Peggy's Legacy

Peggy’s Legacy

By Mary Jane Moore.

My Aunt Peggy’s parcel sat, unattended, on the dingy

carpeted mailroom floor in my apartment building for a

couple of days. My apartment is kind of a dump but it is in a

good neighbourhood and close to the beach so it’s all good.

Yes, I am guilty of leaving the parcel there. A miracle,

really, no-one decided to take it home for themselves. My

mom had told me it would be arriving soon but coming

across the country, I didn’t expect it for a while. In my

defence, I was on an extended Tinder date that lasted over

the July long weekend. I rate all of my dates and this one

lands around a 6 out of 10. Enough to hold my attention for

more than 24 hours but always something lacking in

intensity or complexity. I’m not a serial dater but living

alone and in my late twenties (I am not stating my exact age)

means time can go slowly and very uninspired without the

occasional tryst to liven things up.

The parcel was hard to miss, faded brown paper,

hand scrolled address done with a fat felt pen. How did she

manage to do it all in cursive writing? So much tape, I think

she used the entire roll. Quite impressive for a woman in her

80’s. She was a force of nature, my Aunt Peggy. She

chopped her own firewood up until last year when she had

her heart attack. My heart hurt when I thought of her having

to leave her wonderful house on the lake. My great

grandfather built the place many decades ago. The cottage

was perched on the edge of a deep, clear lake that I swam in

every Summer of my childhood.

In case you are a linear, time-oriented person, Peggy

was my great aunt, I think, yup. My grandfather’s sister.

Anyway, She always gave us very weird Christmas presents,

always with a “survivor” theme, packages of dried food for

camping, blankets made of crinkly plastic material that

supposedly could keep you alive in a snowstorm if you found

yourself on the side of a mountain…Her gifts ignited my

imagination. She was an artist too; she drew natural

landscapes and painted portraits, many were still there, in

her cottage on the edge of the lake.

Now she lived in an assisted living retirement home outside

of Ottawa. Her failing heart had put her there, unable to

chop wood or make herself dinner.

Here I am, 6000 kilometres away in Victoria, on

Vancouver Island. I grabbed my trusty kitchen knife and

carved carefully away at the package. It was truly a bugger

to open with all that tape. My mom had told me that Aunt

Peggy believed her number would soon be up. She wasn’t

one to mince words. She wanted me to have her jewelry

collection because I had shown such interest in it years ago.

Aunt Peggy may still be thinking of me as a 10- year old girl

fawning over her lumpy, glittery necklaces and pins. I did

appreciate the chance to see this stuff again although I had

no intention of wearing anything in the box. As I examined

each piece, I thought of her and the tales she told of

travelling alone through Europe as a young woman. Agate

necklaces, elaborate pins in the shape of Scottish thistles,

adorned with semi-precious stones, even a creepy actual

bird’s foot set in a silver clasp carved with a tiny elk’s head

holding a large, clear orange stone. At the bottom of the box

was a small, black notebook. At the moment I thought it

would be so cool to know the stories behind these old gems,

I opened the notebook. There were hand-drawn illustrations

of each pin, brooch and necklace, one on each page. All

completed in Peggy’s fine scroll. She had written an account

of each piece of jewelry. Everything was carefully

catalogued, with dates, places of purchase, who she

purchased it from and an account of the exact day in her

travels.

I needed this; I needed some intrigue in my life with a

zesty bit of history attached. My writing consisted of catchy

marketing phrases for the fashion industry. Word-smithing

was my livelihood but it was rather solitary and definitely

not exciting or even lucrative.

Curiosity had always been a burden on me. When

things became routine, it all felt mundane and tedious. Work

often felt like this. But every piece of jewelry and each detail

recorded in this little black notebook had so many

unanswered tangents and questions bubbled up in me. Why

had Peggy kept all of these things for decades? And why did

she seem to have such an incredible fashion sense but yet

she had kept this hideous bird’s foot pin?

My cell buzzed and vibrated on the coffee table. My

mother’s photo flashed and lit up with each buzz. I picked up

my cell and answered. “ Hey, Mom, you must have a 6th

sense. I am just going through the box that Aunt Peggy sent

me” I said. There was a pause and my mom spoke softly…” I

have some bad news, honey...Peggy passed away last night

in her sleep. She had only been in the retirement home for a

few days; we are all so shocked.”

Now, it was my turn to pause. “Honey, are you okay?” Mom

said, concerned. “Wow, I guess I thought she would last

forever somehow,” I replied.

Life does that…just all of a sudden.. someone you love

just dies. I intended on calling Aunt Peggy today. I had so

many questions to ask her about the notebook and all of the

hidden stories it contained.

“She left you some money, dear, what a kind soul she

was, $20,000 each for you and your brother. Peggy knew

what she was doing; she gave me a copy of her will a month

ago. We have the cottage too and it will be so great to all go

there next Summer. Don’t worry about coming back for the

funeral either; Peggy requested no service; she just wanted

to be cremated and her ashes placed in the lake.”

This sudden synopsis of events had me reeling. Too

much at one go, to say the least. I sputtered out something

to the effect that it was so sad and I had wished to speak to

her again but had now lost the chance..something about how

great it would be to have the cottage still and of course, the

money. I made an excuse to go and that was that. Now to

mull over the facts and the emotions. Surprise, loss, grief,

wonder, regret, guilt..need I go on.

A day or two went by in a blur. I took out the bird’s

foot pin and searched up, “ silver pin with bird’s claw and

big orange clear stone attached, Scottish?” Pictures popped

up and there it was, apparently, a grouse’s foot with a cut

Citrine stone. Yes, it was Scottish, likely made in Edinburgh.

The pin is still worn today by men on their kilts. It is

supposed to bring luck to the hunter when on the hunt

for ...what else...Grouse. Why did Peggy have it? I looked at

her notebook details, beside her usual category of ‘Date

purchased: Peggy had written instead ‘gifted’. She had been

given the pin by a man named Gowan Arthur, on September

5th, 1961. I recalled her only son’s name was Arthur…he

had died in a motorcycle accident in Australia, I think.. when

he was in his 20’s. I hadn’t noticed before but on the

underside of the pin the word “Mizpah” was hand engraved.

Searching this up I found that “Mizpah" is a term from the

bible meaning “God watch over us while we’re apart.” The

plot thickened and my curiosity ran with it.

My small inheritance of 20,000 dollars could

conceivably take me to Scotland on a holiday. Possibly, a

working holiday where I could find out more about Peggy’s

story with Gowan Arthur or at least, find inspiration to write

my novel or series of short stories. A fired-up love story

perhaps and if that wasn’t reality, well, I could elaborate and

confabulate to make it so. I fell in love with the idea at least.

September turned my desire into a plan and

Edinburgh was my first European destination. Believe or

not, phonebooks still exist in Scotland and I looked up “G.

Arthur” in the well leafed through pages at a pay phone, no

less. There were only five listings. Edinburgh isn’t a large

city and miraculously.. this was not a completely insane idea.

I called the first number and asked if there was a Gowan

Arthur. Scottish people are surprisingly chatty and I gleaned

all kinds of fairly useless but entertaining information in a

short amount of time, got invited over for lunch and even

asked out to a “Ceilidh” that Saturday night, a Scottish

dance party. No-one seemed to know an Arthur Gowan but

my 20 something brain was smitten by the voice of James

Gowan, the guy who had invited me to the Ceilidh. “How

would we recognize each other?” I asked him. He said he

would stand by the front door and wear an Arthur kilt, a

green and purple tartan with a Grouse pin that his

grandfather had given him. I felt as though a new chapter of

my life was unfolding before me, all thanks to Peggy’s pin.

James stood that Saturday night in the high archway of a

grand old hall along one of Edinburgh’s main streets. His

voluminous shiny dark hair swooped to one side on the top

of his head and slightly curled over his right brow. He

leaned back into the pillar behind him, one leg held self

consciously behind the other as he stood in his kilt. I

recognized the pin immediately and I pointed to mine as I

had decided to wear it even though it was a very strange

accessory. He had a meticulous black well- trimmed beard

and his smile broke as our eyes met. I couldn’t help but

smile widely back at him. Hey I said “ you look so very

Scottish!” It sounded so dumb as soon as I had said it but he

laughed and told me that I didn’t look Scottish at all. We

both laughed and made our way over to a table alongside the

dance floor. His eyes were a stony blue, captivating, of

course, and an accent that had me hanging on each word.

James told me, after our talk on the phone, he had asked his

dad if he knew of any Gowan in the family, living or dead. He

said his grandfather had a cousin named Gowan and he had

found a picture of him in a photo album. James pulled the

picture out of a pouch he had brought along. It was a photo

of a large Scottish wedding; everyone in traditional dress

with a couple standing playfully against a pillar along the

side of a regal hall. The young man in the picture looked

familiar and he did vaguely resemble Peggy’s son, Arthur.

Gowan, in his own Arthur purple and green kilt, had his arm

affectionately slung around the waist of a young woman in a

long satiny looking red dress. I had seen many old photos of

my aunt Peggy and it was her, most certainly! The stars

seemed to align that night. James and I danced and talked

the night away. Not only had I begun to uncover an

intriguing part of my Aunt’s past life, I may have also found

my own love story.