Diane posted a condolence
Friday, December 5, 2014
Aunt Marion was a fun aunt - especially to a kid! She taught me how to play Cribbage, Euchre, and Crokinole (I never mastered that one!) and I I've been told that knowing how to play these games will serve me well when I get older!
For a few summers, I spent 10 days or so at the farm - mostly with Aunt Marion. She worked so hard when, as a teacher, she was supposed to be on summer vacation! I learned that you can derive real satisfaction from a good day of hard, physical work. I used to love haying time. I remember one time she pulled several strands out of a bale of hay and taught me all of the grains that make up hay. The only one I can remember is timothy! She taught me how to drive a tractor and I felt so grown up while doing that. We had to count the herd of cattle once every couple of days or so to make sure that they were all where they were supposed to be. She taught me the names of the different breeds and how to tell the cows apart so that I didn't count any twice. Aunt Marion loved gardening and the flower beds at the farm always flourished under her care. She loved animals. You could tell that the dogs and cats on the farm really liked her too. Remember Scampy, Tammy, Lucky & Sheba?
Aunt Marion loved to travel in the summers. Kenya was a favourite destination and she really enjoyed Nairobi. I still have some mementoes that she brought back from her travels. She would come to visit our home in Ajax one or two weekends during the school year. Aunt Marion and my mom would make some sort of disgusting tuna and egg mixture in pastry. If you could choke that down, the reward was cheesecake. This was not your conventional cheesecake. It had a graham cracker crust, but then the cheese part was cream cheese mixed with Dream Whip and icing sugar. It was usually topped with raspberry jam because one of them didn't like cherries. They would make the disgusting tuna mixture and the cheesecake together, chatting away the whole time. It was neat to think of and see my mom as somebody's sister and not just as my mom. If Aunt Marion had been on a trip prior to one of these weekend visits, she would bring a box of slides and we would set up the projector and the screen and we would hear and learn all about places that we would probably never get to visit.
Aunt Marion loved baseball. She played it before my time and she was a big Blue Jays fan! One time Aunt Marion, my mom and I went to a Blue Jays game at the CNE. They were losing, so we decided to leave early and catch the GO Train back to Ajax. As we were walking out, they had a huge comeback and won the game! She was so excited that we got to see them win that one!
For me, Christmas at the farm didn't really get started until I had had a piece of Aunt Marion's delicious fudge. I've been thinking about it for the past 3 days! I'm hoping to get the recipe to try it out on my kids!
Diane
