How I always looked forward to February as a kid. Growing up on the prairies was great but once we became used to building snowmen, playing "Fox and Goose" and dodging snowballs, it all became ordinary again.
My sisters and I really looked forward to February, a shorter month - one less very cold day it seemed - and of course, Valentine's Day! These were days with no television, very few library books and no computers, cell phones, I-Pods etc. We all had music lessons so practising the piano was a daily dreaded ritual and we had our little responsibilities to help Mom with the housework and cooking. So any special occasion became a very special time for enjoyment and participation.
My Mom's birthday fell on January 15 - that was a very special occasion. One which brought all my aunts and uncles to our home for afternoon "Faspa". We would hurry home from school at 4 o'clock that day, greatly anticipating the delightful aroma of coffee, the buzz of animated chatter around the table, and the knowledge that there would be special treats for our after school snack.
So we looked for diversions for entertainment. A great diversion for me during school hours was to study the back of our notebooks -Scribblers, they were called. There were charts of measurements of the old variety: cups, pints, quarts and gallons; inches, feet, yards; bushels and pecks; times tables and in the very center, this little ditty for remembering the number of days in each month of the year:
Thirty days hath September
April, June and November.
All the rest have thirty-one-
Except February, which has twenty-eight
But Leap Year coming once in four,
February then has one day more!
And so another February is here...still exciting but definitely in a different way.
2 comments:
Good to ponder previous Valentine's Day celebrations. It was so exciting - the anticipation of a party in school, of receiving valentines and of sending them and of course the lunch.
This was fun for us children but definitely a huge
challenge for our Mom. We would inform her the night before or the morning of the celebration, be it Valentine or Halloween that we had offered to bring a cake or a loaf of sandwiches. Can you imagine in a household of 8 children- no car at hand to go the store etc. Our mom was amazing to say the least - she always came through.
Good memories!
#1
Hi #1 - I must say I often wonder how Mom ever managed so incredibly well. I well remember those class parties and all the valentines that were handed out from that huge decorated box in which we'd deposited our cut out valentines. And those sandwiches...my all time favourites were those vegetable soup sandwiches made on bought white bread!! Could anything be tastier!
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