Nonna's Visits

The Boa

Mom would visit wherever we lived and she often came to Pointe Claire with her Nonna gene. 

One time Mom came to babysit Tyson when he was about five months old.  Tyson’s kind and sensitive character came through even at this age.  He rarely cried, but he cooed. He was such a good baby.  I was sure Mom could handle him and he wouldn’t give her any grief.

She took him to Ottawa to visit her good friend Lois Langevin.  Robert, Lois’ son, lived at home, but had left for a few days, leaving his Mom in charge of his boa constrictor in the basement.  Lois worried that it would get out, but Robert assured her that this was impossible.

When Mom arrived, she put Tyson down in the upstairs bedroom for a nap.  Since she didn’t want him to fall off the bed, she put him comfortably on the floor and left the door open. She then joined Lois in the bright and sunny den that looked out onto the back yard and pool.  There they sipped on a glass of white wine and got caught up on their news.

After a couple of hours, Lois invited Mom to have a look at the boa in the basement.  Mom was nervous just thinking about it.  Needless to explain their horror when they saw the cage was empty. 

They raced up stairs, dreading what they might find.  Much to their relief, Tyson was all in one piece, still sleeping on the floor. But where was the boa and what were they going to do with it?

They found it in the next room slithering up on the curtains.  They closed the door, picked up Tyson and gingerly went back to the den.  Mom neglected to tell me about this until  years later.

The Police and the Fire Department

Another visit entailed the Fire Department and the Police when Brandon went missing.

Brandon was two.  I had brought him for a long walk that day to the shopping centre about one kilometer away.  That evening, he didn’t want to go to bed, but we insisted he stay in bed anyway.  Mom had gone to bed earlier and was sleeping in Damon’s room.  When we turned in at ten, Brandon was no where to be found.  We woke Damon and Tyson up to help search the house, but to no avail.  I was worried he left the house and went back to the shopping centre.  I started my search on our street, checking each car, thinking he may have crawled in and fallen asleep. The air was still and mist hung around the street lights.  It was errie. 

Feeling that time was of the essence for my missing child, I called the Fire Department and they started a search on the main roads. The police were alerted and came and checked our street out.  They searched the house and even looked in the cupboards with their flash lights in the room where Mom was sleeping.  I was desperate.

One of the policemen saw a lump at the foot of Mom’s bed, under the covers.  He didn’t want to wake her up, so he asked if we would check it out.  Well, guess who had fallen asleep under the covers!  There Brandon was, fast asleep. 

Forgetting Damon

We had arranged a rendezvous point in Ottawa where Mom was to pick up Damon and take him back home to Thornbury with her.  Well she forgot.  When Mom got home, we asked her how Damon was doing.  There was this long breathless pause as the synapses struggled to connect. “Oh no. Did I forget?”  she said in a very guilty tone. We teased, “You didn’t forget him, did you?  Do you think he’s still waiting for you on the street?”  She had a hard time living that one down.  Damon was about 12.

Life on Marlin, The boys and the Jansons

Devoted to My Boys

My worst nightmares were that I was alone and didn’t have any children.  I would wake up to my dream. I counted my blessings every day.  They were what kept me going.  They were my source of joy. When they were tucked in bed and kissed and hugged good night, after story time, I would go downstairs and line up their little shoes and think to myself, “What a blessing that these little shoes are filled!” 

The Jansons

There were other families on the street with kids, the Dahls and the Scobbles. It was then we met our neighbours, Jay and Tamara and their three kids, Andrew, Jackie and Pieter. We became very close friends. We made time for each other and our friendship grew over the years. We fit well as couples.  I never remember having one disagreement the whole time we were friends.

One Hallowe’en Don and I got on our knees with sheets over our heads and knocked on their door. Tamara was all sweet and friendly until Don grabbed her boob.  She was speechless at the cheekiness of kids today.  She was flustered as she grabbed a handful of candies to drop in the pillow case Don was holding.  As she did so, he seized the opportunity to do it again.  I, of course was in the background trying not to laugh.  When she recognized my giggle, she fell on the floor laughing.

I remember the time my mother was visiting. After she went to bed, Jay and Tamara and Don and I partied on.  We ended up on the street having an egg race on a tricycle. They were giggling at my long white dress trailing behind the little three wheeled bike.  My mother heard the laughing in her upstairs bedroom and thought, ‘Who is making all this racket?”  When she realized it was my laugh, she thought, “Oh, that’s Christine; isn’t she having fun!”

The Jansons would come to the cottage with us on many occasions.  One winter we braved a trip with all the kids.  We left the cars on the road and skied in with our provisions. As we were leaving the car site, Don was prepared; he was packed up to the gills with a very large, heavy nap sac on his back, full of tinned food. He was wearing his Arctic down-filled coat that he wore on a survival course in the military in the Arctic somewhere. It was an over-kill as it was raining. The snow under our skis and toboggan was getting sticky. Nonetheless, Don braved on, calling, “Follow me!”  just like a great white hunter of the North.  At that very moment, the words hardly out of his mouth, that he keeled over on his back.  He couldn’t move and I was laughing so hard, I couldn’t help him.  I wondered what he was going to do for an encore.  I was hoping he had something.  That was good.

When we got to the cottage, there was a lot of commotion as we scurried to get the fire going in the wood burning stove. Brandon had done something to the dog, so he was sent upstairs to his bedroom for time out. As the fire got started in the fire place, the smoke went up the chimney, but I could smell another kind of smoke.  I tore the fire extinguisher off the wall and ran upstairs with Don, Jay and Tamara behind me.  The curtains were on fire and the mattress was smouldering.  Brandon was about 7 at the time and he was experimenting lighting the matches when things got a little out of hand.  He didn’t want to call out for fear of getting into more trouble.  We got the fire out and all of us dragged the mattress through the hall to the other bedroom and pitched it over the balcony onto the cold snow below. That was a little too close for comfort.

We spent many happy times with the Jansons, not only at the cottage but also at the farm, where we moved after Pointe Claire. We had every New Year’s together with all the kids; they always preferred to party with us than with their friends.  We smoked and drank and partied on. When they were young, we would put the clocks back an hour to celebrate New Years with them and then put them to bed and party on.  They caught on to this ruse rather early.  In the end, they stayed up with the adults until the wee hours of the morning.  I loved bringing them with us when we were with friends;  I thought it made for good memories.

It was very sad and a great loss to me that Tamara passed away from lung cancer in 2005 at the age of 56.

Brandon Birth, 1981

It was in this house that Brandon came into the family.  Super Baby. The pregnancy was text book as was the delivery.  It was the precursor that was a little unusual.

Don was in my bad books the week I was to deliver, so I called upon my mother to accompany me in the delivery room. Don ended up being present anyway, so we had quite a party going on.

When labor started, Mom and I trekked off to the hospital.  I sat up in the hospital bed with my long shiny dark hair cascading down my back, doing my nails and chatting with my mother, looking like anything but in labor. The doctor came in and announced, “You’re not in labor; you’re going home.” Well, it just so happened that the next day was Friday 13 and there was no way I was having a baby on such an unlucky day.  In my state I was figuring his/her birthday would be Friday 13 every year.  Women don’t think too clearly when they are in labor. So I argued that yes, I WAS in labor and I wasn’t going anywhere. I was going to have this baby tonight. I was going to will it to be born before midnight. The doctor said all right, but he was leaving for the night and going out for dinner because he didn’t believe me.

They gave me an enema, just in case.

There was a heart monitor next to the bed to monitor the baby’s heartbeat.  Well, my mother bores easily and when she’d had enough of listening to the baby’s heartbeat, which was strong and healthy, she asked, why not we listen to hers?  Hers was pretty good too. Then it was my turn.  First of all, we couldn’t find it.  When we did, it sounded like an old motor boat dying out, then coming back, limping its way to shore.  Baboom.  Stop. Baboom. Stop.  We started to laugh hysterically, while I tried to ask, “Am I dead?” At this point  I really wished they hadn’t given me the enema. I had to control all that while laughing so hard.  A doctor stuck his head in the door wondering what was so funny. He didn’t smile, but wrote something on his clip board. (two nut bars?)

Mom was getting worried now. She ran out of the room looking for a cardiologist.  How does one get a cardiologist just by wanting one? but she did, she got one. Mom wanted my heart checked NOW. He came with his chart; didn’t say anything but kept writing notes on his clipboard, in between darting glances at me.

It wasn’t too much longer that labor really started to get serious.  Mom panicked. She ran up and down the halls calling for a doctor.  Seems they were all in the delivery room delivering babies. She approached a janitor and asked him to come and help deliver my baby.  He informed her, “I’m just the janitor.”  Understandable error on her part, since he wore a familiar blue outfit, like a doctor.  The broom should have given her a clue, however.

They had a delivery room for us when the moment came. Brandon popped out screaming. Doctors were called from every corner of the hospital to see his amazing lung capacity.  He had the body of a football player.  He was magnificent. 

Marlin Crescent 1978-1988

When we moved to our new multi-split house on Marlin Crescent, it was the beginning of a new era. Maybe we could start over.  Maybe things would work out better in this nicer house. It was very exciting and full of promise.

Farewell Prince Charles

The people across the street on Prince Charles had four teen aged boys. They lived in a house about the same size as ours.  

It was the day Don said to me that we could live in this $17,000 house forever because the mortgage would be paid off and it’d be cheap living, that I realized he really thought we could be like those people across the street.

Three weeks later the house was sold and we bought a much larger house in a much nicer area.  It was a five story house in ‘Priests’ Farm’ in Pointe Claire.  We paid $52,000 for it. This move opened the way for opportunities that were yet to come.

Chapter 12