the week too. The Trust Company was to be more pay and a better opportunity for advancement so I was hoping to hear from them first.

By this time, I had found out that it seemed God would guide my path if I left it up to Him. I had sort of made a deal with Him that I would take the job with whichever place called me first. It was late on the Friday afternoon when I was called to say I could start on Monday with my friend from church. I never did get a call from the Trust Company so I figured that was it.

On Monday morning I drove to work with my friend and was given the position in the banking section. It was a very nice, clean office, and the people seemed very friendly and helpful. My first day was very enjoyable. As I arrived home, my husband told me that a few minutes ago a man had called from the Trust Company saying that I could start to work there on the following Monday. I didn't really know what to do. For a few minutes I was really tempted to call him back and say that I would take it. Then I remembered that I had really enjoyed the day I had just completed and I really should stick with my original decision, and trust God that it would be where I was supposed to work. I never once regretted that decision and I know for sure now that it was the right thing to do.

It was only about a year later that we saw "for sale" signs on the Trust Company building. They had been forced to close it, possibly due to lack of business. It was just south of a corner where there were four major banks. I was thankful that God had helped me to decide against taking that one. I ended up spending the next twelve years at my new job, moving from the banking section, to accounting and finally to payroll. I had never learned to do either of these positions but the training came as I worked along with them. The salary could have been a lot better but there were other things that made up for it. Over the years, I was able to make some really sincere, lasting friendships with many very dear people. Some of them have died since then, but I know that I will see them again someday. It didn't take long before I knew why God had put me there.

Every morning we started out the day with a fifteen-minute prayer time. Somehow this always seemed to set the mood of the day. We prayed for each other as well as for the work in the foreign countries. There was always encouragement for those who were down and happy times with those who had something good to share. Many a time, we laughed and cried with each other. We seemed to be like one big family. It was great. The work was hard, and sometimes the days were very long, but for most of the time it didn't seem to daunt us. There was an hour chapel time, every Wednesday morning. I learned so much about how to get closer to God and to get to know Him better.

I vividly remember one very special morning. We would take turns leading the prayer time with a small reading from the Bible or a page from a popular little devotional booklet. I was on my way to work one morning, hurrying out the door as usual, when I happened to see the booklet on my kitchen table. I had been running very late that morning and I hadn't even looked at it. I remembered that it was my turn for the day, so I grabbed it quickly and stuffed it in my purse. As I arrived in the office, having only a few minutes to spare, I found the page for that day and started to look it over ready for the prayer time. To my surprise, another lady started reading some verses from her Bible before I realized what was happening. Apparently it wasn't my turn after all, but I was soon to find out what a wonderfully kind, loving Father God really was.

He knew that I had been going through a really rough period with our children at that time and I was feeling very low. I really needed something to boost my faith. Later, as I went to my desk that morning, I sat and read the page for that day from the booklet. As I read it, tears came to my eyes. The whole thing was based on the last few verses of Psalm 43 showing me how I should trust Him to work it all out for me. It was just as though He was using it to talk to me so I took it as a promise from Him. As I sat there I soon realized that He had made me think it was my turn just to make sure that I read it and received the message He was giving to me. I held on to that promise and not only did it help me then but later I found it to be true. He kept His promise. That was just one of the times when I found so much strength and encouragement from those Morning Prayer times before work started.

It was good driving to work with my friend and very soon we picked up a few more passengers along the way. For a while there, we had a full car of ladies. You can imagine what it was like to have five ladies in a car all chatting away while I was trying to drive. I think I did just as much, if not more, of the talking as they did. We had a great time. I remember once when there were only three of us driving; one was on part-time hours. She only came on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The hard part was to remember what day it was, and not to forget to stop at her house. After a while, she started walking out to the main road to meet us at the bus shelter so we didn't have to go into her neighbourhood. This was fine until one of the days when she was a little later than usual. Because we didn't see her where she normally would be waiting, I thought that it was not the day to pick her up, so I just went driving by. We had been driving for a good ten minutes when all of a sudden, we both realized that it was Thursday, looked at each other in sheer dismay, and together said, "Evelyn!!"...We quickly turned the car around and went back for her. There she was, very patiently waiting for us, thinking that we had been held up for some reason, but puzzled to see us coming from the wrong direction. We all had a good laugh about it once she was in the car and we were on our way to work again.

That was a funny episode but there was also a very serious one too. One time, I was driving the car that had previously been in the accident. It was a lovely vehicle but it had a faulty carburettor system. It had a tendency to want to stall at intersections. We had taken it into the garage to be fixed several times, each time thinking that it would be okay now. We had left work for home at about 4:30 that afternoon. It was good weather and still daylight. We came to a red light so we had to stop. Then, as the light was about to turn green, the silly thing stalled on me again. The light was still green so I turned the key and started it up again. As I did, a huge truck came barrelling through the intersection right in front of us, through the red light on his side. We just sat there, hardly believing what had happened. If my car hadn't stalled, we would probably have been going right through the middle of that intersection as the truck came through. We were so thankful that we had been saved from certain disaster. We quickly thanked God for his protection.

What we didn't know though, was what I was about to hear from my husband when I got home. As I came to the front door, he met me with a very anxious look on his face. He asked me if I was okay. Then he asked me if anything happened to us on the way home. He said that about 4:45 he had felt such a very strong urge to pray for us, that he had actually gone to kneel at the bed and pray for our safety. As I told him what had happened, we figured out that we were actually at that intersection exactly at 4:45. When I told the ladies what had happened they were so thankful that my husband listened, and obeyed what his spirit was telling him to do, and so were we.

At the new church, we soon became involved in the choir again and as it turned out, the choir leader became our daughter's new piano teacher. The children became involved in the mid-week programs for young people and seemed to be enjoying it. We were happy that they willingly came to church with us. Our younger son attended a special week long Vacation Bible School program during the following summer and came home asking many questions about what he had learned. By the end of the week, he came to me and asked if I would help him to say the prayer that would give his heart to Jesus. He too wanted to be sure of a place in Heaven and receive the free gift of eternal life. I was so happy that he was doing this of his own free will, just as his older brother had done the year before. I will always remember that day because it was my birthday. I could not have wished for a better birthday present.

I remember how in the following spring; he was chosen to sing with us in the choir as we were doing an Easter presentation. We needed a little boy to be a shepherd's son, to sing a special song to a little lamb that was destined to be a sacrifice. He sang it so beautifully. It sounded like a little girl singing because he was only about eight or nine years old. We still have it on a cassette tape today. It was put on the tape for me because it was when I had to be in the hospital for an operation, and even though I had fully expected to be in the performance myself; the hospital schedule was a definite conflict. I listened to the whole cantata, in my bed, wishing that I could have been there.

Before long, the two older ones were quickly becoming teenagers and I sensed that it might not be very easy to raise them in the years ahead. The peer pressure came in a little faster than I was ready for. It was very hard to keep track of who their school friends were and what went on while they were there. They were all good kids but that doesn't exempt them from trouble. I knew many of their friends because they brought them home. Our daughter had become very friendly with the young man who helped us to lay the grass in the back yard, and also with his sister. The boys had friends at church, as well as the ones on the street and at school. In spite of our careful handling of the invisible rope that we held around them, we sometimes held it too tightly or too loosely. It was very hard for us during those difficult teenage years, as we were very soon to discover.
16. Our Visit to Wales

The second summer in our new home was very good too. We had saved up enough money to take the children back to Wales for a visit. It would be good to show them where we were born and to see all the family members who they had only heard about until now. It was a very exciting time as we prepared for the trip. They had never been in an airplane before and the thought of going all the way to Britain was great.

We arrived at London airport and were met by my husband's sister and their father. The trip to Wales took a several hours but the children were so fascinated by all that was going on around them, they didn't notice the time. It was a good time for us while we were there, but it didn't turn out to be exactly what the children had planned. I was able to show them some of the schools I had attended but the house in which I was born was not there any longer. It had been condemned, taken down and replaced with garages for those who now had cars. However, they did get to see the house in which my husband was born. It was still there exactly as it was before except that another family lived in it now.

The little chapel where we first met was still the same too. We took them to a service there for the two Sundays of our holiday. They had asked my husband to say a few words and for us to sing for them. We considered it an honour. It just happened to be a Communion Sunday and, as the children had been used to participating in that type of service back home, we allowed them to join in. The bread came around and all was fine, then it was time for the wine. Suddenly our older son started coughing and the other two were almost choking also. It only took us a moment to realize what was wrong. It was real wine. They had never had real wine before and they had taken a big mouthful of the stuff. At our church in Canada we always had grape juice. We tried to get them to settle down as quickly as possible before anyone realized what was happening. It passed okay and the rest of the time we had a nice visit with old friends.

My sister-in-law tried very hard to make it a happy time for us. She took us to the seaside and although it was cool and cloudy, she paid for them to go to the fair. The children had rides, played some of the sideshows and won little stuffed animals called "Gonks," to take home. They asked for a hot dog for lunch. It turned out to be an ordinary sausage on a bun, but it tasted good. One of my husband's old school friends gave them a funny looking stuffed animal with a long pointed nose called a "Womble." They were very popular at the time, something about the "Wombles of Wimbledon." (Wimbledon is a very large, well-known lawn tennis facility in London, England, where many championship games are played). Even though it seemed quite ugly to me, they really liked this thing and kept it for a long time afterwards.

We took a bus tour and had some picnics as we tried to dodge the showers. We had chosen to go in August, which was not really a good time for the weather. It was cool and rained almost every day so they couldn't go swimming in the ocean as they had hoped to do. We spent much of the time visiting people and places that we felt were good for them, but sad to say, it was not their idea of a vacation.

We hadn't anticipated that visiting family members you have never seen before can be quite boring to young teenagers when that's all there is to do for the whole vacation. What could have been a really lovely time turned out to be rather disappointing for them. They liked the people and the plane ride and such, but I guess it was mostly the weather that spoiled it for them. They were not used to having so much rain in such a short period of time. It really gave them the wrong impression of a country that can be, and is, very beautiful when the sun shines. We so much wanted them to like our homeland, but they were just as happy to be back home in their Canada.

When we got home, it was almost time for them to go back to school again. The summer wasn't really a total loss for them, even though they didn't have quite the vacation they had been expecting. They had all been up to Algonquin Park at the church summer camp for a week, earlier on in the month before our trip. This was a week of fun for them with other kids, friends their own ages, and a time of peace and quiet for us at home. It turned out to be a special time for our daughter because it was during one of their evening campfire sessions, that she had made the decision to give her heart to Jesus also. She was a little shy about it when she came home. It was one of her brothers who reminded her to tell us. We weren't sure that she had a clear understanding of what she had done. I was hoping that she didn't just feel left out, and wasn't really sincere about it, like I had been a few years earlier. I knew that it would be up to the Holy Spirit to do His work in her life as He had done in mine. Only God knew what was in her heart, and that was all that mattered.

I was so happy that now we all belonged to the family of God. I thought this would mean that now our problems would be very small, if any. But oh my, was I ever wrong! There is no bed of roses promised to those who turn their lives over to Christ. The only promise He makes is that He will be there with us to help us through it all. The pain and suffering is felt just the same as for everyone else. In fact, the devil isn't very happy with those who try to follow Jesus and he tries as hard as he can to make things difficult for us. I already knew that, but I hadn't really experienced it personally before, only heard about it and seen it in others' lives.
17. Teenage Trials

Well, it wasn't long before we were given a chance to find out how real God's love for us was, and whether or not He was going to be there for us when we needed Him. Many a sleepless night, I cried over my teenagers, praying that somehow God would bring them through it all. Peer pressure was something I had only heard about before, never realizing its powerful impact on the lives of young people. It was so good to be able to go to God as a trusted friend this time, and not like in that awful snow storm when I never even knew for sure that He heard my prayer. Now I knew He was there and I could sense that He was helping me to cope and even giving me some direction along the way in a manner that I had learned to recognize.

A little while later, we discovered that someone had really hurt one of our children and I was having a very difficult time forgiving him. I felt that I had a right to feel this way and I wasn't about to let it all go that easily. We were really trying to work through it but it was so hard. The consequences were devastating to us all, but it seemed that the others were handling it so much better than I was.

There was a time when I was so obsessed with this problem that I was allowing it to take over from almost everything else in my life. I was so thankful for my dear friends at work, their understanding advice and their prayers for me. People at our church were very good to us too with encouragement along the way. It was actually my sister who finally got through to me about it. She came to visit us and told me that had she noticed how this thing was destroying me and that I had to do something about it, and soon. I hadn't realized until then how it was eating away at me from the inside out and even affecting my health. I wouldn't listen to the advice of my husband but I should have. He was too close to me I guess and I figured that he was just going through a hard time with the problem too. He was actually trying to hold us all together through this. It must have been a very difficult job for him and I sure wasn't helping at all. I thought I was asking God to help me but I wanted to do things my own way instead. I was being very stubborn. Somehow in my pride, I felt that He needed me to help Him with this thing, when really I was only messing things up and holding Him back.

Our boys had started going to a different church than the other three of us because they liked the youth program there. For some time now, they had been trying to get us to go with them. Again, I was being stubborn. It was as though I knew that if I went there I would find God dealing with me about my feelings towards this person. After a while, reluctantly I followed the other four and went along too. As I listened to the pastor, over the weeks, I realized that without even noticing it, I had gradually become very far away from God.

The pastor was doing a series regarding our relationships with others. It seemed like his messages were tailor-made for me. I didn't like the awful feeling of not being able to find God any longer. I felt so separated from what used to be a very loving relationship between us. There was a beautiful large wooden cross at the front of this church, all lit up with a purple glow behind it. I found that I couldn't look at it now without crying. Deep down in my heart, I knew what was wrong and what I had to do, but I didn't want to do it. This separation from God was because of the sin in my life. The rebellion to what I knew I had to do and the sheer disobedience of not wanting to forgive this person and for holding such bitterness towards him. Even though I felt that I had a right to feel this way about him, I knew what God expected of me. I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

I sat in the church one evening and cried almost all the way through the service. I had to ask God to forgive me for being so stubborn in not doing what I knew He would want me to do. Finally, I told God that I was willing to try but He would have to help me. I left for home that night, determined in my heart that I had to really forgive him. Not being able to face that person, I wrote a letter to him saying that I had forgiven him and asked him to forgive me for not showing a Christian attitude towards him. I had felt in my heart, many times, that I wanted to get even with him somehow for what he had done and I'm sure that he knew how I felt.

After that, I tried as much as I could to get on with my life. Gradually, somehow, God did it for me, in His time and in His way. It took quite a while, but I found that before long I could talk about it without getting angry and I was beginning to feel that I was getting back closer to God again. It was like a big weight being lifted off my shoulders. I was really glad that I had gone to the other church for that time so that God could use the pastor there to put me back on the right track again.

It wasn't very long before I actually started to feel sorry for this person and the sad situation in his life that would have made him do this. Sometimes I think people do bad things and hurt others because they have been starved of the proper type of love and care that they should have received while growing up as children, and only God's unconditional, forgiving, love in their lives can break the chain reaction.

We were also going through another very difficult time with trying to forgive another person in our lives. By this time though, I was beginning to realize that for the sanity of all of us, there was only one way to handle it. But it was so very hard for us. Once again, we were just devastated. It took a long time to come to grips with it all, and it still isn't totally resolved. But God knows all about it and we just have to leave it with Him and trust that He will put it right, in His time.

Time went by quickly after that and gradually the children were coming through this rough stage in our lives, although I knew there was still quite some time to go yet. It wasn't all bad though. Some of it was very good and there were even happy times.

In Wales, as a teenager, my husband used to be quite a good trombone player. He had joined a special brass band. The men who worked in the coal mine where he was employed organized this. They were part of the community musicians who would sometimes play as they marched in the annual "carnival" (parade) around the streets of the town. He hadn't played that instrument for many years because he had given up belonging to the band when he met me. I guess I took up all his practising time. He didn't own the trombone, so he had to return it when he left. The children and I thought it would be nice to try and buy one for him for Christmas but we didn't realize how much money we would have to pay for a new one.

Our older son had become friendly with the music teacher at his high school and found out that some of their damaged instruments were being replaced. He arranged for us to buy one at a very reasonable price. It just had a small indentation at the base of the bell but he assured us that it would not affect the sound, it just didn't look perfect. We were so happy with it but we didn't know how to wrap it without him immediately recognizing the shape of its case. We decided to hide it and write some clues in the form of a poem. On Christmas morning we gave him an envelope with the clues and made him look for it. As he came to the end of the clues, he probably knew what it was because before he even saw it he had tears in his eyes. We had polished it up to look like new, and when he opened it we could see that he was absolutely thrilled with it. That was a very special family time for us. He never really got into to playing it much though, he said that his "lip" was not in shape any longer and it would take some time to get it back. He still doesn't play it very often but I know that he would really like to, some day.

Again time passed by quickly and it was springtime on the way once more. Our older son wanted to work for the summer at the church's boy's camp up north. He would be on kitchen the duty roster, along with doing maintenance and counselling for the younger ones. There was no pay, but he would have free room and board and it would be a good experience for him to spend the summer away from home.

He had started to be interested in playing the guitar. My husband had been given a lovely new one from my brother-in-law a few years ago. It came from California as a gift because we had helped my sister and their family while he was on a business trip there for about three months. Our son wanted to take this guitar with him to the camp. His dad told him that he could take it as long as he learned to play it, and if he played it very well, it would be given to him when he came home. I don't think my husband realized what would happen. It turned out that our son learned to play it so well that he was playing it for much of the camp's musical needs. He must have worked very hard and deserved to own it. This was the beginning awareness of his obvious love for music. It grew on him like a second skin.

He started to play our piano too, with no lessons. He even wrote a few songs of his own and sung them in church at youth meetings. I couldn't believe how well he was doing with it. I remembered when he was little how we used to have to tell him to sing quietly when he was in the junior choir. He knew the words so well, and had such a strong voice, but he couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. Dear love him. It was so sad to listen to him being so eager to sing his best and yet sound so terrible. But here he was now, even tuning the guitar by his ear alone. Unbelievable!

Many a time, he would play a special chorus on that piano, just to cheer me up when he sensed that I was upset about something. He seemed to know in his spirit when and what to play to lift me up. It was so neat the way he would be so sensitive to my spirit. One time when he knew that I was worried about something, he took a little plaque from the wall upstairs, and brought it down to me where I was in the laundry room. He didn't say a word, but placed it right in front of me on the top of the dryer. The words on the plaque were, "Be still and know that I am God." No words from him were necessary. I knew what he meant and he knew that it would help me, and it did so very much. He probably would be surprised to know that I remembered about that after all these years.

He soon became involved in a Christian Rock Band with three of his friends. He played the guitar of course although at high school he played an alto saxophone in the band there. He brought it home a few times to practise. I never knew what a lovely sound came out of that instrument. He played it very well too. I have always wanted to buy one of those for him. I still might just do that one-day if I ever get enough money. He had bought himself an electric bass guitar by that time but he still played the other one too. He seemed to be able to play just about anything. They were all good musicians and worked very hard to be even better. It was their intention to play music at various Coffee Houses for teenagers to attend on Saturday nights. This was to have a two-fold purpose to help keep the kids off the street and to give them a chance to hear that God loved them. They travelled around all over the place and seemed to be doing an excellent job at something they really loved doing. We didn't know at the time that this was the start of his future vocation plus the means by which he would eventually meet the girl of his life.
18. A Proper Vacation

It was the summer of 1982 and we were due for another car. The one with the faulty ignition system just had to go. We weren't able to get much for it so we didn't have a great deal of money for another one. Our nephew was working for a company who leased a car to him for his business. He told us that the leases were almost up on a few of them, and he would buy one of them for us, if we didn't mind it being a used one and not being fussy about what kind it was. We figured that it really didn't matter as long as we could get something half decent for the price we could afford.

Well now, when he brought it around to see if we liked it, I couldn't believe my eyes. It was a beautiful, one year old Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. The paint was a dark chocolate brown with light brown leather interior. It was fully loaded with just about everything anyone would want in a car. It had a very powerful motor and automatic everything. My husband and the boys were just thrilled with it as they drove it around the block. I felt a little strange about it. I couldn't seem to take in all the luxury of it. It seemed just too rich for my blood somehow. We went for a ride to buy some milk at the corner store. My husband offered to let me drive it but I refused. I really didn't feel comfortable with it at all. Then, as we were coming back out of the store, I happened to glance at the licence plate. As I did, I saw the first three letters were OFH. I stopped for a second and in my mind, I said to myself, "Our Father in Heaven." Almost immediately, my husband turned to me and said, "Look, that car is a gift from God. It says, Our Father in Heaven. You should not refuse His gift." I could hardly believe my ears, and that he had been thinking the same thing as what was going through my mind at the same time. I realized then that God was actually trying to show me that it really was a gift from Him. I felt so badly for my behaviour and asked Him to forgive me. With grateful tears in my eyes, I took the keys from my husband and drove it home. It handled like a dream. It really was such a lovely car. It was air conditioned too and we couldn't wait to take it on vacation that summer.

It came around very quickly and we all went back to Myrtle Beach again for what the kids called a proper vacation this time. The ocean was warm, and the hotel was right on the beach with all sorts of mini golf courses very close behind it. The weather was gorgeous and we had a great time once we got there. Getting there was another story though.

We had decided to leave early in the morning to get a good start on the long journey. Our daughter, who was now almost seventeen, had decided that she was old enough to stay home alone now, and wasn't really looking forward to travelling for two days in the back seat of the car with her two younger brothers. You know how teenagers can be when they are reaching that independent stage. The thought of being home alone and have no one telling her what to do for a whole week, seemed to be more appealing than the ocean, I guess. To me, I felt that she didn't know what she was missing. We tried to talk her into coming with us but she was sure that this was what she wanted to do. My dad's sister still lived just a short distance away, so we had made sure that she would be there if needed. Anyway, we loaded up the car and were off on our way at five o'clock in the early morning, leaving her sleeping in her room. We had said goodbye the night before.

The trip was okay and we made good time. We had arranged to stop overnight in Washington because it seemed to be about half way, and we had liked it there when we went the first time. We checked into the hotel around suppertime and I called home to let her know that we had arrived safely and to be sure that all was well with her. Well, it seemed that she had soon changed her mind, and wanted to come with us after all. I guess it was lonely being in the house alone, and being totally responsible for everything wasn't all that it had seemed. I found out that as she knew where we were planning to spend the first night, she had phoned my aunt, and a dear friend of mine from work, who had pooled their money together to book a flight to Washington for her. She was due to arrive at noon the next day. It all happened so quickly. I was very grateful to them for arranging everything for her but feeling very badly that I had not insisted that she come along with us in the first place.

The next morning we woke up early, knowing that the Washington airport was a full hour away by car. The boys were dressed and were deciding what they were going to have for breakfast, while sipping on a coke they had bought from the machine in the hall. We were just about to leave when I saw our older son standing near the coat racks, sort of leaning backwards towards the wall. He was actually sliding down the wall and his eyes were looking strange. I reached over to try and help him. He was a good four or five inches taller than I was by this time and I was trying to either hold him up, or lay him on the bed beside me. My husband was over near the window of the hotel room. He looked over at us and told our son to stop fooling around. I anxiously shouted back saying that he was not fooling around, but was having an epileptic seizure, and to call for help. I don't know how I knew what was wrong with him, I just knew.

By this time, I had only managed to get him to the floor and tried to put his head over to the side. His legs were stiff and he seemed obviously not in control of his body. I was so upset. I didn't really know what I could do for him. While my husband was calling for the ambulance, I was kneeling beside him trying to comfort him and telling him, and myself, that God would help him. He seemed to be totally unaware of what was happening to him. I kept praying for God to help him. Gradually he stopped striving on the floor and started to breathe very slowly and deeply. I thought he was going to die. I was so devastated. He was very precious to me, as was, and are, all of my children. We were very relieved to find that the ambulance arrived so quickly. They had him on a stretcher and were on the way to the hospital immediately. We soon realized that we were only five minutes away.

When we got there we were also pleased to find that we had no hassle about insurance, they took our numbers and that was it. They examined him well and he was becoming conscious now. They figured out that it was possibly a case of hypoglycaemia and gave him a large drink of very sweet orange juice. We were told that he would be okay now but to take him to our family doctor when we got home. Our whole trip was to be ten days altogether. He was still very weak and tired so I sat in the back seat with his head on my lap. We had to hurry because by now it was getting very late for our trip to Washington airport to pick up our daughter.

When we met her she was so pleased to see us again, and we were so pleased to have her with us. Later on, she admitted that she had a great time and was very glad that she came with us. I stayed in the back seat for the rest of the journey and he slept almost all the way there.

This sort of put a damper on our vacation a little because we were almost afraid to let him out of our sight. One afternoon, we were heading out to play mini golf but he wanted to stay and play his guitar on the beach. We decided to let him do that and continued on our way. We had been there for about half an hour when we heard a siren coming from the direction of our hotel. Immediately, we left the golf course and drove to the spot where we had left him. There he was, peacefully playing his guitar, wondering why we had come back so soon. We tried to really trust God to take care of him after that because we knew that we just couldn't be with him every minute of the day. He was okay for the rest of the trip and we were able to get him to see the doctor as soon as we got home. He went for some tests but it took a while before they diagnosed what it really was, and were able to control the problem with the proper medication. He's doing very well now, and hardly ever gets any more of them. It took a long time, but I have really learned to trust God for it now. I know that there's nothing else I can do and that actually praying for him is the most I can do.
19. 'Til We Meet Again - Twice

It was August of 1983 and we had been married for twenty-five years. Along with a few members of the family, our children gave us a lovely surprise Silver Wedding Anniversary party. It was such a happy occasion. My sister had made a lovely big heart-shaped cake for us. The kids had found an old wedding photograph they used for an enlargement that fitted into a silver coloured frame, and had it engraved on the bottom. There were lots of other lovely gifts from our families too.

It didn't seem like a whole twenty-five years had gone by since we were married. Ours was one of the few marriages still going strong in spite of the years. It seemed that being married very young turned out to be a good idea, in spite of what some would think of as being silly. It hadn't been totally easy, but we had learned a long time before that to make a marriage work, is not just a 50/50 deal but actually giving 100% both ways. We found out that both partners have to love and respect the other person's point of view and be ready to make any necessary adjustments to ensure the happiness of the other. We learned to love and obey God's laws in our lives, and especially to follow the golden rule; to do/for to others what you would like them to do to/for you. It worked, and is still working for us now after fifty-three years.

The following year, we had planned another trip to Wales to see our family, as my father-in-law was not well. We couldn't afford for all of us to go to Wales again, and we knew it would not be a good idea to leave the children alone to travel so far away, so we decided to let our younger son go with my husband in my place. He was happy to go and was good company for his dad. The trip was very sad for them though to see Granch so sick. He could hardly breathe but tried hard to put up a good front. It was very difficult for my husband to have to leave for home once again, knowing that it was probably the last time to see him, just as it was many years earlier with his mother.

They had to come home after the three weeks were up, but by this time, both my husband's sisters were there to take care of their dad. It was only one week later when we were so very sad to hear that Granch had died in his sleep. His older daughter had gone up to check on him before she went to bed when she realized that he was dead. They said that he had died with a smile on his face. We believe that it was because he knew and loved God and that he knew where he was going. He would be so happy to see his wife again after all those years. It was strange to go back to Wales after that and not have him there. He had lived twenty-three years longer than his wife. Such a dear kind man! Loved by many who knew him as he lived for God too!

It was only one year later that my mother died also. She had been suffering for more than twelve years with Alzheimer's disease. It had started to show on her so gradually that it was a long time before we even knew that she was sick. After we had moved to the city, we didn't get to visit with them as often as we would have liked. We were so busy with raising our family that time seemed to go so quickly. I felt so badly that I couldn't have spent more time with her, but I knew that there wasn't really much I could do. She wasn't in any pain physically it was just that her brain wasn't functioning the way it should. My younger sister still lived very close to them and she was so good at making sure that both my parents had the help they needed. I will always be very grateful to her for being there for them whenever she could, and for when I couldn't always be there due to the distance we now lived from them and difficult circumstances with my teenagers.

It was so hard to see my mother gradually deteriorate to the point where my dad had to put her in a nursing home. That was the first time ever that I heard him cry. We all knew that it was best for her as well as for him. He had done all he could, but now the doctor said that she needed more specialized care. She didn't know, nor could she speak our names but I'm sure that she knew we were her family and that we loved her very much. She loved music and liked to listen to cassette tapes of all the old music she knew when she was younger. She wasn't old even then and only sixty-six when she died.

I remember seeing tears come to her eyes as she listened to the song "Bless this House," and as she squeezed my hand seemingly in agreement with the words. I knew that my mom had always loved God. It was very obvious in the way she lived and taught us about the Bible when we were little. One time when we were singing, "Jesus loves me" at the hospital, I asked her who He was. It was at a time when she was hardly able to speak any longer. Most of what she tried to say came out just garbled. Earlier, I had prayed that God would somehow let me know if she had made her peace with Him, and that her place in Heaven was secure. It took a minute or so for her to respond, but with tears in her eyes she clearly said, "I know." That was good enough for me. I was so happy and thankful that He had answered my prayer and in such a positive way.

It was just before Christmas when she was really so bad that she could hardly be out of bed any longer. Even though she was the youngest person there, she looked so much older than her years. It was so hard to see her that way. It was only a few weeks later that we went to see her for the last time. She was propped up with pillows because she could hardly breathe. It was Tuesday evening. I couldn't stand to see her that way. I actually prayed for God to take her home with Him. It was just two days later that He answered my prayer. I remember seeing the closed casket at the funeral and knowing in my heart that she wasn't really in there anyway, it was only the body she had used while here on earth. Her spirit was already free and happy again. Knowing this helped me to bear the grief of losing her. As I was leaving the room, I looked towards the casket, smiled through my tears and said to her, "See you in the morning Mom and I knew that one day I really would.

Again time was passing and the pace of our lives was beginning to get even faster than before. The traffic was getting hectic on the way to work and back, so much so that I was beginning to wish I didn't have as far to travel every day. I had been looking at some new houses being built across the other end of town. If we lived there I could cut off a good half of my travelling time. Our daughter didn't want to move though; she had become more than just friendly with the young man up the street by this time.

I remember the evening of her nineteenth birthday when she came home from a date with him, so happy to show me what he had bought for her. It was a lovely little gold necklace with a double heart-shaped pendant on it. One had a small diamond on the side. She was so very happy and so was I. He was a very nice young man and seemed to be very fond of her. If we moved it would be a little further for my husband to go to work and our younger son would have to change schools.

The two older ones were out working by this time but their jobs were close to town. The move would not hinder them at all. Actually our daughter was working in a local retail store, and our son was working at the same place as I worked, in the very same section that I had started out with. He had applied to attend a famous Bible College in Chicago and, with references from his pastor, was accepted, but he was only sixteen and had just completed grade twelve. He wanted to earn enough money over the summer to pay his own tuition, but he couldn't get a job at the time. He took this as an indication from God that maybe this was not the time to go. It wasn't until September, after he had told them that he couldn't make it, that he was given the job at the place where I worked.

The windows of our house needed to be replaced and there was a small leak in the closet of our daughter's bedroom, and somehow I still felt that it was not really my house. I often referred to, and thought of it as being "their" house even though we redecorated much of it in our own way. It was probably because our little bungalow had never belonged to anyone else. It was ours. We built it from scratch and I knew it. Maybe that was why it appealed to me when I saw the new houses going up at the other end of town, besides the fact that it was fifteen minutes closer to my work.

We all talked about it quite a bit. The prices were fairly reasonable and we had the current one almost paid for. We visited the sales office and chose one of the plans that I thought was more than I had hoped for. It had a lovely main floor family room just off the kitchen, with a fireplace. We had really missed that old fireplace that served us so well in the blackouts. The kitchen had a patio door to walk straight out into the back yard. There was a ground floor laundry room, an extra bathroom in the master bedroom and a small powder room near the front door. This was a wonderful much needed commodity. It was becoming almost impossible to be sharing our one little bathroom with the four of us, and a beautiful teenage daughter who spent enough time in there to make sure that she looked that way. It would be a larger house with another bedroom for our teenage overnight guests. We were allowed to choose colours and styles ahead of time. This would be "our house" once again. I was so happy. A dream house that was almost too good to be true. God had indeed been good to us.

It was around Easter and I had to go into the hospital for an operation. I was waiting for them to send me a date for admission but we went ahead and put the house up for sale anyway. I remember that just after I had been in there for a day or so, my husband phoned to tell me that there was an offer to purchase for our house. It had only been on the market for a few weeks and it was almost the exact price that we needed. He brought the papers to the hospital for me to sign. Then a few days later he phoned to tell me that he had to choose which building lot we wanted for the new house. This was ironic in a way because he had been the one who was not there to do all this stuff with the other house. When we went to look at it for the first time in the March break, he had to be at work, so the children and I chose it and made the offer. He was there to sign the papers for it though, just as I was there to pick out the plans for our new one.

It's strange how things work out sometimes. Anyway, it took six weeks for me to recover from my operation so the packing had to wait a while. Now the kids were old enough to help though, so it was not a problem. We kept going there to watch it being built. It was so exciting to see it gradually looking like the photograph we had been given. We were able to measure the windows to make curtains and have them already ahead of time. We put pretty blue and white frilly ones in our daughter's room, right in the front of the house. Then the time came when it was all finished and we found ourselves loading a moving truck once again. We were living so close to it this time though, we didn't have to spend the last night sleeping on the floor of a hot empty house, and the piano actually went on the truck with the rest of the stuff.
20. Two Weddings

We really loved our new house right away. It was so nice to have everything all so clean and new. There was a double garage and enough room in the driveway for about four cars. This came to be very important as our teenagers were now becoming adults, and so were their friends. Our daughter was the first one to buy a car, then before long our son had his too. It was very nerve wracking to see them going out alone in the car for the first time. I did a lot of praying for them I can tell you, especially in bad weather or if they were late coming home at night. After a while, when I stopped staying up for them, I always left the hall light on and my bedroom door open. If I fell asleep and woke up again, as I usually did, I knew they were home when the light was out and I could rest easy. It was a little different with our daughter though because her boyfriend did all the driving in his own car when they were out together. He wasn't very much older than she was but I felt a little more comfortable when I knew she was out with him. Now that we lived a little further away from his home, he began to spend more time at our house with us. This gave us a great opportunity to get to know him a little better too.

I remember when just before Christmas he was so excited to show me a lovely promise ring he had bought for her, and asked me if I thought she would like it. It was so pretty, I knew that she would be very happy with it, and she was. Their relationship grew stronger over the next little while and it wasn't long before he was buying her the real thing as he asked her dad and me for permission to marry her. We were very happy to give them our blessings. She was twenty years old by that time. They had set a date for the following September.

I remember that I had a real strong desire to see him come to church with us and get to know and love Jesus as we did. So for about three weeks I continually prayed that God would give me the opportunity to find out where he stood with Him. I didn't know at the time that his mother had also been praying for him for much longer. He was such a nice young man, I was so happy for her.

One evening in the summer, July 4th to be exact, they came home around nine o'clock. They stopped to sit out on the front porch where I was enjoying the cool of the evening and a cup of tea. We started to chat about them and their future while he was doing most of the talking. He had spent enough time at our home to know us well by this time. He was saying how he really loved being with us and how our family seemed to be different from many others somehow, in a nice way. He was telling me how he was having a hard time forgiving someone who was hurting him at that time. It was then that I told him what I had been through a few years before.

It seemed we had a few things in common. His birthday was the same day as mine too. Anyway, as the conversation went on, he asked me how I handled the forgiveness problem. As I explained it to him, he started asking me all sorts of questions about God and what I believed. It was almost midnight by this time and I just couldn't believe what was happening. I can still remember him saying to me that he wanted to have the same relationship with Jesus as we had, that he wanted to turn his life over to Him. My daughter must have thought that he needed a way out of it, or maybe she just wanted to see if he really meant it, I don't know, because she told him that he didn't have to make the decision now, but that he could do it later, at home if he wanted to. That was fine with me, but he insisted that he didn't want to wait. He asked me to help him with how and what to pray for.

By this time my husband and our two sons had joined us on the porch. They couldn't believe what was happening either. We had often heard of others being present as the Holy Spirit worked in someone's life this way, but we had never really seen it ourselves before. So there at midnight, on our front porch, he repeated the prayer that I had also said for our younger son, a few years before, as he asked Jesus to come into his life and be his Saviour and Lord. It was such a wonderful tender moment. I was thrilled beyond words. We went inside then and left the two of them alone. I wasn't tired even though it was very late. I was still so excited; I couldn't sleep. Even when I did sleep, I kept turning over in my bed saying thank you to God every time I turned. Somehow I just knew that this night was going to turn out to be a milestone in his life. I didn't know at the time, but she re-dedicated her life to Christ just a few weeks after that too, as she saw some definite changes for the good in him.

Later, I wrote a little poem for him to encourage him in his walk with God.

My Prayer for You

May your walk each day be closer,

As you journey in His love,

That your heart will find a longing,

To serve Him out of love.

May you find Him ever faithful

In all you try to do.

May you always know His presence

And feel Him close to you.

May your love for Him grow stronger

With every passing day,

As you strive to be more like Him,

As He daily shows the way.

I pray you'll use His armour,

To fight the war with sin,

And through much prayer for guidance,

I'm confidant you'll win.

So as the years rush by you,

One day when all is done,

You'll stand there in His presence,

And hear, "Well done, My son!"

Again, time passed by and before long our son came home from a Coffee House session one night saying that he had met a very special girl. It seemed that they had each found the other at the same time. He was telling his friend in the band to look at that gorgeous girl at the table in front of them and she was telling her friend about the good-looking guy playing in the band. She lived about a half hour drive from our house and it wasn't long before he was inviting her to dinner with us. Although we didn't know her, she seemed like a very nice girl. It was easy to see why he liked her; she was very pretty. Our lives were so busy that it seemed to be no time before he was telling me that he wanted to buy her a ring. He asked me to go with him to see the one he had chosen. It was beautiful. He was sure that she would like it, and she did.

We were all so happy for him. He was on cloud nine for most of the time during the next few months. She was studying to be a nurse and already had spent many hours at a local nursing home. It takes a special kind of caring to nurse elderly people. We soon realized that she was a very clever girl as well as being pretty. He spent most week-ends at her parent's home and went to their church with them on the Sundays, just the same as I had done back in Wales with my future in-laws. We were so happy to learn that they had all given their hearts to Jesus a long time ago too.

Before long, they also had set a date, for the July following our daughter's September wedding date. This meant two weddings, only ten months apart. Almost the same as their ages were only nine months apart. We would be decreasing our household by two so quickly and we had bought this lovely big house to have more room for them. Oh well, we still would need it for a while anyway, and it was a lovely house even if it was to be eventually for only the three of us.

It seemed like wedding plans were the order of the day very soon after that. We only had the one daughter and I was beginning to be thankful for that. There was so much to be done and so many details to take care of. It was exciting though and seemed to go fairly well. We had chosen the bridesmaids' dresses and her dress but we couldn't find a matching dress for the flower girl, so I ended up sewing it for her as a miniature replica of theirs. They were pale blue, with a deeper blue for the matron of honour. She had chosen her fiancé's sister and her soon-to-be new sister-in-law for the two bridesmaids. The matron of honour and little flower girl were a mother and daughter set, a dear friend of hers from our church.

The flowers were to be silk, in two shades of blue with white. The men would be in a soft grey with black shoes. Her brothers and his brother were the groomsmen. The last few days were very hectic trying to get the last minute details worked out but when the day actually came it was great. The church ceremony was excellent. As she was coming down the aisle with her dad, I stopped looking at them for a moment to see the look in the eyes of her future husband. I could see such a deep love; I just knew that it was going to be a good marriage. She looked so beautiful. Such a lovely little body in that tiny size five dress. Her hair was perfect, of course, and the whole wedding party looked perfect too.

The pastor made the ceremony so personal, as he gave advice to them both, having known them for a while by this time. I remember that we sang, "To God Be the Glory, (great things He has done)." Such a beautiful song and so very appropriate to the event! Then there were the photographs in the park, and off to the reception.

There was only one sad part, and that was that neither my mother nor my husband's parents could be there to see it. It was quite obvious that my mother was missing at the family table. On the whole, the evening was great. Everyone had a wonderful time and told us so. The happy couple stayed at the hotel for the night and left for a honeymoon at Myrtle Beach the next morning.

When they got home they stayed at our house for a few days until their house was ready. Earlier on before the wedding, they had put in an offer to purchase a lovely townhouse not too far from where we lived. He had saved up some money for the down payment and they found something really nice within the price they could afford. He had a really good job so they would probably be fine. As it turned out, they were very fortunate to get it all settled just a few months before the housing market started to go crazy. We had a big moving-in party as we all chipped in our efforts to help them get settled. It was good to see them so happy.

Well, before long, the other wedding was being planned. Not being the mother of the bride this time though, there was very little for me to do. I was thankful after all the work I had put into the one we just did. They had chosen a deep pink and a pale pink for their colours with the groomsmen in black. Their church was in the process of being renovated so the ceremony was to be held in a very quaint, old, tiny church a little further north. Inside, there were little white pews and a very pretty altar. It looked like a storybook church. The bride had chosen to wear her mother's wedding dress with a new lovely matching hat. The dress was gorgeous, all satin and lace with large puffed sleeves at the shoulders. She looked so very lovely in it as she walked down the aisle, and I could see the same kind of love in his eyes too. We had prayed for a good wife for our son, as we had also prayed for a good husband for our daughter.

We were very grateful that God had answered our prayers on both counts. It was so good to see them so happy. Their ceremony was beautiful too. We have it all on videotape. Her dad had a lovely old refurbished car with a huge white ribbon on the front. They used it to bring the bride to the church and for them both to travel to the reception. The only thing that was a little hitch that day was the heat. The little church was not air-conditioned of course, and the temperature was close to 90 degrees.

The photographs were taken at a beautiful park nearby, with a river running through it. The reception was very good too and before long they were off in a lovely big limousine heading for a hotel in Toronto for the night. The next day they left for a honeymoon in Quebec. They actually stayed at the Chateau Frontenac for a few nights. When they got home, they moved into a little house not too far from where we lived. We were very happy for them as they started their lives together. We soon realized that during these two weddings, we hadn't lost a daughter and a son; we had gained a daughter and a son. We were very happy with the additions to our family.

In between the weddings we had decided that maybe the house really was going to be almost empty when the two older ones left after all. I didn't want to leave that house though. I really loved it. But there were a few reasons why we moved, not just because of the room. We were also thinking that if we chose a smaller house then we could pay off the mortgage. At that time too, we wanted to buy a piece of property out in the country again so that we could build a little house for our retirement. My husband was going to be able to retire at age fifty-four and that wasn't too very far away. We had chosen a really pretty little town and even the piece of land that we thought would be perfect.

So the time came to sell the house. We thought that we would start looking first before we sold it. The very first house the real estate agent showed us was perfect but the closing date was not good for us. After looking around for quite a while, we were having a very hard time choosing a place that we liked. It wasn't easy to find something as nice as what we already had but smaller. Time was going by and our real estate agent suggested that maybe we should see how much we could get for our house then we would know how much we could afford. It seemed like a good idea. Lots of people came to see it, but there were no offers. Then someone came with an offer that was quite low. We were willing to consider a little lower so we signed it back. Just when it seemed to be going through, they changed their minds and we never heard from them again. The agent said this was strange because they really liked the house. Anyway, a while later, another offer came in, a little better this time. Again something happened at the last minute that stopped it being sold. By this time the agent was really baffled. He had to go away to the U.S. for a while so he switched us to his partner. The house had been on the market for almost three months now and we both sensed that God was telling us that we should not be trying to sell it.

We decided that we would withdraw the sale as soon as the time had run out, in a day or so. It was the very next day when the agent tried to persuade us to wait just a little while longer and we reluctantly let him talk us into it. Before we knew it, he was bringing in an offer that was a little higher than the other two but still not what we were expecting. Well, again we let him talk us into letting it go. We should never have done it. I know it's awful to say this, but he didn't seem to care about what we wanted. I'm sure that if the other agent hadn't gone away, he would have respected our decision to withdraw. He knew that we were having a hard time trying to find a place that we liked. I'm also sure now that it was really God trying to tell us to stay put. We sure weren't listening to Him very well at that time.

Within a few days, the market was beginning to go crazy. The prices were going up every day. We still couldn't find a house we liked and the longer we looked, the higher the prices were going. We ended up buying a five-level link home, costing way more than it should have been. But it was very nice on the inside, clean and well kept, not very far from where we were. I was very sad to leave my lovely big house but I knew that I could do nothing about it now; the deal was done.

The packing from that house was emotionally difficult, but we were a little encouraged as we made arrangements to buy the little piece of property in the country. It was a quaint little train town. My husband really loves trains and our daughter-in-law's parents lived not too far down the road. We had become really good friends and we were looking forward to being neighbours. We hoped that the time would pass quickly so that we could get the house built and be back in the country again.
21. College and Careers

Nothing was really changed. We still worked at the same places, had the same doctor and dentist, attended the same church, and kept our old friends. We just had new neighbours. The piano was in the family room this time. There was a fireplace too but we didn't use it very much. The driveway was very small and only a single garage. We were charged a fine if we left the car on the street overnight. I tried hard to like that house. Eventually I got used to it as I kept telling myself that the other one was too big for us anyway. I think it was my pride that was hurt, and that's not very good.

Our younger son was now out of high school and wanted to be a mechanic. He started as an apprentice in a garage closer to the city. He really loved working on cars. He bought an old one that needed some work on it and then sold it later. He worked hard on it and seemed to spend all his time in our garage. This was the beginning of an eventual nightmare for him but we had no idea of that at the time. He didn't stay as an apprentice for very long because he wasn't used to working out in the cold of the winter. He also was in a shop where he was expected to do the work as a mechanic already instead of being taught. He soon got another job indoors. He loved to spend time at his church on the weekends, helping out with the sound system and attending youth activities. He was a good son to us. He lived at home and stayed out of trouble.

Our older son settled down very well to married life but wasn't too happy in his job. He struggled through, as many difficulties happened to cause him to be looking for another one. At last he thought for sure that he had found what he wanted. It was only on a contract basis, but he was hired to work at the same place as his dad. It was a good job and he was very happy there. Then one day they told him that if he wanted his contract renewed, he had to get some sort of technician's certificate. This meant that he would have to attend community college to get it and he couldn't manage that financially at the time. He was so upset when the time came for him to leave. I felt so sorry for him. He had gone through about six different jobs in less than four years since he left school. It was very hard on him. Somehow though, in the back of my mind, I knew that it was because he was supposed to be in Bible College. He had forgotten about his dedication to be a pastor when he was twelve years old, as he was still searching for work.

It wasn't too long after that when I think God reminded him of what was His plan for his life. There was a special video being shown at the church youth meeting one night. It was about a man who was speaking to a whole stadium of young people about how he had been pardoned from a prison term, and how since then, he had turned his life over to Christ. As it happened, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time when he was arrested. Now he was helping these young people to get their lives straightened out and trying to prevent others from falling into the same lifestyle that got him into trouble. As my son and his wife were watching this video, God must have shown them that they should also be helping teenagers. The next thing I knew, she came out of the meeting with tears in her eyes, seemingly for a happy reason, and told me that they would be applying for Bible College. They had already been working as leaders with a young peoples' group at their church and loved it. They seemed to be so good with kids and the kids loved them.

The application was accepted and before the summer was over, they were ready to move everything for a four-year stint at a famous Bible College in Regina.

I remember when they packed up the truck with the car on a trailer at the back, and started out on the long four-day trip. I was sad to see them going away, but very happy that they were doing what I really felt was what God wanted for them. It seemed to me that the whole idea of him not being able to stay at his other jobs was because God wanted him elsewhere.

In the meantime, I was the proud, happy grandmother of a lovely precious grandson born to my daughter. He was a good child and so loving. I felt too young to be a grandmother but I wasn't really, and he was well worth it. I so enjoyed being able to spend time with him. His daddy was really growing in his Christian faith and I knew that this little family were very happy. It was so good to see the both of them being baptized together, as my husband and I had been, just a few years previously, along with our two sons.

We kept ourselves busy at work and at church, while our younger son also seemed to be in and out of different jobs. He wanted to be in business for himself and do his own thing. This was not a good idea, although he really felt that it was. A few times, he struggled through with perseverance trying to make it work. Sad to say though, it's a tough world out there and he wasn't quite ready for it. He gave of himself to the point where over the years; he made some serious errors in judgement, trusted people way too much and got burned by them. He ended up losing his business and his money. After a few years of sheer frustration, in situations that all fell flat on him, he also was able to finally get a job at his dad's place. But he was not required to have the technician's certificate. By this time they had changed the policy again. This really confirmed my feeling about the fact that God just didn't want my other son to stay there.

We made a few trips out to Regina to see our son and daughter-in-law, especially the time when their baby was on the way. It was so good to hear that we had another baby grandson. Such a little darling too! Being a grandmother is so nice. I have always loved children. Our daughter-in-law went through a really rough delivery and needed some help. She had a very hard time recovering. We were very glad to be able to spend a few weeks with them.
22. A Test of Faith

Time went by and things were getting pretty hectic at work for me. The whole organization was growing so quickly that we could hardly keep up with it. I loved my work but I was trying to do too much. My husband tried to tell me but I wouldn't listen to him. I should have known about listening to him from before. He decided that we needed to get away so we planned a trip to Wales for May. It was a good trip but I was so thoroughly exhausted. I was walking around sightseeing, when I noticed a heavy pain in the bottom of my stomach, I could hardly walk. It felt like some sort of pressure. It seemed to be getting better a little later on in the week, but I still didn't feel well. I had been through some bladder problems before so I figured that it was probably what was bothering me.

When we came back home, I went to get it checked out with the doctor. He told me that my bladder was okay but he found that I had a cyst on one of my ovaries. He seemed quite concerned about it. He was due to go on vacation soon but wanted me to get it examined by the specialist before he left. When I went to see him in July, he told me that I should have it removed but they didn't have any beds available at the hospital until October.

When my doctor came back from vacation and received the report from that specialist, he was quite upset that I had to wait so long. In the meantime, I was beginning to feel very uncomfortable again. I sensed that this thing was growing and pressing on my bladder. I could actually feel something that seemed like a large egg in there. I called to see if I could get into the hospital any earlier. My doctor was trying too. Eventually I was called see if I would take a cancellation on August 20th. I arranged for the six weeks sick leave from work for the recovery time and prepared for the operation.

When I awoke from the anaesthetic, I was told that it was quite a large cyst and that it had broken as they were taking it out. They had sent some of the tissue for the usual biopsy but he was a good 95% sure that it was okay. He told me that they had taken the other ovary out as well because it looked a little worse for wear too. That was on the Monday. On Thursday, the specialist came into my room and sat on the end of my bed. He told me that the one ovary was fine but they had a bit of a surprise with the other. He then proceeded to tell me that he knew of a good man in a city hospital who was very good with radiation and that he would make the arrangements for me. There would also be some further exploratory surgery necessary as soon as I was well enough.

I remember sitting there, trying to grasp what he was saying? Radiation? Was he telling me that it was malignant? I can remember being almost ready to scream ... no, no, it can't be! Then almost immediately I could feel the panic being suppressed and calmness setting in as if it was being forced on me. It was like the panic was coming up from the bottom, and the calm was pushing down from the top. I told him that I was fine, I thanked him and he left. It seemed that he was used to being the bearer of such news but I think I was just stunned for an hour or so.

I had tried to prepare myself before the operation that there was a chance that it might be malignant. There was the sense of urgency in my family doctor and also the way in which it seemed to be growing so much. I guess we can sort of expect something and yet still be floored when it actually happens. I really didn't know what to think next. All I knew was that I couldn't get over how calm I seemed to be. After all, I had just been told that I had cancer. Was I still just stunned by the news? Before very long, I began to realize that this calmness was God letting me know that He would be there with me. To help me through it all and that somehow it would be okay. There was nothing I could do about it anyway. I just had to trust Him. That is something so easy to say and so hard to do.

None of the nurses or the doctor knew that it was my birthday that day but all my family had planned to visit me. I remember praying that somehow God would help me to hide it from them, not wanting to spoil what they had planned for me. Later, as night came and they all went home, I went to the window of my room and looked up at the starry August night. I remember the tears in my eyes as I thanked Him for doing it for me. Then I cried myself to sleep as I wondered what tomorrow would bring.

I was awake early and I put in a call to my church to ask if the pastor was coming to see me that day. I was going to have to tell my family somehow and I needed all the help I could get. He did come and we prayed that they would be able to take the news in a way that would not upset them too much. Just as he was leaving on the elevator, my husband was coming in. They met with the usual greetings without a hint of the problem. Then the phone beside my bed rang. It was my family doctor calling to see if the specialist had been in. He was actually trying to find out if I had been told yet. My husband was now sitting beside me and I couldn't say much. I just told him that I was fine and he said that he would be around to see me soon. Of course my husband wanted to know what the phone call was about. Even to this day, I can't remember what I told him or how I said it. All I know is that he seemed to be quite calm about it. I'm sure it was because he was trying not to show that he was upset to spare me from further hurt. He was so concerned about how I was taking it that he never showed his own shock. We cried together as he was leaving but he made sure that I was okay before he left.

I didn't know until later, but he told me that when he got home he was so mad at God. He went down into the basement of our house and shouted at Him for about a half an hour. He couldn't understand why this was happening to me. He was asking God why it couldn't have been him instead. He said that he was stronger than I was and it shouldn't have been me. He said that when he had stopped shouting, it was as though God was asking him if he was finished yet. Then he said that somehow he felt a little easier about it all after that. I was really touched by the love my husband showed for me over this. He wanted to take it in my place. He's such a special person to me. I love him so very much.

Then the time came to tell the children and the rest of my family. My daughter phoned me very soon after my husband had left the room. I told her right then over the phone. She was very upset. I felt so sorry afterwards. I realized that I should have been much gentler with her about it. She had no idea that it was going to be malignant. She wasn't properly prepared to hear such news and I should never have told her over the phone. That was a very big mistake on my part. I guess I wasn't thinking straight at the time, I don't know. All I do know is how badly I felt about it afterwards. She is such a wonderful daughter to me. My husband told the rest of the family as soon as he got over the initial shock himself. He told me that my sister took it especially hard and was very upset.

When my body was beginning to heal and it was time for me to go home, the doctor told me that he was booking me into another big hospital in Toronto for the further exploratory surgery as soon as possible. It seemed that because they had stitched me back up before they knew the results of the biopsy; they hadn't looked around for further growth of the disease. I was hardly well enough to take it when the operation was booked for early October. This was very extensive surgery. They took extra tissue from a few places around the area and gave my intestines such a going over that they felt like my whole insides had been put through a wringing machine. When I woke up from that one I was so very weak. I didn't even know who had been to visit me for a few days after; I was so completely out of it.

The doctors told me that they had taken all they could and were pretty sure that it would be okay now. My intestines were fine and with the chemotherapy and radiation to make sure, I should have a good chance to make it. They allowed me to go home after about ten days but I could hardly walk even with assistance.

When I got home, we realized that our bedroom was on the top floor of this five level house. I could barely make it to the living room. Before long we decided that we would have to move. My husband was very good around the house but with going to work and taking care of me, he was finding it very hard to keep up.

Our older son suggested that it would be a good idea if we sold the house, invested the money, and rented a one-floor condo for a while. This seemed like a very good idea so we put the house up for sale. We didn't want to make the same mistake as last time, so we asked God to show us if this was what He wanted us to do by allowing a few things to happen. We asked that it would sell very quickly with an early closing date so that we could be out as soon as possible. We needed the new owners to be willing to take over the mortgage so that we wouldn't have to pay a penalty to get out of it at the bank. That we would be offered a sum within a few hundred dollars of the asking price and that we would be able to find a nice place to live very quickly.

You can imagine how pleased we were when these things started to happen, but even though it sold within two weeks and we were offered within a few hundred dollars of the asking price, it was a very bad time for the housing market. The mortgage was to be taken over by the new owners and very quickly too, as of December 1st. We were able to find a very nice condo close by with a beautiful view of Lake Ontario in the distance. I had always said that I would never move back into an apartment again. I had been so used to having a house and a back yard but I knew that I had no choice now. I had to do what seemed best regardless of how I felt. There would be very little room for all our belongings as there was no storage space other than the laundry room. We gave some of it to "the kids" and stored some in the basement of our friends' house who lived in the train town. We thought that maybe if we ever got to build that retirement home on our little piece of land up there, we wouldn't have very far to move them. Maybe that was what made me feel as if the apartment was only going to be temporary and somehow I didn't seem to mind it as much as I thought I would.

It was almost new and was very clean and nice. We were to be on the top floor so there would be no noise from people above us. There was an outdoor pool, exercise room, lovely grounds and a security system. It would actually be very nice to have everything on the one floor including the laundry room. It would be so much easier to take care of and I would be able to get around much easier without the stairs. I couldn't do any packing of course but my husband did most of it and our son, who was still living at home. Before I hardly realized it was actually happening, we were on the move again.
23. When I Am Weak – He Is Strong

We settled into the apartment okay and I really liked the little sunroom that we designated as our TV family room. We were facing the south and even though it was cold outside, the sun always shone so nice and warm into that room. I was beginning to get stronger and I had tried going back to work. I really missed my friends there; they had been so good to me with cards and gifts, and many prayers I know. I had really never thought of leaving my job. I soon realized it was way too early to even think about it.

We had arranged for my husband to have some vacation time off around Christmas so that we could fly out to visit our little family who were still only half way through the Bible College courses. It was so good to see them again. They were still really struggling to manage, but seemed to be happy. The little one was getting so big. He just loved music, which was a natural seeing who his parents were. His mother was qualified to teach piano and loved music too. Even while the baby was still in her tummy, she would put the earphones on it for the gentle music to quiet him down so that she could sleep. It really worked too and maybe that's why he loves music so much himself. Even up until fairly recently, he would love to have choruses playing on a cassette tape while he was falling to sleep.

The time went so quickly. We had a lovely visit with them and were very sad to have to leave when it was time to come home. It was very cold there. The airplane was having a hard time trying to move on the ice while trying to leave the docking area to get to the runway, but we made it after a few tries and several large buckets of sand. The temperature was so low that the salt was no longer effective.

I wasn't looking forward to getting home much anyway because I knew what was going to happen in January. I was booked for my first session of chemotherapy, if I was strong enough. I really didn't want to do this. I knew what others had gone through and I was afraid of the nausea. Somehow I can take pain better than that. My husband came with me and the doctor assured me that it would be okay. He said that there was no cure for cancer and that as of now, this was all they could offer me by way of any treatment. Even as I think of it now it makes me feel ill. I sat in a big leather recliner chair as they gave me this "medicine" in my arm as I watched the bottle above me slowly empty itself. It took almost two hours before it was done. They gave me pills to take home to combat the nausea and then let me leave.

My husband drove me home and I barely got into the apartment when it started. I spent the next three weeks trying to recover from it, when I was due to have another at that time. The first week was the worst. I was so weak and felt like my whole body had been poisoned. I couldn't even keep water down. My mouth tasted like my tongue had been dipped in liquid metal and it wouldn't come off. I couldn't eat even soup. It felt like if the cancer didn't kill me then for sure the chemo would. At night I would shake and shiver from the inside out. I could never remember being this cold before and my nerves seemed to be just totally shattered.

My husband was very good to me and helped me so much. My daughter also dropped by on her way to work every day to check-up on me, and to see if she could help when my husband had to go back to work. She is such a good daughter, I just couldn't have wished for one better. All of my family members are very special to me. I count all of my children as precious gifts from God.

I had heard about the fact that I could lose some of my hair, but I had told myself that it didn't really matter anyway. But oh my goodness, when it started happening, it did matter, a lot. It wasn't just vanity after all. It was part of being a woman. I will never forget being in the shower as the drain was getting blocked by large amounts of my hair going down. As I was rubbing the shampoo into it, I could feel it coming out into my hands.

I was afraid to dry it with the towel and even more afraid to look in the mirror. It looked awful. I cried and felt so helpless to do anything about it. Again, my husband was so good to me. I must have looked a real mess, but it didn't seem to matter to him. He tried to reassure me that it didn't all go down the drain, at that time, and he took me immediately to buy a wig before the rest of it went.

That too was quite a traumatic experience. I ended up having to get two of them. The first one was purchased from a local hairdressing salon. This lady was not used to dealing with cancer patients, I'm sure. She was far from being sensitive to the emotional upset that I was going through. It was quite a matter-of-fact deal, and she sold me a wig that was far from suitable. It was too big for the shape of my head, way too much hair on it for the style I was used to, and the colour was so much darker than my own that it made my face look much more washed out than it already was. But, thinking that it was to be expected, I was very thankful to have it at the time. At least it was hair. Then a few days later, I could see that it looked so awful on me. I was ashamed to wear it outside. I just couldn't get used to seeing it on me. Maybe it was vanity this time. It seemed like a stranger was looking back at me in the mirror. I cried again. My husband could see how I felt. He told me that I was going through enough trauma as it was; at least I should have a wig that I felt comfortable with and that looked nice on me. He looked up in the phone book and found a place where men could go to buy a hairpiece.

I had an appointment for the next day. I was sure that it would be very expensive there, and we had already paid a lot of money for this other one. I didn't know at the time, but his insurance at work covered us for two wigs under such circumstances. When I went into his store, he looked at my wig and immediately could see what the problems were. He tried hard to match up my colour, size and the style I had been used to. What a difference in the service there. He was very good at his job. I left that place with a lovely wig. Lighter in colour, almost exactly the style I usually wore and I hardly knew it was on my head. I felt so much better. It was as though he had given me back my self-esteem. The whole thing was even a few dollars cheaper than the other one. I thanked God for my loving, understanding, wonderful husband. He was always trying to make me happy, no matter what it took to do that.

I remembered all the prayers of the folks where I worked and at my church and how God had promised to be with me through all this. There were many days when I don't know how I would have made it without knowing that He was there. How was I to cope with knowing that there was no cure for the disease that I had, and that even the medicine was making me sicker instead of better? I had already been to two funerals of workmates of mine who had recently died of cancer. Should I be preparing to die too? It was very easy to fall into depression, or just give up, but I chose to keep fighting instead. I wasn't ready to leave my family; I loved them so very much.

Every morning I would listen to my music tapes and hear the praise choruses that we used to sing at church and at work. They helped me to daily remember God's love and faithfulness to me in the past. But even then, I was still finding it so hard to trust Him. Was I really healed?

My younger son had given me some tapes from a lady at his church. They contained Bible verses pertaining to God's healing power. I listened to them and read the Bible verses that were mentioned there. I tried hard to claim that healing for myself. As I read the verses in the Bible, it seemed as though God was talking to me through them, and I started to trust that He was indeed making me well. He helped me so much in such a way that I could never explain, and I did feel the wonderful hope that even if I was to die, I would not be afraid. Jesus had proved to me in so many ways that He was real, alive, and loved me very much. The peace and hope that I found from Him was something that no amount of money could buy, or than anyone else could give me.

One day not too long after that, we saw and bought a small ornament for the wall, shaped out of dough, as a little old man and his wife standing near a garden fence. It was blue and cream coloured. My husband said that it would be the first thing that we would hang on the wall in our retirement house, in the train town. I often looked at it and wondered, yet deep in my heart I still held this hope that I would make it and it gave me courage to keep on fighting the gloom.
24. My Purpose in Life

A few months earlier, while I was waiting for the second operation, I had lots of time to assess my life so far, and see what I had accomplished as to compare with what I would like to have done. I had read a few books about ladies who had travelled around the country speaking at women's meetings and helping people who needed encouragement and to hear of God's love for them. I had often thought that I was meant to do that too, but in the books, most of the ladies did it as widows now that they were alone. When I knew that I might not have much time left, I figured that I was probably never going to be a widow and that I should look into what was involved to do that, as soon as I could.

There was a lady I knew from work who had been speaking at ladies meetings for quite a while, and was working part-time too. She seemed to be managing fine and was very happy doing it. I called to ask how I could become involved, and she gave me a phone number to call. The next thing I knew, I was writing out what I figured were the right words to say. She had told me that it was to be a mini version of my life story and what I felt would help and encourage others to experience God's love as I had done. Then I was to take it to this lady for her approval. If she liked it, I would be put on a list of speakers to be called and invited to speak at one of their meetings. It was called the Christian Women's Club. Apparently they had clubs all over the U.S. and Canada and were doing a lot of good for women from all walks of life. This was giving me more hope again that one day I would be well and useful outside the home again.

I made an appointment and went to visit this teacher of speakers. She was a very gracious lady, pleased that I had been led to do this, and was anxious to hear what I had written. As she listened to my speech, she asked me if I had a poem or some words of a song that I could use as a theme. As it happened, I did have a poem that I had written several years before when I first started to work in the accounting section. I had wanted to put a poem in my Christmas cards to convey the message that I couldn't find in a store card. I wanted so badly to tell my family and friends about God's wonderful plan of Salvation, and Christmas seemed to be a perfect time to do this. I had found the words coming in my mind during one of the Wednesday morning chapel sessions. I hurried up to my desk and wrote it down on the first piece of paper I could find, before I forgot some of it. I'm sure that it was not of my own talent but words that God had put into my head. I've done several more poems since then, all coming to me in the same manner. This was my first poem.

The Gift

The very first Christmas gift ever

Was to us from the Father above.

The most precious, priceless present

Of Eternal Life, through LOVE.

This gift is one that we receive

In a loving personal way,

But many just choose to ignore it,

Their very own souls in sway.

The gift so precious and costly,

Was His Son, given to die

So that we could accept His ransom

To live with the Father on high.

All we have to do is say "Thank You,"

For freely 'tis given indeed;

To humbly ask for forgiveness,

And take it, acknowledge our need.

For none of us is worthy

To stand before His throne,

Our best just isn't good enough

For entrance to His home.

But through the blood of Jesus,

Our souls have been redeemed.

To claim Him as our Saviour,

His gift must be received.

So once again we're reminded,

That a gift should be opened with love,

And we're grateful to God, our Father,

For His Son, our Saviour, His LOVE.

A few weeks later, I was due to go back to see this lady. I took a copy of the poem along with a revised sheet containing a few adjustments that she had suggested I make to my "story."

I was really sure now that this was what God had wanted me to do. She liked the poem and my speech so much that she put me on the list straight away. I was so happy.

I can remember thinking that I should go to my pastor for prayer and anointing with oil for healing. When he asked me what did I want him to pray for, I couldn't understand why at the time, but I found myself asking that God would give me enough time to do this work for Him instead of asking that I would be healed. It seemed strange to me afterwards when I thought about it because originally it had been my intention to ask for prayer for healing. I didn't know at the time, but God must have intended to do both.

Soon it was time for my second session with the chemo. I wasn't well enough to have it after the three weeks were up. In fact I went to the doctor and told him that I wasn't going to take any more of it at all. In trying to make the right decision I was really torn. If I didn't take it then maybe it would seem like I was committing suicide because there was no other medicine that he could give me and it would be like just giving up. I had been told that the scan and ultra sound tests I had been given earlier had showed up another tumour on my liver. It seemed like I was really being forced into taking the next treatment as the only means of ever hoping to get well. I didn't know what I should do. I still didn't really know if God was going to heal me, sometimes He doesn't do things the way we think He should. I couldn't tell how long He was going to let me do this work for Him, or if I was ever going to be well enough to do it at all. It seems my faith should have been a lot stronger, at that time, but somehow I just knew that I was meant to do this and whatever it took was to be up to Him. The doctor told me that he would give me a more refined type of the chemo this time so that it wouldn't be as hard for me to recover from it afterwards. It was a little easier at first but still made me so very sick and weak.

As the weeks went by, I was due for another scan. When the results came in this time I was so happy. They told me that I didn't have a tumour on my liver after all, even though they were so sure before. They had decided that it was just a small lesion, and that it had probably been there from birth, and posed no threat to my life. This was such wonderful news that I could scarcely believe it. They would never have admitted it, but my husband and I knew what had happened to that tumour, and we made sure that we thanked all those people who had prayed for me. Most of all I thanked God for giving me that chance to work for Him. I was so encouraged but soon it was time to take the next treatment.

It was very rough again this time. The nurse was having trouble finding a place to put the needle, and as a result, my arm became so swollen and very painful, that I had to carry it in a sling. It was so badly bruised and looked a real mess for about two weeks. The same thing happened in the other arm when I had to go again. By the time I was due for the last session, I was convinced that God was trying to tell me that I was not to take any more of this stuff. I was getting weaker and not recovering quickly enough in between them as it was. I discussed it with my family, and we decided that I wouldn't be taking any more. The doctor didn't give me any argument this time either. In fact, he said that I had been a brick to have gone through it all as well as I did. It seemed that not all his patients were affected by this stuff in the same manner. Like all medicine reactions, it was worse for some than for others. He still informed me however, that he had no cure and that we just had to hope that the amount I had taken already would have done its work.

It was obvious by this time that my position at work had been replaced by my assistant. In payroll the people have to get paid no matter who is sick. It was very hard for me to give up that job. I looked at it as more than a job, it was a part of me. I had been there for twelve years. I felt like I was useless now and took it very hard. The people were so good to me. Brought me gifts and sent me cards of encouragement. They were like part of a big family to me. I missed them, and I missed being part of that place. I guess I was beginning to go into a form of depression, having lost my job and my health when I was not ready to lose either. But again, somehow my spirits were lifted as I realized that now I had stopped taking the chemo, I was beginning to get a little stronger again.

I started to listen for the phone, still hoping to get a call one day as an invitation to go and speak somewhere at a ladies club. A little while later, I was thrilled when it actually happened. I told her that I had been sick but I would do my best to make it. The date was set for the next week so I had a great incentive to try and get strong. This was great. It helped me in a few ways actually. First it gave me a feeling of some sense of being useful again, plus it made me realize that maybe God was going to let me be well long enough to do His work after all. I listened to lots of my Christian music, prayed a lot, read my Bible, and found so much help from Him every day. I tried to get adequate amounts of rest, good food and exercise, to get myself stronger.

The day came very quickly and I was ready to go to my first meeting. I put on my new wig and my best attitude, and off I went. A dear friend from my church came with me. I was very shaky with the driving. I hadn't been driving for a long time, but I made it with God's help. When we arrived, I didn't know anyone there. I had only spoken to the lady who invited me over the phone, but it didn't seem to matter. They made us feel so welcome and treated me like an honoured guest. There were over a hundred ladies who had come for a spring fashion show. I was a little nervous just before it was my turn to speak, but as soon as I got started I was fine. When it was over I was a little weak and shaky but so very happy that it went well. So many of the ladies said how much they had enjoyed listening to me and quite a few had expressed a desire to get to know Jesus, and to take Him as Lord and Saviour as I had done so many years earlier. I was so excited as I got home, but so thoroughly exhausted. Now I knew that this really was what God had wanted from me, and that somehow, He really would keep me well, as long as He still had more for me to do.

As I was getting better, my husband decided that we both needed a vacation, so we decided to try and go to Myrtle Beach again. I probably would not be able to make the trip by car though. That would be too tiring for sure, so we decided to try a plane trip instead. Well, that mode of travel may have been a little faster than driving down, but what a milk-run it turned out to be. Nevertheless, we arrived safely and had the good time of relaxation that we both really needed.

During that summer, my hair was gradually beginning to grow back, so that I didn't have to wear my wig as often. I had given my other one away to someone taking the chemo who didn't have any insurance coverage and couldn't afford to buy one. I never did see the lady who received it because I had given it to the nurse at the clinic, but it was nice to know that it was going to help someone feel a little better.

I didn't have any more calls to speak until the fall so I had more time to get strong. Our son and his little family were due to come home for the summer. He was to serve an internship at a church that had been chosen for him. It was so nice to have them close enough to be able to visit and spend some time with them. They only had one more year to go before the graduation.

I was still having the check-ups and scans, and still all seemed to be well. We would often drive up to the little train town and take our lawn chairs with us. Then we would put them on the property where we figured would be the front lawn, and just sit in the sunshine while imagining that we already lived there. Then we would go to a local restaurant and have supper with our "neighbours", friends who were the parents of our daughter-in-law, or else she would make us a lovely meal. It was the thought of this dream house that kept me struggling to get well. I would spend hours looking through the books of house plans, trying to find just the right one that would be our last home this time; our retirement home. My husband only had a few years left to work now because he had been in the same place since he was eighteen and only needed thirty-five years of service to retire. It would be so nice to have him home with me. There was still another year to go before he could retire, but in the meantime, we could still make plans.
25. In The Meantime, Life Goes On

As time went by, I was so happy to be getting many phone calls to go speaking at different clubs all over the province. I even had a few to do in the U.S. We both went together and stayed in a lovely Victorian bed-and-breakfast house in New York State. The ladies were very nice to us and we had a great time. It was like a mini vacation. I was still getting stronger and so happy with the new work I had been given to do. It was all on a volunteer basis of course, but that didn't matter.

Before we knew it, fall was here and then Christmas once again. It seems that the older I get, the more quickly the time flies. I can remember sitting in church for the candlelight service on Christmas Eve, gratefully looking at the Christmas tree with tears in my eyes. I was thinking to myself that this tree was a very special one. The one that I had thought I would never get to see. The year before, as I looked at one, I remember thinking that it could very well be my last Christmas. I knew it wasn't that I was afraid to die, but I didn't want to leave my husband and my family. But now it seemed that there was a pretty good chance that I was going to see a few more of those Christmas trees yet.

Winter didn't seem to be very hard at all in the condo. No snow to shovel and a nice place to park the car in the underground garage. We could get in and out without getting wet or cold, and we hardly had to scrape off the windshield, other than when returning home from somewhere. The bright sunshine always shone in through the big windows facing the south. Sometimes it was so hot in our apartment that we had to keep the windows open. I guess being on the top floor meant that all the heat in the building was rising up from the other floors. If we didn't look down at the snow, we could have thought that it was summer all year round.

The view was beautiful from where we were on the eighteenth floor. I remember one night around suppertime; there was a huge electrical storm out over the lake area. The sky was all colours, but very dark in some places. We watched the lightening just fill the sky with its flashes of light and beautiful colours. It lasted for about an hour. I had never seen such a sight. I didn't realize it at the time but there were many advantages to living in that place. If only there had been a balcony, maybe then I would not have felt so trapped in there. Perhaps it was because I was feeling lonely too, not being able to go out to work and be with my friends. I missed being able to just walk outside in my back yard and enjoy the fresh air. It was good for me really though, and I was thankful to be alive. Time passed quickly and before we knew it, spring was on the way and we were getting ready to go to our son's graduation.

At work, my husband was hearing rumours going around that there was a fantastic incentive offer coming out soon to persuade people to retire early. This seemed like a great idea, especially as he was almost ready to leave anyway. He had now completed a year more than the required thirty-five years of service. He was eligible to retire when his age, added together with his years of service, resulted in the ninety-factor required for a full pension. He had started to think about what date he should apply to get this pension.

He had been told that it would take quite a while for all the paperwork to be processed. The rumours were changing from week to week. Sometimes it was a deal for sure, and then it was just all talk. He really didn't know what to do. If the incentive was coming, he wouldn't get it at all if he had already submitted his resignation, but the longer he waited, the longer he would have to wait for his pension money to come through.

Time was passing by, so he decided to go ahead and put in his resignation anyway. He drafted it out by hand, and turned on his computer to make a good copy for the printer. Well, he couldn't believe his eyes. He was so shocked to find out that as soon as he tried to enter his password, the whole thing crashed. He lost all his files and had to have the computer repaired. Thankfully he had the files backed up, but this really made him think twice about writing that letter. Also, once again, positive rumours were circulating so he decided to wait a while.

Weeks went by and still no sign of any incentive notices coming out. This time he decided to give the letter to his secretary for typing and he would sign it. She didn't want him to leave, so she jokingly said that she was throwing it in the garbage. The following morning, we were due to fly out to Regina at nine o'clock. When we arrived at our son's house, we received a phone call from the office. She was full of apologies saying that the garbage had been emptied the night before, and she had forgotten to take the letter out. There was nothing we could do about it now anyway, so he told her that he would sign another one when we got back home.

There were a few days to go for the graduation, so my daughter-in-law and I went shopping for dresses. We had a great time, and found one that looked really lovely on her. We bought two actually because there was a banquet on the Friday night as well. This was a very special occasion for us all. We were so pleased to see our son finally receive his Bachelor of Theology degree. I wrote a little poem for them and put it in a card.

Graduation

Four long years of struggles,

Through sickness, toil and strife,

With Satan doing all he could

To quench your call in life.

But God had made His plans for you,

For work He had begun,

He kept you safe, supplied your needs,

And now the victory's won!

Congratulations, both of you!

Your faith has pulled you through.

Along with praise to Christ our Lord,

We're oh so proud of you!

They had really struggled through those four years and both worked very hard. It had been far from easy to say the least. Without knowing it, their little son had been allergic to the formula for a long time, while the doctor was treating him for a gastric problem. They had very little sleep for months on end, and had to cope with this dear little child crying in pain. I remember her saying that one night she just sat and cried with him. My son was in an accident on the icy roads, when another car ran into theirs so badly that it was a write-off, yet thankfully he had only minor injuries.

They had to move about three times trying to find something they could afford that was suitable. Our daughter-in-law received a very severe whiplash and back injuries in an accident that happened while they were sitting waiting for the traffic to move. There was so much happening to them. I could go on and on. It was only while they were home for the last summer that a specialist in Brampton was able to get the little one into the hospital and start him on the road to good health. Now he is well and growing up to be a very fine grandson.

At this present time, our daughter-in-law is still suffering from her injuries though. I knew that Satan wasn't happy about the ministry they were preparing to do, and that he would put up a fight to try and stop them. But I also knew that God was stronger and that they would make it through, and they did. It seems that as a parent, it's harder to watch your children go through hard times than it would be to go through them yourself. In fact, I know that there were many times when I would have done anything to protect them from troubles, but I have since learned that without problems in their lives, none of them would ever learn to survive in this world. That applied to all three of them and to us too.

Later, when we attended the Induction Service at his first church, I could sense that it had all been so worthwhile. In the speech he made to the congregation that day, it was quite obvious that this was what God had intended for him to do. He knew it too, and was so very happy to be there at last. We were so pleased and happy for them. It was a very special day in their lives. He was very good at his work with those kids and a fine teacher of the Bible.

When we came home from the graduation, it was time for my husband to resubmit his letter of resignation from his work. They were saying that there was no money available for any incentive offer after all. This time, he typed the letter himself and actually took it into the office of his Section Head. As he was handing it to the secretary there, she asked him if he had considered what he would lose by not waiting to hear for sure about the offer. It seemed that she was trying to talk him into waiting a little longer again. This was the last straw. He told her that this was the third time he had been stopped in his efforts to resign. Surely it was God trying to tell him that he should not be doing this. He tore up the letter and went back to his desk, deciding to wait it out. Well, as it happened, it was only twelve days later that the incentives offer actually did come through. We were so thrilled to hear that it worked out to be quite a sizeable amount. He was very glad that he had listened to what seemed to be God guiding him and had decided to wait.

They organized a lovely retirement dinner for him. Our younger son made a video of all the memories recalled from long ago that they all enjoyed. Thirty-five years in one place is a long time. He also made up a funny poem about his dad and the years that had passed, along with a presentation of a personalized car license plate bearing a name to match the poem title. Now that they had both worked together for a few years, he had learned a few "inside" details to laugh about. Some of his buddies, who had since moved away, came from quite a distance to be there. It was good for him to see them all again but probably sad to know that a whole chunk of his life was now being severed. He had prepared himself for it though and he took it very well. He sure didn't miss all the traffic he was used to fighting through every day.
26. Our Dream House

It was good to have him home with me at the end of that summer and even though it was something new at first, I was really glad that we had such a good marriage. It's not easy to be spending twenty-four hours a day, every day, together without getting in each other's hair. He was going out for walks every morning, while I was getting myself up and ready for the day. I'm usually not a very alert morning person and he had the sense to recognize that he should leave me alone for the first hour or so. He would wake up all full of energy and rearing to go so I was thankful that he had the exercise room downstairs and the pool in the summer. It still wasn't a house though and as I was feeling much stronger now, maybe it was time to start thinking of the next move.

In the meantime, it was also good to have him home so he could come with me when I was asked to speak at different clubs. One time we went to Ottawa for a three-day circuit where I had to speak at four different clubs. We stayed at the home of an executive member and had a really nice time. It was quite a grueling schedule for me though. I don't think I would ever have been able to get through it all if I had been doing the driving too. I came back exhausted as usual, but very happy that I had been able to go and I was so grateful for my wonderful chauffeur.

My husband's sister and her husband had moved to a lovely little retirement estate just north of us. When we visited them, it seemed to be a very nice place to live. But somehow we knew that we weren't supposed to be there, even though the area was nice and we enjoyed their company very much. We had seriously looked at getting the dream house that I had chosen to be built on our property in the little train town, but sad to say, this didn't work out for us after all. I soon realized that I had to come to grips with the fact that another location and another house would be just as good. Our friends there were very disappointed too, but we still keep in touch, and visit each other as often as we can.

At the time, I was very thankful to even be still alive long enough to get out of the condo. At least the dream of that house in the little train town had been a great incentive for me to get well and not give up due to my bad health. We have realized since then, that my husband would have not liked being in such a place where there was not much to do. It was a lovely little town but the transition from the city would have been too drastic for him. It was hard enough for him to get used to being retired after thirty-six years of going to work every day.

We searched around for something nice that would suit us, in a good location and at a half decent price. We did find a new building site not very far from my sister-in-law's place. The houses were not all built yet so we were able to pick out a lot and the style of house etc. We asked God to guide us by finding a certain model on the lot we liked at the right price. When all three matched up, then we knew that this was where we should be. As it turned out later, we realized that He had also added a lovely big back yard with trees and a river behind. It was more than we had even hoped for.

It was hard for me to move out and leave our younger son behind but he had needed to be on his own for quite a while and this was to be the time. We made all the arrangements to move into our new little house in the country. The doctor was very pleased with my check-ups and so were we. He said I would still have to keep in touch every six months for tests, but as far as he was concerned it was in remission. We were so happy. It was like I had been given a new lease on life. Another Christmas had come and gone and another tree that I thought I would never get to see.

I was very busy sewing for a few weeks making drapes for the windows and deciding what colours we would chose for each room. We knew the kitchen was to be blue and beige. It had to match the little dough ornament that we had bought a couple of years earlier. That was the first thing we hung up on the wall when we moved in. Even now, I often look at it and remember God's goodness to me in bringing me through that rough time in my life, and I am so thankful to Him.

There was no grass down until late August and the dust was so bad you could almost taste it. Then when it did come, we had to spend hours trying to give it enough water to keep it alive. It reminded me so much of all those years earlier when we did the same thing with our first little bungalow, only this time we didn't have to lay the sod ourselves and there was plenty of water from the backyard hose. We left enough room at the back for a big patio with a picnic table and some chairs so that was a little less grass to water. We also had chopped down some of the trees that were fairly close to the house. They were bush pines and looked a little on the scrawny side anyway. Some had even died during the construction of the house. This still left more than enough grass for my husband to cut. Sometimes in the early morning, I would sit out the back and see the sun coming up through the trees. It was so quiet and peaceful. I was so thankful to finally have my little house in the country. The rest of the trees were so beautiful and majestic.

I remember that a few months earlier, I had been out to a retreat centre with my husband at a monthly leadership meeting with our church. There were big tall pine trees there too. While the men were in the meeting, I put a cassette tape of choruses in my Walkman and strolled around outside, through these lovely trees, just enjoying the peaceful music and the majesty of the great outdoors. I realized what a beautiful world God had intended this place to be. We went there several times and I enjoyed it so much that I was wishing we could have kept going there for a long time. When we moved away, I thought that those hours I enjoyed were all over. Now, here I was, sitting in my own back yard, looking at and enjoying the same beautiful scene and I had never even asked Him for it, but I sure thanked Him.

We found a nice little church with some very friendly people who made us feel so welcome right away. It was hard to leave our other church friends but we often went back for a visit to bridge the gap for a while. Our daughter and her family were still attending there so we got to see them too.

My husband found a lovely par-three golf course about five minutes away that very soon became a daily exercise routine for him. The main town was only a fifteen minute drive south, so we also signed up for a session at a swim and exercise facility there. We started to really enjoy being retired. There was always plenty to do around the house, inside and outside.

I planted a little garden out the back and ate the most beautiful vegetables I had tasted in a long time. We enjoyed meeting very nice neighbours and happy children. We were able to have our grandsons up to visit in the summer and made good use of the little room we had especially prepared for them. We have three grandsons now. My daughter had a second baby boy after waiting eight years for him. Another miracle from God! She was just about giving up hope of ever having another child. She is such a good mother and devotes all her energy to making a happy home for her little family.

I soon started to attend the local Christian Women's Club and became involved on the executive committee. Being on the other end of the meeting was strange, but I sure learned to appreciate all the work that goes into making it successful. It was so good to be feeling well enough again and to be useful in something outside of the home once more.

There have been many ups and downs since then. We went over to Wales for a wedding and ended up going to a funeral as well. Our little twelve-year-old niece was suddenly killed in a tragic car accident. The weather was fine and it was a quiet Sunday afternoon. The driver, her eighteen-year-old cousin, accidentally mounted the curb and hit a lamp post that fell on the passenger side of the car. It was quite a terrible shock for us all and very difficult for the family to deal with. Sometimes I wonder about how people ever cope with such things when they don't have the help from a close relationship with Jesus as we do. It's still very hard for us to cope with what life throws at us even with Him.

There was one very difficult summer for us when we encountered a very sad misunderstanding with some of our close family members. It bothered me so very much for a long time. We became separated from each other for a while and I grieved over it almost as if they had died. I wanted so badly to try and make things right but I couldn't. All my efforts seemed to be in vain. God knew that I needed help to pull through it at that time and through my many tears, His precious Holy Spirit filled me with His peace and love during the times when I needed Him the most. God also sent an aunt from Wales who had wanted to spend a few weeks with us at our home. When my husband was out playing golf, I would sit and talk with her, sometimes from breakfast right through to lunch. We talked and prayed together as she sat and listened to my troubled heart. I never really knew her very well before this visit but God used her to encourage me and give me words from Him to help me. She never seemed to tire of listening to me and cried with me too. She helped me so much more than even she knew, by just being there.

I have had to learn that God's ways are not always our ways and that I have to trust Him to do what's best, even when I don't understand why or how. Sometimes we get hit very hard with things and we don't know which way to turn or what to do about it. But God knows. I have learned that nothing happens to us that He doesn't already know about. He usually has something for us to learn from it and will never let it go beyond what He knows we can bear. It's through those difficult times that He proves to us how much He loves us and really cares about us. Sometimes it's a long time after it's over before we see the reason why, but love usually has its way and wins out in the end.

The poem I wrote during that time was what I intended to send to encourage those family members who were hurting also, but I wasn't able to get it to them. Over the next few weeks I realized that as it turned out, God had given that poem to help and encourage me too. I read it over many times, as I tried to tell myself that the message it held was very real and I only had to claim it as a promise coming from Him. It really did help me.

God's Peace

When the storm of life is raging,

And the night seems dark and cold,

It's hard for us to think of it

As "trials turn to gold".

The thunder and the winds are real

They toss us to and fro

We struggle through the hurt and pain

And wonder; does God know?

But yes, He knows your sorrow,

He feels your heartaches too,

And though He may seem far away

He's watching over you.

The storm is only for a while,

It never comes to stay,

Hold on to what you know is true

And love will find the way.

Clouds will give way to sunshine,

And rain does make things grow

Before the rainbow fills the sky

The peace of God you'll know.

And I did know that special peace. Over time, my prayers were answered and there was a wonderful reconciliation of love and forgiveness. Love had won!

I had learned to trust Him and to know in my heart that He would take care of it all, in His time and in His way. If I hadn't gone through that difficult time, I would not have experienced the knowledge of His faithfulness in being there with me, through it all, once again.
27. The Destination

We can struggle through under our own steam or we can have a loving Heavenly Father to go ahead of us and prepare the way that He knows is best.

I don't know what lies ahead for me. None of us knows what tomorrow may bring do we, or if we'll even have a tomorrow. But I do know that God has it all planned out for me and my time is in His hands. I have never regretted turning my life over to Him all those years ago. Out of trials and hardships, I can see that underneath the outward struggle there has always been that deep down feeling of knowing that somehow He was there, helping me to cope. He has proved to me in so many ways that He is real and alive and loves me very much and _That Changes Everything!_

When my life is almost over, I would like to be able to know that I have left behind some happy, loving memories in the lives of my friends and family; that they will say of me that I really loved them and did my best to help them all I could. But most of all, I pray that they would have seen and known that I knew and loved Jesus. It is my hope that my children and their children too, will always hold Him close in their hearts for the rest of their lives. Then I know that one day we will all be together again, as one big happy family, in Heaven.

My Home

Have you ever thought of Heaven

And what a joy 'twill be

To know no pain or sorrow,

A home where He will be?

A special home prepared for those

Who loved Him here on earth?

Who gave their hearts and lives to Him

Through spiritual birth?

I know I'm far from perfect,

But Salvation now is FREE.

When Jesus took my punishment

HE paid the price for me.

Oh how He must have loved me,

To die there in my place;

To save me from the wrath of God,

A second death to face.

There's nothing more that I can do,

But love and trust in Him,

Who cleansed me, and forgave me

From all my guilt and sin.

So when time comes for me to die,

My heart will know no fear.

My soul will spend eternity

With Him, my friend so dear.

What love will be in Heaven!

What joy and peace there'll be!

I'll join Him with His loved ones,

As one big family.

Maybe you are thinking that I am wrong and full of baloney about this faith that I have in God and the Bible. Well that's entirely up to you of course. But look at it this way. If I am wrong and you do nothing, what will you have lost? But if I am right and you do nothing, then you will probably find out to your great sorrow, when it's too late to do anything about it, that it wasn't really a lot of baloney after all. Is it worth taking the chance?

As soon as you put your trust in Him and try for yourself, you will soon find out that it's all true. Read it for yourself. If you ask Him to show you what it really says, He will open your eyes to the truth and somehow you will sense it in your heart and know it's real. The Bible is still the world's bestselling book. Forever is a very long time to be wrong.

It doesn't cost anything to you. Eternal life with God is free to all who have the faith to trust Him. The debt we owe for our sins has been paid for, in full, when we personally accept forgiveness from Jesus and count his death on our behalf as payment for our sin. He has made it so simple that even a child can come to Him. All it takes is a humble prayer of faith. Admit that you are a sinner in His eyes needing Him to prepare your spirit for eternity, and so handing over the rest of your life to Him.

How can we expect our spirits to live forever in His home without getting to know Him first? We need to be prepared ahead of time for that final destination, and the only time we know we have for sure, is now, this moment.

He is the one we ultimately have to face one day, alone, with no-one else to blame or use as an excuse for our behaviour towards Him. He has given us a free will and the right to choose or reject His plan of salvation for our souls. None of us can say that we have never sinned; that's why Jesus died for us. He alone lived a perfect sinless life. Through His great love for us, God was willing to allow Him to become the final sacrificial lamb, offered for the forgiveness of the sins of all those who would accept it in faith, and love Him in return. The choice is yours, as always. Obviously you know which choice I made, many years ago now. I am really looking forward to my final tomorrow, forever with Him who loves me so much that He would die for me. Then at last I will see Him face to face.

When I See His Face

I'm waiting for that special day

When at last His face I see,

He knows the very time and place

That has been set for me.

So wonderful to me to know

He even knows my name

And when I see Him face to face

My heart will feel no shame.

You see He knows me here and now

As I know Him deep within.

My spirit is alive with His

Since I gave my life to Him.

He reconciled me back to God

When He died to set me free.

Forgiveness, pardon, cleansed from sin:

The price was paid for me.

I know He has a place for me

In His eternal home

And when time comes for me to go

I will not be alone.

I'll know Him by His loving smile

That glows out from within

My heart will recognize His voice

And I will run to Him.

He'll hold my face in His scar torn hands

On that great and glorious day

He'll smile and say He loves me

And my heart will melt away.

And there I'll see Him face-to-face,

Thrilled by His love for me,

My gratitude beyond compare

For all eternity.

