Dear friends,
Our youngest daughter is here with her husband and three children. They suddenly decided on Friday that they could get away and they drove all day. There are
two boys and the youngest is a little girl of five years. Very pleasant, intelligent and well-behaved children. They are home-schooled by their mother.
Also in the party is one very large dog. Their dog is an English Mastiff. If
you would like to see a 4,000 year old breed that was used in war as a fighting
dog, then go to Google Images and put in English Mastiff. It is a beautiful dog
, and very calm, but very powerful. If you don't know them you will find this search brings interesting results. They adopted him when he was two or three months old, and his name means "the Handsome one", in Spanish. I think it is El Guapo. Guapo, for short.
Last night everybody slept in the back garden in a small tent so they could be near their dog. The dog was outside of the tent, of course, but managed to cuddle up to a couple of the children by laying down right against the tent.
Last night when I wrote about Canada Day I was listening to giggling outside in
dark in the nice little tent right under my window.
Today everybody was up and about early, and Ben and Tamara went to the store for
some breakfast cereal. They came back with a flat of sweet, ripe raspberries, too, so we all had a delicious treat.
It's a pleasure to have them here. They can't come very often because they own
a successful restaurant which they just moved into a larger space, but as it was
Canada Day weekend they shut down and came in Friday evening.
On the ferry their big dog had to be left in the car. The passenger side window was open a little for air for him. Their car was parked on the bottom car deck. It isn't allowed to bring your animal out of your car. Suddenly there was aannouncement over the ship's message system after they were well underway. "A large dog is roaming loose on the third car deck. Owners please come to catch and confine him." When they hurried down they found that Guapo had actually shattered the tempered glass of the passenger side window in his fierce efforts to get out. The second son (8 yrs.) collected much of the glass for me to use in my
collages. I use all sorts of stuff in collages. Usually it is discards, because one of my concerns as an artist is the health of our planet. The pieces of glass are fairly small and a lovely shade of pale torquoise blue. Each bit has little irregular cracks running through it. I'm sure you know what broken safety
glass looks like, but the thing is, how did Guapo break it? With his head? by smashing it into the glass? This dog weighs 160 lbs. The largest of the breed can be 200 lbs. Fortunately he is an obedient dog!
Ben and I stayed home with Guapo so he wouldn't be unhappy, while the familywent to the beach for a few hours. We grandparents love the children, but we also like to have a peaceful time for awhile now and then.
The other day I closed a kitchen drawer and a fork that was sticking up slammed
into one of my fingers so that the tines were buried deeply and I had to pull it
free. Too bad that I forgot to remove my Baha'i ring when I could, because now
I can't. I've been using ice to take the swelling down, and yesterday our eldest grandson remembered the thread trick in the BC Health Guide he read a couple of years ago, so we tried that, but the ring is stuck fast. Fortunately, the colour of the finger is pretty good, but it swelled again in the night. So today I
'm still babying it.
There are five messages on the answering machine that I need to hear and list for Ben. He hates doing it. Just now I took a call from one of our tenants. Their daughter was hit by an 80 year old driver as she was crossing the highway,
so she is in hospital with a broken femur and bruises and cuts. That happened on Canada Day. This family has had a lot of hard luck. Some of it brought on by
themselves, and some not. They are the ones I told you about last summer. They
were homeless and living in a tent in someone's backyard. Then a storm tore their tent. Somebody referred them to Ben. Fortunately he had a house that could
be rented to them for a small amount, because it needs repairs and it isn't worth fixing because it will be moved from the land one of these days. The house isn't very good, but the land has become extremely valuable. Their two daughters
were able to go to a good school, and the father fixed a few things in the house
so that they can manage to live there. Someone donated some furniture, and with cooperation and kindness all around they are, so far, still housed. Now this
bad luck. The father really should put in a request for a medical disability pension as he has back and shoulder problems that prevent him for doing his usual
work at an agricultural station here, but for some reason he doesn't get to it.
The wife is taking a course to become a masseuse. The girls are steadily getting older and one day they will leave home or get jobs and things will go more easily for the parents, I expect.
I thought it was the family coming home from the beach, but what I heard was Guapo calling Ben for reassurance that he hadn't been left alone here in thesenew surroundings. Ben is unusually good with animals and already the dog feels
comfortable as long as he's around. Ben can even attract or reassure wild animals when he wishes. Once a mother hedgehog brought all her little family to see him. Once he talked to and reassured wild beaver that were building a dam so
that they allowed him to remain near. Once in a zoo he calmed an unhappy black
leopard with a wounded paw. He is also good with people who need reassurance and help. A couple of days ago a father desperately phoned to ask him to come to
calm his mildly retarded son who had been badly hurt by a "friend" and was
shouting without let-up after a night of sleeplessness about the affair. Ben was able to manage that, too.
Well, I think this must be getting too long for many here, so I'd better finish
it off. Let me say that I hope we avoid major war in the Middle East. I'm sure
you all agree with me on that one!
With warm affection, Mary
