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| Hapi standing in my reflection at the Reservoir beach |
The other day I was walking at the Reservoir with A. She is a year younger than my mother would be if she were still alive, she has the same name and she grew up in the same province. A's father was a doctor, my mother's father was a lawyer. A's family lived in a small village on the shore of the St Laurence River, my mother's family lived in a wealthy suburb of Toronto. My grandfather was involved as a lawyer in the amalgamation of some 12 or 13 smaller communities with Toronto proper, so by the time I was born, the house my mother grew up in was now in Metro Toronto. When I started school I used to walk by that house every day. I marvelled at how grand it was, nothing like the tiny overcrowded house my family lived in then.
But I digress. A walks very slowly and so does Hapi so I like walking with her because then I don't feel like I am slowing anyone down. A's dog Teddy is a little devil of a toy poodle who scampers everywhere, but he is growing older and shows more interest in Hapi than he used to. A and I chat about history, both personal and world. We share book titles that we think might interest the other. So, on that day I got talking about my childhood memories of "The Cottage", my grandmother's summer home that we stayed at every summer until I became depressive teenager who didn't want to go anywhere with anyone. I described the lake, the water activities, the trails, the tennis courts, the Regatta and the Corn Boil, so on and so forth.
A was ewwing and ahhing at my descriptions. She told me that I was so lucky to have that, that she routinely begged her parents to buy a little cottage on a nearby lake. Her father said No, they lived right on the Saint Laurence so why did they need a cottage on a lake and besides, he worked all the time being a country doctor. A loves tennis, so the fact that I had access to tennis courts all summer long particularly impressed her. However, I do not and never did love tennis, so I pretty much ignored the courts. My cousins were avid players so sometimes I accompanied them to the courts and would explore the surrounding woods while they played. And tucked into the underbrush not far from the road, I discovered a shuffleboard court. Now that I could get into! The mallets were kept locked up with the tennis paraphenalia so I had to borrow the key from my obnoxious cousins, but still, a small price to pay.
Telling A about the shuffleboard court, she exclaimed, Oh you were so lucky, so wealthy! Not just tennis courts but shuffleboard too! Well, I have to say I have never looked at my childhood as "lucky" or "wealthy", but A has set me straight. I think I have always looked at my childhood through that constricted lens of a depressed teenager, and missed the best bits altogether.
4 comments:
Very interesting perspective Annie. My summers were magical, spent on an island off the coast of West Cork and the reason they were is that my father was absent, working away in the big city so us kids and my mum were free from his discipline and restrictions and ran wild, no shoes, no rules. No running water, not even a privy, oil lamps.
Now the rest of the year not so great.
I love that pic of you and Hapi.
XO
WWW
Sounds like a very good vacation WWW, probably made the rest of the year a little more bearable. My Dad was not at the Cottage very much either, but we had plenty of restrictions imposed by mother, grandmother and aunt.
We often don't recognize the positives we have growing up until years later. I didn’t feel deprived but summer was mostly at home. I only recall longing to go to scout camp for a week but my single mother couldn't afford it. There were no vacations as I was growing up, except a couple weeks two years when i visited my grandmother’s farm, then an aunt in another town. Interestingly, i only recall being at each of those places but I don't know how i got there or back home since my mother had no car.
Joared, so true! When I was a single mother I couldn't afford any of the things I took for granted in my own childhood and consequently felt like I was depriving my kids of their rightful due. But I don't think they saw it that way. My kids got to go to camp because the local church, of which I was not a member, saw to it. I didn't have a car either, so I presume a church member did all the driving.
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