My grandmothers were both adventurous women, traveling far
from their birthplaces to put down roots in distant lands.
Hazel left New Brunswick on the east coast of Canada to cross
the continent as a young woman early in the twentieth century.
I have a picture of her standing in a logging camp on the
coast of British Columbia in her long skirts, with giant fir
trees towering around her. She found her husband in this wild
land, and although they sometimes lived in cities they were
happiest with plenty of space around them.
In the 1950s they had a small farm where I spent every holiday
as a child (in retrospect this was not so much a treat for
me as a reprieve for my exhausted parents). The farm was a
little universe with its own meadow, forest, orchard, hen
house, rabbit house, hay stacks and fields of fruit and vegetables.
My grandfather worked his acreage alone and we grandchildren
were outside almost every waking minute. I fed rabbits, fetched
eggs, picked raspberries, shucked corn and helped preserve
berries, tomatoes and beans. There were two stoves in the
big kitchen –- an old cast iron wood-burning stove and
a new electric one. Hazel preferred the wood stove and only
resorted to the newfangled one when the whole extended family
came for dinner. Except in summer, the fire in the wood stove
never went out. On chilly mornings the big kitchen was always
warm, and once in a while during Easter holidays I would wake
to find a tiny newborn lamb in a box on the open oven door,
keeping warm until my grandfather reunited it with its dam.
Hazel used a heavy black cast-iron skillet at almost every
meal, cooking on that wood stove. I remember rabbit stew with
baking powder biscuits on top, eggs straight from the henhouse,
garden potatoes and onions fried in bacon fat. The skillet
was an icon of every memory I carry of those savoury farm
meals. When Hazel’s cooking days were over I took the
precious skillet home. And when I moved to Asia, it was the
first thing I packed. Wayan uses it to make wonderful curries,
and to roast her mother’s fragrant organic coffee.
A few years before Hazel arrived in Vancouver Meg, my other
grandmother, set sail from Scotland for the same destination
with her new husband. (The marriage was something of a scandal,
as he was eight years younger and married Meg against his
mother’s will, then his brother fled to Australia with
another man’s wife where they lived a long and happy
life together without benefit of clergy. It was not such a
stuffy era after all.) They disembarked at Halifax in 1912,
then took the train right across the country. I have a sepia
photo of Meg standing with my grandfather dressed very much
like Hazel in demure long skirts and a long sleeved blouse
with high lace collar. Both my young grandmothers look very
pleased with themselves in the photos, as if they were getting
away with something -– an expression I call ‘living
without adult supervision’.
The holidays I spent with Meg as a child were very different
from life on the farm. She lived in an apartment in the city
with thick curtains and lots of heavy carved furniture. We
children were taken for daily walks in the park (twice a day
if we were very restless) and served soft-boiled eggs in porcelain
egg cups for afternoon tea, with toast soldiers and jam in
a cut glass bowl. I remember delicate bone china cups and
saucers and a fat embossed silver teapot on the sideboard
that was part of a tea service presented to my grandfather
in 1947 when he retired from the Canadian Legion.
Packing up after Meg’s death, my mother brought home
the sterling silver tea service. Besides the teapot there
was an elegant coffee pot, a big sugar basin and curvy milk
jug. They spent most of the next 30 years carefully swaddled
in blue flannel drawstring bags at the back of the sideboard
in the dining room. I think I saw that teapot used about five
times (we used a brown china pot for every day), when my mother
had a special tea party and pulled out all the bone china
cake plates, cups and saucers. She would wash and dry the
silver pot with great care afterwards, then tuck it back into
its blue bag like the family treasure it was.
Last summer the sterling silver tea service made the long
journey to Bali. My mother was clearing the decks and neither
of my sisters wanted it. When I opened the blue drawstring
bags for the first time at my Bali house, Wayan Manis gasped,
“Seperti Rajah!” She was all for wrapping up the
tea service and putting it away again, but I was determined
that its time had come at last. It had spent most of the past
60 years in the dark, now it would gleam in the tropical sunshine.
I bought a nice tray for it, and use that tea service almost
every day. It never seems to need polishing. Another set of
sugar and milk pots in silver plate also made the trip from
Canada, and these contain holy water for the daily offerings.
They make a nice change from the empty jam jar that once performed
this service.
I think my grandmothers would be pleased to see their things
here; silver and iron, the precious metal and the practical.
They’d appreciate this life of mine, living with my
animals by the jungle. Like them, I’ve put down my roots
far from my birthplace. And like them, I often wear the secret
smile of someone who is living without adult supervision.
