You gotta read this!

And…we’re back in 2024.

For our first post of the new year, we thought we’d shake things up by welcoming a guest contributor. Everyone, meet Julie. 

Now, in the twist you didn’t see coming, Julie and I don’t actually know each other that well. I couldn’t tell you the day of her birthday or how she takes her coffee – heck, I don’t even know if Julie drinks coffee – but what I do know is that we share a love for our mutual friend M.

M and I go back more than 30 years. Being her friend means there’s always something cozy to eat waiting for you when you walk in the front door of her home. It means being surprised with a little gift she picked up for you, just because. During COVID, she coined the “spirit shimmy” – a dance maneuver she would perform during our Zooms. At any point during the call, M would spontaneously advance on her camera and shake what her mama gave her, giving us a belly laugh and a glorious five-minute reprieve from our collective lockdown funk.

Another thing that’s special about M is that she’s a fervent cheerleader for her friends. This is especially true when it comes to my writing. No matter what I’ve written, whether it be an email, a eulogy or a social media post, she will proclaim, with great enthusiasm, that it is the funniest and most clever. And she doesn’t stop there. She tells people about it. Like a parent who can’t help but pull out their phone to show off pictures of their kids, she’ll say to all walks of people, “you gotta read this!”

And this is how I came to know Julie. She is also on the receiving end of the love and enthusiasm wielded by this petite, emphatic champion. 

Over the years, M has said to me, ”you should meet my friend Julie, she’s a good writer like you.” While we have met in person, all too briefly, I never had the chance to read something Julie wrote until last December when M sent me something Julie penned for her family. In short, it was the funniest and most clever. I couldn’t read fast enough to see how it ended and also wished it could go on forever?

Huh. After all these years of thinking M’s take on my writing was clouded by her friendship with me, I had to admit, maybe she does know what she’s talking about.

I loved Julie’s piece so much that I asked her if she’d be willing to share it here and she said yes! I’m going to let Julie take it from here but not before one last shout out to our cheerleader. 

M – thank you for connecting us and so fervently supporting the stuff we like to do, for no other reason than that you love us. I hope I have half the potential you see in me.

And now, over to Julie.

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This is such a wonderful idea, to build community around writers and stories, and I can certainly agree with Sharon, that “M” is a gift of a human I am indeed lucky to know.

This story came about as we recently lost “Gran E” after 93 terrific years, 26 of which I got to enjoy as having her be my mother-in-law. It was our first Christmas without her and we missed having her as our epicenter very much. I wrote this to read aloud to hubby (the youngest kid of seven and the only boy – that is a whole other story) and our kid1 (22yo) and kid2 (19yo).

Every Christmas Eve we each pick a story from our box of Christmas books to read aloud. We’ve done it since the kids were little and it’s surprisingly poignant to see our adult kids with a little smile on their face, reading their favourite holiday story. I read this as a surprise and it was lovely to feel Gran E with us again, in a small way. Please enjoy, and thank you Sharon for wanting to share! 

There are days…squirrel in the house

It started with a phone call, as many adventures can, from a lovely and charming grey haired lady. 

“There’s a squirrel in my house,” she said.

I arrived twenty minutes later, flush with adrenaline and a noble desire to help, because the lady was my mother-in-law, and what better way to be cemented as preferred daughter-in-law*, than to rid her house of an unexpected, unwanted guest. *I was her only daughter-in-law…

I forensically assessed the scene. Tiny black pawprints on windowsills. Scuffling sounds coming from under the couch. Eyewitness account having seen something black and fast streak across the room. The thing is, my mother-in-law was no ninny. She was a nurse after the war. She raised seven children. She played a mean game of gin rummy. I didn’t doubt that she was right and a squirrel had fallen down her chimney, getting past the flue, and was now eviscerating the underside of her loveseat. 

It was time to get to work. Phase one of the operation involved sizing up my opponent. Instinctively I knew I had the upper hand – I am bigger, smarter, and better equipped than the average squirrel, figuring as I did that my opposable thumbs and executive level reasoning were advantages. That being said, one is rarely prepared for the size of something you’ve only seen out of doors when it comes zooming at your face from under a piece of furniture. 

The chase was on. 

I settled Gran E (as we affectionately called her) at her kitchen table and closed the french doors to her living and dining room. From her vantage point she could see the back half of the scene and I was thankful she couldn’t see her living room, for the state it soon took on. I donned gardening gloves and commenced phase two – operation exhaustion. I decided to tire the squirrel out, and assess where it was hiding each time I chased it out from somewhere, so I could systematically close off its escape routes. My plan was genius – reduce its options then trap it in a box and take it outside. I did not factor in the herculean endurance possessed by the average Canadian squirrel. 

Twenty minutes later I was panting and red faced from exertion and mounting rage. The loveseat and armchairs were all flipped on their backs, to stop the squirrel from scooting underneath them. I had leaves from the dining room table blocking the bottoms of other pieces of furniture, and had taken up a table cloth, which I now wielded like a matador, convinced I could throw it over the squirrel on one of it’s supersonic passes, to slow it down then slam the box over it. 

Another twenty minutes later I was breathless as I had repeatedly experienced the surreal sight of the squirrel launching from the flipped loveseat into the air above my matador sheet, sometimes using it for added leverage to soar off down the length of the dining room, like a jet boosted missile. Each time I would gallop after it, trying to chase it into a corner, and as I passed the french doors, Gran E would laugh her hooting chortle like she was watching the best variety show ever.

Another twenty minutes later the squirrel’s path was reduced to a predictable loop and I thought it might be starting to slow. It wasn’t jumping as high, and when we made eye contact, it seemed resigned. On one of it’s streaks past me, I grabbed at it – a move born of desperate reflex, as I was not at all sure what I would do if I found myself clutching a squirrel, but thankfully I only came up with a tuft of hair from the tip of its tail. 

Ten minutes later I decided I was a failure and we’d have to burn the house down to get rid of the squirrel. I was sitting in the centre of the living room, all furniture flipped on its back or precariously stacked in a pile. The squirrel was revving his engines in the corner, preparing for lap 1,249 of the space, and in a gesture born of desperation, I threw the box at it. 

Time froze. 

The box landed perfectly over the squirrel. I could hear its thoughts, because they mirrored mine; “HOW IN THE SWEET NUTTER…” 

We burst into action at the same time. The box began skittering across the floor as I leaped to my feet. I could see paws and a nose creeping out as I reached the box and slammed it tight against the floor. In a fluid motion utterly at odds with my natural coordination, I grabbed a magazine and sliced it underneath, flipping the squirrel containment unit with its makeshift lid until it was right-side up, and closed the flaps. 

A stunned silence filled the room. All I could hear was what I thought was the clock ticking, but it could have been a burst blood vessel in my head. I eased to my feet, holding the box like a priceless artifact, one hand on the top and another cradling the bottom, and opened the french doors, promenading towards Gran E. She clapped her hands and was about to speak when I saw her eyes widen and she jumped from her seat. “GET OUT” she urged and spun me towards the door. She had seen what I could not, that the squirrel was pulling a Jaws and was about to chew through the side of the box.

I raced to her front door, and in two steps launched the box and its furry contents off her porch. The box hit the ground first, the squirrel once again soaring like a mythical winged creature, to land on her emerald front lawn. It stopped there and sat up, to look around and I swear I saw it contemplate taking another run at me before it turned and disappeared into a hedge. 

It took a half hour to restore Gran E’s furniture, and to pose for a photo with her and the clump of hair I’d snagged from her guest’s tail (see below). We laughed about the ridiculous evening we’d shared, and I headed home to rehydrate and stretch. Gran E swore in the days and weeks that followed that a squirrel with a short-ish tail was casing her house and was often on her roof. I believe her, and we agreed if it ever made it inside again, that we’d leave its removal to the professionals.