Back to Canada

Back to Canada, 1959

We were due for another posting in 1959 and this time we were headed for Ottawa. I was eleven when we crossed the ocean again, and again on the same boat, The Homeric. 

I was older now, eleven, so I had a better understanding of the trip and I knew we would see land before I got old.  I still enjoyed the mints outside the dining room.  I liked that we were with friends that we had spent the last four years with.  Time was moving on and I would likely not see them again because we would no longer live on air force bases.  At least on the base, you had the feeling you belonged to a huge family who shared similar experiences. We were different from the civilian kids who never moved and didn’t understand the world in the same way.

The voyage back to Canada was full of events.  They really went out of their way to entertain the kids with parties and activities. 

There was one traumatic moment that quelled my soul.  

I vividly remember the day in the cabin that my Dad hit me across the head so hard that I went flying into the wall. It was a familiar pain of my brain hitting my skull at 500 miles an hour as if my skull moved, but my brain didn’t.  I felt I was going to pass out, but I was just dazed.  My tongue ran across my front teeth. The jagged chip felt huge. When I told him he broke my tooth, he became more infuriated. But he stopped hitting me. I wondered why it never occurred to me to play dead.  That would have wakened him up.