Music by Enes Berg Stringam

My Mom, age 20. Why couldn't I have looked like that?!

It's the first of November. 

If she were still with us, my Mom would have been taking down the Halloween decorations and hunting out the boxes marked 'Christmas'. (Canadian Thanksgiving is in October, so we move directly from Halloween to Remembrance day to Christmas.)

And she would also be digging out the Christmas albums to put on the stereo.

Mom loved music.

I'm thinking about her today . . .

This is another entry from her journal.

There was much music in our house.

Mama had a beautiful voice, singing us to sleep with lilting Swedish tunes.

Papa was quite proficient on the accordion, playing schottisches, polkas and old-time waltzes for dances at the school house, and at home, especially when we had visitors.

Early on, Papa bought an organ at a sale.

I loved music and tried to play that organ.

Later, Papa purchased a piano to which I became attached as to a loving friend.

Tommy Mair, a musician friend of our teacher, arranged to give music lessons after school in Millicent.

I was thrilled to be enrolled and Tommy became my teacher, maestro and hero.

He could play anything without a sheet of music.

As he rippled through my lessons with a magic touch, I was enthralled, floating on a cloud of notes so sweet and heavenly, I wanted the rhapsody to go on forever.

For eight wonderful lessons, I wafted in ecstasy.

Tommy would play a tune and I would copy him.

Then he would improvise with many delightful trills so that the simple little single notes became a whole orchestra of sound.

As his nimble fingers raced over the keyboard, I was transfixed into a fantasy world beyond my fondest dreams.

In that moment, I yearned to be a maestro like Tommy Mair.

But after eight lessons, I was on my own.

At every opportunity, whether at home or at a community dance, I was at the piano watching the artistic mastery of every pianist.

Fascinated by the variety of piano improvisations.

Then, at home, I would spend every available moment trying to replicate what I had seen.

I was drawn to the piano like a moth to light, picking out tunes in a painful process of matching notes to keys until I had memorized them so I could play them by ear.

The piano became my best friend and companion.

It became an outlet for self-expression.

I learned that if we express ourselves well, others will listen, understand, and believe in us.

They will be buoyed up and motivated by our message and inspiration and we, ourselves will also be inspired with a feeling of accomplishment.

Music has helped me to greatly raise my self worth, to feel good about myself.

For this, I am thankful to my first inspirational music teacher, Tommy Mair.

Summer in a Quonset Part Two

In the summer of 1968, my parents sold our home ranch out on the south fork of the Milk River, and bought another place nearer to town.

There were myriad challenges.

But the most important was that it was bare land.

Absolutely everything needed to be built.

Construction was immediately started on a new home, and at the same time, on several barns, corrals and outbuildings.

The ranch buildings arose much more quickly than the house.

And that left us in a further dilemma.

Where to live.

The people who had purchased the ranch were justifiably anxious to take possession and our new house was far from completion.

My parents decided to move us into the newly-completed, steel-ribbed quonset.

It was an adventure.

And it's told here by my mother, Enes, from her journals.

(If you missed part one, you can find it here.)

Home!

I drove right into the quonset and parked close to the living room area.

My thoughtful husband had already arranged the living room furniture in an orderly manner - complete with end tables on each side of the sectional couch.

It looked . . . inviting.

I wanted to drop my weary bones into the nearest chair!

However, there was no time.

Everything else there was chaos. Packing crates, boxes, and furniture everywhere.

Doc was busy setting up beds and improving bedrooms with dressers and wardrobe cases for partitions.

The electrician had been busy and two deep freezers were already humming their normal tune whilst preserving the family food.

My stove was being set up in the kitchen area east of the living room space, and it was comforting to know that I would be able to use most of the electrical conveniences I enjoyed.

Two tables were set up in the kitchen - one to be used as a work table and the other for eating our meals.

A set of steel shelves had been erected beside the tables for storing dishes, bowls, kettles and all my baking and cooking materials.

We had found an old cutlery drawer and it came in very handy when it came time to sort all the various kitchen tools.

I covered most of the articles on these shelves with tea towels. We discovered, with some annoyance, that the cement dust settled everywhere.

No amount of sweeping seemed to solve this problem.

In fact, I think it aggravated it!

We covered most of our furniture with grey flannelette sheets and old bed spreads. They stood like great, hooded monsters in the fading light.

It was nearly time to have our evening meal and the thought of food was farthest from my mind.

Our children were dancing about the crates and boxes in gleeful abandon and I hated to intrude upon this carefree joy with restrictions.

Luckily, I didn't have to.

A dear, sympathetic neighbour brought in a hot, steaming casserole of peppered steak and a crisp green salad. (I shall always have a soft spot for hot, peppered steak and a thoughtful friend.)

We suddenly discovered that we were not only hungry, but ravenous.

Just to smell this delicious food set our taste buds to dancing. We set the table quickly and all sat down together to share a moment of thankfulness and enjoy this wonderful food.

It had been a long day, this 23 of June. A warm, sunny day after the refreshing rain of the night before.

It was a day full of sound and activity, of confusion and frustration.

A day ending one segment of our lives and beginning a new one in a long chain of segments - each one an event that would shatter, frustrate or console us as we met new challenges.