Fire Ball

There was a terrific thunder storm outside, with lightening and thunder.  I knelt on the couch with the kids and watched through the picture window. Suddenly, a huge ball of fire leapt through the window, across the room and out the back patio doors.  How could anyone ever film this?  It was a phenomenon recorded in books, but I don’t think it was ever photographed.  Amazing! A good reason not to sit next to a window in a thunder storm.

Lights Out

It was dusk, a time that necessitated turning on the lights.  Well, none of the lights worked.   It wasn’t unusual to have a power failure in Pointe Claire.  We thought it was just another power outage in the area.  We got wood in for the wood burner, got the kerosene lamps ready and extra blankets for everyone’s bed for the cold night ahead. We tentatively expected the neighbors to come to huddle around our wood stove. As it got darker and darker, we noticed the neighbours in the back still had their power. I went out on the street to investigate who lost their power and noticed everyone but us had power.  This was a mystery.  We had paid our hydro bill?

Slowly the recollections of the day came back to me.  I was working in the garage and rolling up the garden hose. I recklessly threw it over the hook on the wall, and went on my  business.  It turned out that ‘hook’ on the wall was the main power lever for the house and by throwing the hose over it, I inadvertently switched it off.  Power problem solv-ed.

"Where's My Bugs?"

One of my endearing memories of Brandon!

I was buzzing around the kitchen finishing up making crunchy granola.  I hurriedly filled three bowls and gave them to the boys who were playing in the back yard.  I continued with my business until dinner time when I summoned the boys in with their empty bowls.  Brandon still had quite a bit of his granola left.  I placed his bowl on the counter and absentmindedly nibbled on it as I prepared dinner. I hadn’t had a taste and this was my opportunity to sample the results of my cuisine.  

Dinner ready, I call the boys. Brandon takes one look at his bowl and yells, “Where’s my bugs?” I scrutinized the bowl only to see ants on their backs, beetles without legs, flies wing and legless.  Allch!  Just the thought I’d eaten them made me retch.  I yelled back, “What are you mad at …?  … I’m the one that ate them!”

Choking

Brandon was about 14 months old and still learning to chew on a hard diet. This day he was having difficulty swallowing on an apple. He always managed to succeed; but this was different. He was choking. I grabbed him and put him over the sink. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t do the Hiemlick method hard enough to clear the apple out of his throat.  

A few days previously, Don had rented a video from the library for our 16 mm projector about the services of the Fire Department.  Much to our surprise, they did First Responder calls.  Don put their phone number on all the phones. When time was running out, I grabbed the phone to call them. It was only for the fact that the number was on the phone that I was able to call them.  I could never have looked up the number in the phone book in this state of panic.

I called the Fire Department, explaining the situation and I swear they were in the front door before I hung up the phone.  Fireman Tottle, [which I understood as his name Firemantottle] snatched Brandon up, now blue, over his knee, hit him on the back and stuck  his little finger in his mouth. Out popped the obstructive piece of apple.  Brandon immediately turned pink.  They took him into their fireman truck and transported him to the hospital for an Xray.  He was just fine. Every year after we would go and thank Fireman Tottle for saving my son.  One year we went and heard the sad news that he had passed away.  I had a plaque made for him, acknowledging his heroic deed, and presented it to the Fire Department. That was the end of our connection with Firemantottle.

The Buick

The Buick

My Great Aunt Franny [my mom’s dad’s sister] owned a super powerful Buick Skylark. an 8 HP…  It seemed out of context for her.  She would take it to the garage and the attendant would drive it to the bay and when he stepped on the gas, the gar would hit 80.  Well, it went shockingly zesty anyway. When the car got old, Franny gave it  to Mom.  Mom loved that car and when it started to have problems, she teased that she wanted to bronze it and make it into a guest house at the cottage. Much to Don and my surprise, we came out of the house one day to see Mom’s old Buick with a big ribbon wrapped around it. She was giving us her Buick Skylark. We much appreciated the gift, as any young family would love to have a car given to them.

I remember yet the day we took the kids to Toronto from Pointe Claire in that old Buick.  Once in Toronto, it started to make unusual noises and I suspected it was in it’s death throws.  We were stopped by a police officer who asked appropriate questions like, who were we, where were we going and what was wrong with our car.  We answered we were on our way to the scrap heap and we were planning to purchase a new car imminently. He was satisfied with that and let us go on our way.  We did just that.  We were sad to see the old car go, but the new Oldsmobile ’88 adequately assuaged our grief.

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.