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.