At the time I began writing this I was dieting. I had been stuck, for a couple of months, at about 180 pounds. Every time I even think of that number, I hear Gloria's voice repeating a story from her family history.
At one point, when Gloria was young, her family lived in the Toronto area. At that time, her grandparents also lived in the same area. On one occasion the whole family, including Gloria's grandparents, visited Niagara Falls. They took the elevator down to the base of the falls. On the long, long ride down, Gloria's Grama Campbell brightly observed oh, I wonder how far down this is. The elevator operator replied, as he had undoubtedly done thousands and thousands of times in his career, "180 feet." When Gloria told this story she always said the "hundred and eighty feet" in an absolutely bored, dead, flat, voice.
Gloria was a better storyteller than I am.
(We'll come back to that.)
Gloria is the daughter of Stu and Sulla Furneaux.
Stu was born in Saskatchewan, and, in common with many of those born in that province, was fiercely proud of the fact. He was very proud of Saskatchewan, and, despite the fact that he fell in love with BC, and the Vancouver area, always held that Saskatchewan was the most marvelous place in Canada.
Stu was, in many ways, a product of his time and place. As a bit of a farm boy, he was extremely conservative, both politically and socially. This extended to the place and position of male and female genders. Men and boys were superior; women and girls were to be subordinate and supportive. There were things that men were supposed to do, and pursuits that women were supposed to do. That was the way it was, and always had been, and the way that it should continue into the future.
Stu was quite interested in genealogy. He had traced his family line back, supposedly in a direct and unbroken line, to about the 1600s. He had additional genealogical material and sections, going back to when Roger de Furneaux, who came with the Norman invasion of England, was given a grant of land following the invasion. The Furneaux name, through the centuries, developed a bewildering variety of forms such as Fernelle, Ferness, Forness, Fornow, and a number of other variants.
You will notice that this fact, of having an ancestor who came across in the Norman invasion, means that his family background originally descended from the French. Stu very conveniently disregarded this fact. He was very proud of being a British subject, and was an ardent monarchist. Any mention of the fact that the Normans lived in what is now France, before they crossed the channel and invaded, was met with strong objections.
Sulla was actually Ursula. Ursula was a family name, in her matriarchal ancestry, which was the side of the family that Sulla, and her daughter Gloria, knew the most about. This means that the descent is through Robertson, Hardcastle, and Campbell, thus making the nominal line of descent somewhat more complex. However, the Hardcastle women paid more attention, and, as women, who hold the family society together, they knew the stories, and the relationships, on the matriarchal side of the family. The men, who supposedly held the official status, didn't pay as much attention to their own family stories, and so, while a few of them still existed when I married into the clan, they were far fewer, and much less well documented, in terms of the oral traditions. Gloria had two daughters. Gloria's brother had no children. One of Gloria's daughters has a daughter, and that daughter has now produced another daughter. Great women raise great women who raise great women.
One of the things that Gloria left behind was a scrap of cardboard, the back of an old notepad, with a number of sayings that I recognize as coming from her family, and probably particularly from her mother, Sulla. Some of these sayings are, in fact, fairly common, such as "bless your pointed little head," which I doubt that either Sulla or Gloria realized referred to microcephaly. Or "Lord love a duck," which is fairly commonly used. Or " a lick and a promise," or "if looks could kill," or even "from stem to dungeon," which may not be used terribly commonly anymore but was by no means something that only the family invented and used as a reference.
Lord love a duck
Ship doo crick
Happy any old day
He who is without expectations is never disappointed
Soda in the milk
A man running for his life would never see it
A lick and a promise
We're still breathing in and out
Bless your little pointed head
Love you lots
God bless Safeway and their barbecue chicken
(Clean from) stem to gudgeon
If looks could kill
Some of the phrases, however, did originate solely with the family, and generally had a story attached such as "ship do crick," which was a phrase, possibly originating with Sulla, or even with Larry, and was all that the speaker could manage in trying to reproduce the phrase "shipwrecked crew." This was used as a reference, within the family, when the person, or more likely the whole family, had been through an ordeal and was feeling tired and wrung out.
Another reference was the phrase "soda in the milk." This was a reference to a family event and story, when one person's birthday present or party was under discussion, and those who were discussing and planning it, wanted to keep it confidential. This discussion was going on in the kitchen, among the women of the family, when the person whose present or party was under discussion came into the room, and wanted to know what was being discussed. Someone thought quickly, and replied that they were discussing how much soda to put into a pan of milk, when you were boiling it, in order to prevent the milk from burning in the pan. Therefore, from then on, the phrase "soda in the milk" became a family code for "mind your own business--we are discussing you and don't want to tell you about it."
Stu was from Saskatchewan, and Sulla was from Manitoba. During the Second World War, Stu enlisted, and was sent to military training at a camp near Portage la Prairie. Sulla was involved with the entertainment of the servicemen who were in training, and dated some of them, including Stu. Stu, at one point, asked Sulla to marry him. She said no. Fortunately for my story, and my life, a week later she wrote back to him and asked to change her answer to yes. They were married in Portage la Prairie. In a bit of a tearing hurry, because, before the wedding took place, Pearl Harbor was bombed, and all leaves were canceled. The wedding was moved up, significantly, and they were married, and immediately headed off, on the train, to Stu's posting in Nova Scotia. Gloria was conceived in Dartmouth. Although she was born in Sydney.
As an Air force brat, Gloria was moved from pillar to post, as her dad's postings were moved. She grew up in various camps. Even when Stu left the service, he still continued to move the family, frequently. In fact, he did return to the Air force for a time, and then left it for good, but still kept moving the family. Gloria attended thirteen schools, in eleven years of schooling.
Yes, that is eleven years. In those days, there was no kindergarten, and, at one point, Gloria skipped a grade, and so graduated a year early.
Gloria's first husband also moved the family quite a lot.
Part of the results of all this moving was that Gloria got very good at packing. But another aspect of it was that Gloria really, *really* hated to move. When we got married, I took to telling people that the only reason that Gloria did agree to marry me was that I agreed to move into her place (by now in North Vancouver), and didn't make her move again.
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