My blog has been tagged
Marcia a writer-friend of mine. Blog tagging, from what I understand is similar to those emails we get when you fill out a questionnaire telling people who already know you things about yourself that maybe has never come to light in your relationship, like your favourite colour or what movie you liked best.
In this Freeze Blog tag I am to write ten interesting facts about myself and then tag ten more bloggers to do the same. Marcia has released me from tagging ten more bloggers. The truth is, I don’t know ten others and the ones I do know have already been tagged. She is however, not releasing me from writing the ten interesting things about myself and really, how can I pass up an opportunity to talk----All About Me!---uninterrupted.
Here we go:
1) Without any words spoken, or acknowledgment given, my parents inspired me to build houses. They built three cottages (summer homes) over the years but the last one they built the summer I was ten is the one I remember most. Their stress to get the cottage done with the limited time they had filled the air along with the smell of sweat from their labour. There were the constant trips into town my mother made for the endless building supplies needed. There are visions of my father on his knees inching along driving nails into the floor boards. My friend Joan and I used those floor boards as our personal gymnasium, making cartwheels from end to end of the cottage until the wall studs went up and nails were driven into wallboards. Then the job-site became a place for hide-n-seek. My parents designed the cottage so my sisters and I could each have a bedroom with a view of the lake. I have wonderful memories of lying in my bed watching the waves lick the shore line. Never realizing that the seed was planted for me to some day build houses for myself.
I had my first try at building when I was twenty-three; a bungalow with not nearly the imagination of my parent's last cottage and none of their hands-on hammering and sweating. I lost money and a few dreams on this first building attempt and I learned a lot of lessons. The biggest home building lesson was to always think resale, know what suits the general market, even if you believe this will be the house you will live in forever.
I never intended to build three houses in Mexico. It just evolved as I followed the twists and turns in my life. When I was building the second home on the side of a steep hill, Julian was six and we had yet to meet Johnny, there was a day early in the construction when Julian and his friend Renato invented a game at the site. They rolled down the the mound of construction dirt and then climbed back up using a rope they’d tied to a post at the top of the street, pretending they were mountaineers. I was in a rush, there were workmen to pay, construction supplies to buy etc. but before I yelled to them that we had to get going I had a vision of a young girl doing cartwheels on freshly nailed floorboards. I jumped into the dirt and rolled down the hill with the boys.
I love building and will be so happy if Julian decides to carry on the family tradition.
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2) I used to talk to ghosts. First there was the little girl who would come and sit on my bed. I think I was about six or seven when she first showed up. She was bald and wore a pink dress. She never said anything. She would stare at me not answering my questions wanting to know who she was or how she got up on my top bunk. When the girl would come to visit I would inevitably end up in my parents bed, unable to go to sleep in my own. Several more ghosts came over the next few years, enough that I lost my fear of them---almost.
The most vivid ghost appearance was at my boyfriend Murray’s cottage when I was fifteen. It had been converted from a dance-hall to a summer home in the early forties and the furnishings from that time came with the purchase. One wing of the cottage had four bedrooms. First Murray's, then his parents and then me at the far end across from the other spare room. All doors were left open at bedtime, squelching any opportunity for Murray or I to sneak down the creaky hallway to meet up in the night. My room had twin beds, a wardrobe and a dresser with two drawers. I slept in the bed beside the window and put my overnight bag on the other bed, never using the dresser or the wardrobe during my infrequent one or two night stays. I awoke one night to find a man standing beside my bed. He was wearing an army uniform, his hair was curly and cut short. He wasn’t wispy ghost like nor was he solidly present. His facial features were definable, a thin nose, deep-set eyes. The army ghost wanted to know where I had been and why I hadn’t come to stay for such a long time. I was explaining how busy my life was, while also sitting up to shut the window because of the cold chill in the room. When I turned back from the window he was gone. I was spooked. This was the first one that had talked to me, yet I didn't know what his voice was like. With all the other ghosts I had done the talking, asked the questions. I tried going down the hall to share what had happened with Murray but sure enough the creaks and groans coming from the old floor was enough to wake all the ghosts in the house and the noise in contrast with the stillness in the air sent me running back to bed to shiver under the covers and wait for morning.
When I described the night event to Murray and his family in the light of day, Murray left the breakfast table and came back with a photograph of none other than my army ghost. It was a photo in sepia that he had found in the dresser drawer of my room when they first bought the cottage. He’d thought it was a neat old photograph and had left it where he found it, thinking maybe some day he would take the time to find out who the man was and what had happened to him.
Murray now knew the man was dead and I now had proof with the photo that my ghost visits were not dreams.
I never slept in that room again and I stopped talking to ghosts in my mid-twenties. Was it because they stopped appearing or I stopped being open to their visits...?
”Who knows what lurks... The Shadow Knows!”
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.......My ten interesting things to write about is turning into a long blog. So...what I’m going to do is break it up over a few days. I also may not be able to come up with ten. I might have to throw in some tongue-in-cheeks interesting things about me, like---Its so interesting how it is that I’m Always Right!
Since I don’t know ten bloggers to tag to write ten interesting facts about themselves I would like to extend the tag challenge past bloggers and invite my friends and family who read this blog to send to me by email your ten interesting things and I’ll post it for you on my blog.
Thanks Marcia for giving me something fun to write about.
