July 12 was Orangeman's Day for some (Irish Protestants), commemorating the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. As my Dad said, "Tell you what kind of Irish I am: if you bring me a white horse, I'll ride it!"
My mother-in-law, Ruth, was born on this date in 1925; she would be 86 if she were alive today (sadly, she developed Alzheimer's and died August 15, 2006). My daughter is expecting her third baby on August 4, 2011, but she has had her first two children early. She has also been getting contractions off and on since June. I had wished that the new baby might be born on Ruth's birthday, but we're still waiting.
Ruth raised her four kids mostly alone. She went to Library College in Toronto and became a children's librarian back in the days when few married women did such crazy things. She was the first librarian at the new St. Vital library in Winnipeg. Later in life, she separated from her husband and moved the kids to Sudbury, Ontario, where they all went to Lasalle high school eventually. She was the librarian at Garson school, and was later forced to teach English, which she hated. She retired and moved back to Winnipeg where all her children had moved. She loved spending summers at the family Cottage on the north shore of Clear Lake. She lost the use of the cottage when it was stolen by her shady brother-in-law, Bill Knowles (AKA Kobus) for a dollar!. Ruth's mother had left the cottage equally to her two daughters, but had left her son-in-law as the executor, seeing that he was the only "man" of the family. Without telling Ruth, he paid each sister $1 and bought it outright, selling it for a profit of about $60,000 back in those days. This betrayal hurt Ruth and her family deeply. She never spoke to her sister again.
Ruth loved the summers spent with her mother at the lake, and books, and dogs. In fact, that is the epitaph that I suggested to Mike: "Summers. Dogs. Books." It describes her so well. She was a great mother-in-law and a wonderful, exciting and youthful grandmother to our daughter.
When Ruth first started forgetting to return calls, ignoring birthdays or telling us the same thing twice in a row, we were not too concerned, although sometimes it hurt our feelings or made us angry. When we realized that something was physically wrong, it made us more understanding but more heartbroken. It became hard to remember her as she was - yet when she died, it was as if the ill Ruth was replaced by the young and optimistic woman I remember. My friend Barbara was so amazed at how very attractive Ruth was in her 60s and 70s. They both shared a love of dogs and the softer blues like Wedgwood, turquoise and periwinkle.
Ruth was a joy to shop for; her clothes always looked so becoming. She was an indefatigable traveler and fun on road trips. Her sense of humour rarely failed her; she enjoyed most English comedies and the Giles series of daily cartoons, as well as the Far Side.
