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Who’s my ginger peachy
Valentine’s Day! I hope you celebrated in some way, shape or form. It’s one of my favourite days of the year, right after Boxing Day and the day after Valentine’s Day. When I was a youngster, in elementary school, Valentine’s Day was celebrated in the classroom with a decorated cardboard “mailbox” on the teacher’s desk into which each of us deposited our Valentines for our classmates. During the early days of my educational career my mom didn’t believe in “store bought” cards. A few days before Valentine’s Day the Durning Kids would sit at the kitchen table with scissors, crayons, paste and paper crafting. The creating of homemade Valentines for our student friends was either a pain or a pleasure. A pleasure because crafting was fun and a pain because we really wanted a glossy booklet of store bought cards. Of course Mom, being the kind of Mom she was, made us create a Valentine card for everyone in our class. We weren’t allowed to leave anyone out, not even the icky kid who picked his nose and wiped boogers on his desk. Everyone got a Valentine card. Thank goodness she didn’t make us sign our cards. She told us Valentines should be from a secret admirer. Other parents weren’t like ours. Some kids would only get one Valentine, the one a Durning Kid had crafted. Some kids got oodles of cards. The pretty girls (ya, there were pretty girls) giggled and blushed as the designated Cupid delivered cards to each desk. It may have been one of those Valentine’s Days when I realized how important it was to include everyone. My little kid heart was broken for the kids who were almost completely left out. As the years passed, homemade cards were replaced with books of cutoutstyle cards and envelopes. This likely happened because the family fortunes changed and store bought was a whole lot easier for our busy mom. The rule about “everyone gets a card from the Durning Kids” never changed. For all of the wackiness Mom may have been, she had a big heart when it came to showing love and kindness to others.
These days I find it very difficult to get into a warm and fuzzy Valentine mood when the whole world is such a messed up place. The damn Pandemic, which was only supposed to last for a few weeks, still isn’t over. The war in Ukraine is still raging. Raise your hand if you thought that would have been resolved by now.
A devastating loss of life happened in the earthquakes which shook Turkey and Syria, leaving thousands of people are without homes, food and medical care. The country’s biggest grocery corporations are posting record profits, yet continue to blame outrageous food prices on the supply chain. Thousands of hardworking Canadians work full-time hours, but are barely able to keep a roof over their heads and food on their tables. While I love music, my ear worm has been It’s Good News Week (look that one up) but we really haven’t had a “good news week” for months and months. Like a lot of you, I thought by this point discrimination would be a thing of the past, yet here we are.
By the time this column is published it will be one day after Valentine’s Day. I sorta, kinda miss sitting around the kitchen table with my brothers and sisters making cards for our classmates. We helped each other with the drawing, the cutting out, the colouring and addressing the envelopes. When we were finished, and our pile of greetings had been packed into a decorated brown paper lunch bag, Mom always served us a treat for a job well done.
I may bake a batch of heart cookies then clear the kitchen table, haul out the markers, the card stock, the glue sticks, the glitter and whip up a batch of Valentine cards. I may even share with my Ginger Peachy. I don’t think I’ll have a glass of milk to wash those cookies down, though!
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