Arnie and the mothers

Although I often have to label myself on forms as a "home maker", I soon get tired of home improvements and, for example, can only bear to think about our on-going kitchen renovation in short bursts. This weekend we shopped for backsplash tiles, not finding such a wide choice as advertised at Home Depot, so the next day we went to Lowe's.

I have no desire to describe this in my blog.

Otherwise I have been trying to work on the creation of two very different books, one being an illustrated story for my grandson about the ice breaking machine that was recently set to work on the Rideau River. I've named the character Arnie Amphibex and although "he" is officially known as an amphibious excavator I've called "him" a Water Digger. With our small camera we took some video footage of the ice breaking operations and mailed this to Alexander ahead of the story which will now follow (I've just finished printing it), illustrated by stills from the movie.

The other book in production is not mine but the brain child of a Caribbean diplomat living in Rockcliffe, homesick for her island in the sun, I believe, who is compiling a collection of narratives, or eulogies, about people's mothers, all of these ladies from her part of the world. I volunteered to help her with the layout and editing of her book, a fiddly task, quite time consuming. I'm using the Pages application on my Apple Mac for this (although Chris thinks I should be using LaTeX) while my diplomat friend tries to locate the illustrations—photos—of the individuals described. Each story has been submitted during the last few years by a worthy islander, and it's interesting for me, an outsider, to discover how similar they are. Nearly every contributor mentions his or her mother's piety and strictly disciplined, principled approach to child rearing. Several of these people born at the start of the 20th century were the children of slaves who had worked "on the plantation" before they were freed, but the details and general atmosphere of the stories remind me of my great aunts and grandparents in Britain.

In my friends house hangs an oil painting of a typical island shack, with little boys and chickens roaming outside. The shack sits in the sun on a pile of rocks. Apparently this was a typical former slave hut that had been moved bodily to the place where the occupant wished to live.

My friend wants her book to be tribute to all the mothers of the Caribbean, of all origins, in particular her own mother, the end of whose life inspired the start of this project.