Threads of My Life: Saskatoon and our Dutch/Canadian Cousins

Just as we walked into the Travel Lodge in Regina, Liz's phone rang. It was Cousin Iris! Iris was my Dad's favorite cousin. She's 78 now and although Liz has heard of her for years, even corresponds with her, the two of them had never met. Iris used to work for the R.C.M.P. (that's the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) as a matron. We'd planned our trip to meet up with Iris and visit with her and her daughter, Peggy. Peggy is at the Wascana Rehab center in Regina, learning to walk on her new legs after a horrible accident last year. So..we walked into the hotel, the phone rang...Iris was wondering where we were. In the lobby! AHA! She had been waiting for us all day. She came out of the room and tried to back us out the door, so we could rush over and meet Peggy. Tsk tsk tsk..it had been A LONG DRIVE! I wanted to at least walk into our room and oh, use the bathroom. Did I mention it had been a long drive? LOL Liz, ever the clever one, used the excuse that she didn't want to leave her bagpipes in the cold of the truck for any length of time. Then she proceeded to unload all our luggage and take it to the room (aha! where we each had a turn at the bathroom!) Of course by then, it was too late to have dinner with Peggy, so we ate at the hotel and then went to visit. Neither Liz nor I had ever met Peggy before--it was about time! She's doing very well, although the doctors say her age (49) is against her, but I think she more than makes up for that with her attitude. She is positive and upbeat; determined to walk again. She told us most amputees who lose their legs through thee knee, never walk again and are stuck in their wheelchairs forever. She is not going to be one of them!

The next day, while Peggy was doing therapy, Iris took us to the Mountie Museum. They had an excellent film; very well done but didn't have as much of the history as Liz and I would have liked. The latter part of the film was geared to showing people what the Mounties do, trying to get new recruits. They kept asking Liz if she'd bee interested and wanted to give her an application. You have to be a Canadian citizen, but one fellow assured Liz, they could get around that, no problem.