Stoney Creek Memories

To help me grow in my writing,  I study the work of others and often find a line or a poem which resonates deep within me.  

The line "Only a picture from a blue tin box" and the poem it begins are such inspirations.  The poem is "Cape Enrage"  by Lynn Davies, from her first collection of poems, The Bridge that Carries the Road, published by Brick Books in 1999.

This photo of me and two of my younger sisters was taken during a stay at our grandparents' home in Stoney Creek in 1954.  They looked after us while our parents were moving our household to another city.  

Lynn's poem evoked this memory.  I appreciate Lynn Davies for the beauty, inspiration, education and challenge her work offers.  I learn much about how to write better, examining the way a poem is created by another person.  In this instance, her first line brings a memory and her poem gives me a guide, by which to write this prose remembrance. 

This is my memory-

Stoney Creek

"Only a picture from a blue tin box." The week we stayed while our parents moved to Belle River. My grandfather steadied a brownie camera, told us, "Hold still." The July sun warmed water in the steel tubs, heated the galvanized walls which held us. My little sisters splashed and jumped; drops flew to my grandfather's trousers, 'til he shook with laughter.

In the picture, I wear a red bathing suit, my grandmother found in the attic, a gaudy orange flower sewed to the strap. This tub held Peggy's drinking water when she was alive, whinnying, running the pastures. Grandfather told me she had been a handful. After a drink, she'd hold water in her mouth. When he turned, she'd dribble a shock of cold down his back.

In the slow afternoon, soaked in water and laughter, we worked wonders: raindrops on the stiff gladiolas behind us; magic liniment on bites from black flies; wet-ghost hand prints on grey cedar shingles. We were water sprites spitting water onto a gravel driveway, watching it dry, disappear, dreaming of that horse full of tricks, all mischief gone.


Words in coloured ink will take you to another site with additional information, if you click on them.  I continue to grow in my writing, am aware that I have much to learn, and am grateful to work which shines a light for me.

Memories of Playing in Mud

Memories of Playing in Mud

What is it makes me smile at seeing three children stamping in the mud?  Perhaps it is this memory from my childhood of a heat-held day in August and the five of us pleading to go to the river to play. 

Five faces under twelve nagging in unison are hard to resist.  We pack our jam sandwiches and oatmeal cookies and endure the usual warnings.  “Watch out for the changing tide, don't play in the main part of the river, stay away from the quicksand behind the fence on the marsh, don’t play with skates—just leave them alone, make lots of noise to warn bears you are near and come home when you hear the whistle.”

We nod, yes, yes, and scamper off.  We walk the mile and a half to the river in the company of black flies who are happy to see us.  Fingers of alder and needles of spruce scratch at our arms and legs, but we are cooler now walking under a canopy of oak, maple and birch, as we chatter our way to the water.

We strip to our bathing suits and throw ourselves screaming down the sluices of mud.  Soon we wear sleek new skins, as we slide down and down the troughs, shrieking when our legs slip into the frothy brown river.  We scramble back up the banks grabbing toe holds in the muck, giving ourselves to the lure of the squelchy sludge, to the call of the syrupy ooze.

We are sun-warmed and wet with soft, heavy clay squishing from our feet, clinging to our fingers and clumping in our hair.  We slide and play.  We are brown shining creatures, wild and exuberant under resinous pelts.  For hours, we slide and tumble; we become river otters. 

Yet eyeing the tide, we know we soon need to leave and begin the chore of washing ourselves in the freshwater brook that spills into the river.  We try (as much as any child tries) to get clean, but the brook water is so cold it bites into our bones.  Unable to remove all the clay, we sit on the banks sunning ourselves, flaking off dried chunks and flicking them at each other, teasing and eating our lunch.  In our teeth, we catch sunlight and laughter.  The summer heat dries us like creations kilned after the potter’s wheel.

Then far away, a signal sounds.  Our grandfather’s two-fingered whistle calls us back up the wooded hill, “Come home.”  We carry our clothes.  We are still so encrusted we can’t put them over our bathing suits, now dyed the colour of dirt.

When we arrive in the yard, too bespattered to go indoors, we wait.  We know the routine.  Our grandmother sprays us with the hose, the water from the gravity-fed spring as cold as the winds of December.

We shiver as bits of mud and clay slip and plop to the ground.  Cuffing at them with our feet, we make mud mounds.  Later, we gather these globs of damp clay and create pinch pots that will bake in the sun, to hold the dandelions we love.

Bits of my childhood are preserved in mud, like the red pottery made from Petitcodiac River clay.   Memories of being river otters, enchanted with the magic of mud chutes, of splashing into the river, scrabbling up slippery banks and coming home caked with clay and laughter; these memories whistle me back to my childhood home, whenever I see children stamping their feet in the mud.

Photo and words are ©copyright 2011-2013 Carol Steel.  These are three of our grandchildren walking in the mud at The Rocks in Hopewell Cape, supervised by both their grandfather and their mother.  They were not in any danger.

If you would like more information about the Petitcodiac River, click here. 

WARNING:  The Petitcodiac River is not a safe place to play.  It has strong tides and undercurrents, quicksand and mud so sticky you can get stuck and can't get out.  This memory is from 50 years ago and involves a small tributary of the river that entered our property and provided the safer banks and slower waters in which to play.  Do not slide into the banks of the main Petitcodiac or you may not get out.  It can be dangerous and deceptive and often is.

Baby Boy

Hold this baby close.  Smell his baby skin, fresh and new.  Touch his hair of gold and silk.  Watch his dark eyes widen, not yet focused and his pink mouth search, not quite smiling.  See milky tongue and tiny nose, a dimple in his right cheek like his big brother.  Touch his long fingers and toes, caress his translucent skin.  Hold this baby heartbeat to heartbeat. 

And love him.  Love him the way only a Grammy can love.

Sweet Peas

Sweet peas climb by tendrils that search for a support to cling to, almost anything will do.  When I was a child, my grandparents grew sweet peas to cover an aged greying fence that had once been part of a sun-bathed chicken run.  My childhood job was to pick the seed pods and faded blooms from the sweet peas and to regularly cut the flowers in order to encourage them to bloom.

And bloom they did, to a height of six to eight feet covering the fence with profuse colours, filling the yard with their sweet perfume.  Sweet peas bloom for long periods from late spring to early autumn, as long as they get watered heavily and frequently so their roots stay moist and cool.  The sweet peas in these photos are from my sister’s and brother-in-law’s gardens, still blooming near September’s end.

I always believed that one had to soak sweet pea seeds or nick them to open the hard seed coating, before planting.  In Lois Hole’s Bedding Plant Favourites published by Lone Pine Publishing in Edmonton Alberta, 1994, Lois says, “Instead of soaking seed, I simply plant into warm, moist soil and use an inoculant.”  She also fertilizes regularly to increase the size and number of flowers.

Sweet peas are an old fashioned annual climber bearing clouds of frilled flowers in varieties of red, purple, white, pink and blue.  Though they are a bit of work to plant and maintain, they are worth every speck of energy and care expended.  Just look at these flowers, vibrant, delicate, opulent!

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