My memory is increasingly suspect these days, but this really happened. At least, I think it did…

It was the summer of 1966, the months between my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college. I was heading north, part of a group of young volunteers organized by what was known at the time as The Grenfell Mission (it’s now called the Quebec-Labrador Foundation) that provided community-based support for conservation and the cultural heritage of the coasts of northern Quebec and Labrador. There were about a dozen of us who would spend the next several weeks working and living in various isolated fishing villages along the St. Lawrence River in northern Quebec. To get there, we flew commercially to Montreal, then boarded a small DC-7 that took us on to Quebec City at which point, we embarked on a packet steamer that over the course of the next three days dropped us off, one-by-one, in our assigned villages. I was the last boy to disembark. My new home would be with the Nadeau family who lived out on the quay near the village of St. Paul’s River, the last stop before the Labrador border; Newfoundland lay just off the coast.

The Nadeau family had eleven children, the eldest only a couple of years younger than I. (I would turn 18 at the end of that summer.) My “job” was to work with the young children in the village, teaching them how to swim, an essential life skill since all the boys would grow up to be fishermen, and all the girls would grow up to marry fishermen. I suppose there were other skills to impart, but in reality, I was basically a camp counselor, a tall and gangly pied-piper to the village kids who had been released from the town’s one-room schoolhouse for the few short weeks of a northern summer. Of course, what I didn’t realize at the time was that I was the one who was doing all the learning—about a different culture, a different way of life, an entirely different world. It was, to say the least, my first experience in becoming a small part of a world that was so much larger than anything I had ever known or even imagined.

Bob Bryan, the chaplain at the high school I had attended, ran the program. He was an Anglican priest and his summer parish was the Quebec-Labrador coast. To tend to his flock, he flew his own sea plane up and down the coast, baptizing babies, marrying couples, burying the dead. He was a revered figure in those parts and I wanted to be just like him someday.

On this particular day, I was with the village kids in town when we heard Bob’s plane overhead. He circled the village a couple of times, then waggled his wings, a sure sign he had something for us. I remember looking up and seeing his grinning face looking out from the pilot’s little window, just before he dropped a package that tumbled down to us. The kids rushed to open the package. Inside were two pair of boxing gloves.

Bob’s plane continued to circle above us. Immediately, the kids formed a ring and the boxing gloves were distributed. I got the first pair and an enormous teenage boy got the other pair. What happened next was…well, I don’t really remember what happened next, but it must have been the shortest match in the history of boxing. I was like one of those cartoon characters who wakes up to see little birdies swirling around his head. I think I remember seeing Bob, leaning out the window of the plane waving and laughing before he flew away.

There is no real point to this story; it’s just a memory, but, like other good memories, it recalls another time, another place, and another me. As my brother-in-law David liked to say, “It’s all good.”

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores.

It’s that time of year: some atavistic impulse kicks in and we all go off on a cleaning tear. Maybe we’re just shaking off the winter doldrums, or maybe it’s all that green pollen that coats everything, our noses and throats included. Or maybe it’s just that we want a clean, fresh start, and what better time to do that than now, when this lovely planet is doing its own version of spring cleaning: trees in bud, bulbs blooming, grass growing—everything is regenerating and rejuvenating after months of dormancy and despair.

At home, I should have seen it coming. A week ago, my wife said she wanted to touch up a “one or two” spots in the kitchen with some fresh paint. Well, give a mouse a cookie and pretty soon, everything was off the walls and a major project was underway. A few days later, same thing, same room, but in our other home over on the Western Shore, except this time, everything had to come off all the counters and out of all the kitchen drawers and cabinets. All the silverware, all the plates and glassware, the coffee pot, the blender, the toaster oven, the fruit bowl…EVERYTHING. Them, of course, EVERYTHING needed a temporary place to reside which means that the dining room began to look like the Beltway during rush hour—all backed up with no place to go. Fortunately, two professional painters came to our rescue, so my wife was promoted to supervisor and the work got done in just two days. However, three more days later, the mouse and I are still in the process of moving things back to where they were, albeit with a little culling of the herd. Decluttering is good for the soul.

Remember that mouse who wanted a cookie? Now, she wants a glass of milk. This time her target is the porch that’s covered with last year’s dead leaves and this year’s whirligigs and pollen. That means everything has to come off so that our handyman friend can now paint the floor of the porch (we’re still over on the Western Shore, mind you) while we hose off all the wicker furniture which we’ve temporarily stacked in the driveway where the cars used to be. At one point,  I couldn’t find something I needed and began to mutter and moan. “What’s the matter?” my wife asked. I said, “Nothing, dear,” never daring for a moment to tell her that what I wanted to do was to stake my claim in the easy chair in front of the television so I could celebrate Easter by watching another golf tournament. Nothing says “Christ is risen!” like watching golf on TV.

Anyway, it’s probably true that once everything gets reassembled and properly stowed away, we’ll feel a modicum of satisfaction because we’ve done our duty and are on track to properly greet the new season. Nope; not so fast. Now that Mother Nature is awake and active again on the Eastern Shore, there’s a backyard full of work to do over there: weeds to pull, edges to cut, mulch to spread, and grass to mow. Fortunately, we know another guy whose back is strong and whose rates are reasonable so, like a baseball manager making his second trip to the mound in the same inning, I’ve signaled to the bullpen for my ace relief pitcher without a pang of regret or remorse. We’ll share the fun!

John Wesley, the father of Methodism, claimed that “cleanliness is next to godliness.” Well right now, I’m feeling especially godly, so on this spring Sunday afternoon, I’m finally going to sit down and watch a few grown men attempt to roll a small white ball into a hole with a flat stick. The mouse and her next spring cleaning project will just have to wait.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores.

Words are strange beasts. Take ‘jade’ for example. It can refer to a brilliant green gem or stone, revered in China for its durability as well as its propensity to bring good luck. Or it might refer to the jade plant, flora’s manifestation of fortitude and fortune. Go to any Chinese restaurant worth its MSG and I bet you’ll find a jade plant somewhere near the cash register. Now consider jade’s adjectival form, ‘jaded.’ Its connotation is almost the exact opposite of its plant or mineral cousin. To be ‘jaded’ means you’re tired, played-out, disillusioned or cynical, as in, (just for example), “the public has become jaded by all the political shenanigans taking place in Washington these days.”

Etymology is the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed over time. I mused (of course, I did) about how ‘jade,’ durable and lucky jade, had morphed into ‘jaded,’ it’s worn down, disinterested, unenthusiastic, “I’ve-seen-this-all-before” cousin. As it usually does, a little research went a long way, and it turns out that back in the day, a ‘jade’ was another name for a tired, old horse. Now we were getting somewhere: to be ‘jaded’ was to be a tired old horse, in other words, a nag ready for the glue factory.

Since I’m feeling a bit jaded these days, that thought made me shudder. Am I ready for the glue factory? I sure hope not!  Maybe I’m just overexposed to all the consternation, confusion, and chaos emanating from Washington these days. I listen to the news and sigh; I roll my eyes, shake my head, and think, “How much longer, Lord? I’ve experienced too much of this already and it’s only March! I don’t know if I can take another forty months of this wilderness.”

I doubt I’m alone in this. I also recognize that many other of my fellow-Americans aren’t the least bit jaded. In fact, they’re feeling energized, glad to be back in the driver’s seat, finally getting rid of all this governmental waste and left-wing tomfoolery once and for all. And that thought makes me feel all the more…jaded. Sigh.

I have a lot of friends who have opted out of paying attention to the news. I understand that. But then an image pops into my mind—an ostrich with its head in the sand—and I know from experience that ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away. Better to seek and find a solution and figure out how to prevent it from happening again. Simple enough for some of life’s travesties, much harder for others.

It turns out that an ostrich never really puts its head in the sand. That’s a myth. Think about it: if ostriches really did stick their heads in the sand to avoid imminent danger, there wouldn’t be any ostriches walking around today. I assume the same can be said for people. It’s far better to look around and see what’s really happening than to pretend that everything will be hunky-dory when I take my head out of this hole.

A year ago—maybe more—a friend gifted me a jade plant. Maybe she thought it would bring me luck or maybe she thought I looked a little jaded. I didn’t pay much attention to the plant for several months, but then I began to tend it and now it’s thriving. In fact, It’s going to need a bigger pot soon. So maybe I’m not so jaded after all.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores.

My friend the Professor recently ran an idea up the flag pole of his social media that included the phrase “clutching their pearls.” I hadn’t heard that phrase in years—“limousine liberals” yes, but nothing about “clutching their pearls.” It got me thinking…

When I was growing up in Pittsburgh, my Aunt Addie lived with us in the big house in Squirrel Hill. She wasn’t really my aunt; I think she was my mother’s great aunt which means (I guess) she was my great, great aunt. I think she originally came from New Jersey and was the last of her family’s line, Her full name was Addie McClaus and by the time she came to live with us, she was well into her 90s. She always dressed in widow’s black and always wore a string of pearls. It must have been quite a shock to her system to come into our household in her waning days, but that was how things were done back in the 1950s. I remember the day she died. My mother found her in bed one morning and called for an ambulance, but Aunt Addie was already gone. I ran upstairs to tell my big brother Aunt Addie was dead, but he didn’t believe me until he saw her being carried down the stairs and out the front door. I’d like to think she was wearing her pearls when she was called to heaven.

Anyway, that’s what my friend’s flagpole post brought to mind when I read it. The child in me remembered Aunt Addie; the grown-up thought about what it means to be clutching one’s pearls. In case you don’t know the expression, it means to be excessively or naively shocked, dismayed, or appalled, as in “everyone at the film festival was clutching their pearls over all the explicit sex scenes in the director’s new film.” Of course, that was not the reference in the professor’s post. I bet you can imagine the scene to which he was referring, you know, the recent one that occurred in the Oval Office…

Be that as it may, the image of someone clutching her pearls (I imagine it was a woman who was doing the clutching, but maybe not), perfectly captured my sentiments as I watched that horrific tableau unfold. If I had been wearing pearls at the time, I would have been clutching them so hard they would have turned into diamonds. It was that bad.

I am still aghast at what transpired. A brave man who had been leading his country in a fight for its life was being berated and bullied by two individuals who seemed to be having temper tantrums that would send a two-year old to his room for a timeout. Even members of the hand-picked press that were present got involved in the melee by asking our guest why we didn’t wear a suit to the Oval Office. I bet no one thought to ask Winston Churchill that question when he appeared in the Oval Office wearing his wartime siren suit. Be that’s where we are, God help us.

I apologize. As you know, I don’t usually wade into political waters, but I’m still clutching my pearls about what I saw. And it wasn’t even a film. It really was that bad.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores.