Lindsay Campbell
To Tanya Redford, her mother, Barb, is the best grandmother in the whole world.
This Saturday (June 6), Barb Redford will host a second-annual fundraising event at her home in Devlin.
The event—entitled “Marzie Days”—is in support of her six-year-old granddaughter, Mara Raimondi, who has a very rare chromosome abnormality called 18 p deletion.
Last year, the youngster and her parents entered a walk-a-thon in Winnipeg called “Cruisin’ Down the Crescent.”
Participants were required to get pledges in support of the Children’s Rehabilitation Foundation and so Redford created “Marzie Days” to help her granddaughter raise money.
“We raise money for the children’s rehab centre in Winnipeg because they do wonderful things for Mara,” she explained.
“My granddaughter, she’s six years old and only weighs 28 pounds, but they build her things for her to make things easier and they help her out a lot.
“We raise money for Mara towards the walk-a-thon,” Redford added.
“But it all goes to the rehab centre in Winnipeg in a roundabout way.”
As well as building therapeutic equipment for Mara, the Children’s Rehabilitation Foundation also has a clinic that she goes to for her feeding tube, making it an organization the family strongly supports.
For the inaugural “Marzie Days” last year, Redford sold plants and flowers that she had grown herself. And because it went so well, she decided to do the same thing again.
Tanya Redford said this is an extensive project that her mother truly puts her heart and soul into.
“She orders and buys the seeds from different outlets in Winnipeg,” she noted.
“Then she starts the whole process in her basement.
“Her whole basement is decked out with lights and whatever she does down there to grow all these seeds,” the younger Redford added.
“Then she goes through the whole process of transplanting them by moving them out into their own little greenhouse.
“And this is truly her love of Mara doing this.”
Tanya Redford said it’s no small undertaking.
“My mom spends hours each day caring for these plants, just for Mara’s day,” she remarked.
Last year, “Marzie Days” raised close to $1,000. But Barb Redford stressed she could not have done it without the help of the community.
“It actually went better than we expected,” she noted. “But we’ve got really good friends. It’s not just me.
“My friends donate baking, too, and we’ll sell it and this went particularly well last year,” she added.
“We cannot do it without them.”
Her daughter can attest to that.
“To know that we live four hours away [in Winnipeg], but we can come home and people will come out and support Mara’s fundraising for the rehabilitation foundation, it’s just wonderful,” Tanya Redford enthused.
“I can’t say enough about that.”
Tanya Redford expects to be here for Saturday’s event but the family is taking a “wait-and-see approach” on Mara because of the health her condition puts her in.
Redford said her daughter’s chromosome abnormality has created complex health problems, which cause her to be very fragile.
“But we don’t like to think of her ever as being limited,” she stressed.
“We like to think of it as creating her own path. . . .
“She doesn’t talk. She communicates by sound,” Redford noted. “She doesn’t walk or crawl.
“But we shouldn’t lose sight of everything she can do.”
Barb Redford hopes she’ll be able to share the day with her granddaughter, but remains understanding when it comes to her condition.
“Hopefully if she’s well enough, Mara can make the trip,” she remarked.
“But if anything comes up, she won’t come down because they have to be close to the hospitals in Winnipeg.
“I hope she can come but if not, it is what it is,” she reasoned.
Tanya Redford said even if her daughter is not able to attend, she doesn’t want people to lose sight of the amount of work her mother has done out of love for her granddaughter.
“For me, the underlying theme that I love the most about this is that my mom is doing this for her grandchild,” she remarked.
“For me, it’s that my mom takes this labour of love that she begins in winter, and she follows through with hard work and care just to do this for her granddaughter.
“I love the fact that my mom does this for my baby,” Redford added. “That’s what I love.”
Those who wish to help support “Marzie Days” can drop by Redford’s house, located at 1213 Highway 613 North, anytime this Saturday after 10 a.m.
