

Copyright 2016 by Patricia Tennant

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including scanning, photocopying, or otherwise without prior written permission of the copyright holder.

**ISBN:** ST EDITION

UPLOADED TO: SMASHWORDS: May, 2016

INDEX

Chapter 1: AND IN THE BEGINNING

Chapter 2: A NEW BRANCH ON THE FAMILY TREE

Chapter 3: ANOTHER BABY AND A BIG MOVE

Chapter 4: HURRICANE HAZEL

Chapter5: SHE'S GOT WHEELS

Chapter 6: YES KIDS, THERE IS A SANTA

Chapter 7: DID WE JUST BUY A HOUSE?

Chapter 8 STEVEN IS BORN

Chapter 9 THE RUNAWAYS

Chapter 10 PETER, CHARLIE AND THE PLUMBING

Chapter 11 VANCOUVER HERE WE COME

Chapter 12 SITTERS AND GRANDPARENTS

Chapter 13 A DORMITORY IS BORN

Chapter 14 THE DENTIST

Chapter 15 BATTERIES AND FROOTLOOPS

Chapter 16 GLEN ECHO

Chapter 17 SERIOUSLY? A GIRL?

Chapter 18 PAPER ROUTES AND CELEBRATIONS

Chapter 19 DINNER PARTIES AND LAUNDRY

Chapter 20 THE YEAR OF THE TUNNEL

Chapter 21 GIVE ME A SICK CHILD

Chapter 22 MUSIC LESSONS

Chapter 23 HOSPITALS WE HAVE KNOWN AND LOVED

Chapter 24 MEALS AND HARRY DENTON

Chapter 25 COTTAGE LIFE AND DOGS

Chapter 26 CUBS, SCOUTS AND BROWNIES

Chapter 27 GIVE US THAT NEW- TIME RELIGION

Chapter 28 AH, THE TEEN YEARS

Forward

May, 2016

Here it is people, my version of your lives as kids.

The working title was, "The Kid Book", and over the years I couldn't find the right title until recently when this memory floated into my mind: you know that time when your child has committed an infraction and you're trying to be stern and your heart is bursting with love? Well, that's the way we felt when we asked tiny Mark, "why?", and he replied, "My thinking made me do it."

There was my title

I wrote down childhood moments that I wanted to remember from the time you were infants, tossing the scraps of paper into a file.

When you were grown and on your own, I began to weave it all into narrative form and thought it might become a retail book, and then went back to assembling it just for you.

It could have benefitted from a stern editor and occasionally the times are out of skew but its pretty well all there, and mostly in the right order.

I also promised myself when I started sifting through that even if I didn't recall the incidents the way they were written; I would accept the written notes.

I was going to continue into the teen years but I quickly realized that was a good time to close.

It's mostly light-hearted and some of those incidents can still make me laugh.

You're all funny people; just give you an audience and away you go.

Enjoy

Chapter 1

AND IN THE BEGINNING

I don't know how this thought popped into my head. It was a hot, sticky July day and I was leaning over the kitchen sink, idly prying dried Pabulum out of the china bowl rimmed with little bunnies.

The idea wouldn't go away.

I didn't have a life plan. I don't think I'd ever have a life plan.

When I carefully thought about it, what I did have was a day-to-day survival plan and a house full of children.

That thought and the usual household sounds pushed me back to my real world; to my real world, worrying how to stretch a cup of ground round for one more meal and whether the damned fuel bill would get paid on time.

Then it finally hit me; I was responsible for all those innocent little children in my house and these lines between my eyes did not come from piping, "Birds in their little nests agree."

Well, sure I knew I had kids. I was dead certain that I had been immersed in childcare twenty four hours a day, and I'd had a crush on the obstetrician several times, so sure they were my kids. It seemed sort of sloppy to finally recognize that I didn't have a life plan, just a houseful of kids.

I could not recall just exactly how I had ended up in this mortgaged kitchen with every moment of my time spoken for, when a blink of an eye ago I was single, carefree and untouched by overdue bills and overheating car radiators.

I dried my hands and hurried to the phone to alert my husband at the office.

"I'm sorry to bother you, but have you looked around our house lately? It's full of children and they're all ours. How did this happen?"

Yes, he had noticed we had a lot of children and might he remind me that he had been willing to settle for fewer of those.

"Listen," I continued, "Wasn't it only yesterday that we were scrounging quarters for the movies and popcorn, and now we have a house and a mortgage and bank loans and all those children. Who decided we were old enough and sensible enough to borrow money? What was the bank manager thinking of? And all those children; are we ready for all this responsibility?"

He said there there, you're just having a trying day so why don't you call a sitter and come down town and we'll have dinner and discuss this. Well, I did just that and before you could turn around we talked ourselves into a newer car and another baby.

I cannot believe my good timing, marrying and having babies when nothing else was expected of me except to keep the house and kids in order. And that was enough; all that was missing from my life was a built-in treadmill. There was that vague unspoken rule that everything should be perfect when husband returned home from his important work, but I'm sure that rule was meant for women with the 2.2 kids and a cleaning staff.

I certainly never considered having a career outside the home and in fact, I thought I had a full time career in my home.

I always wanted to be a mother, a mom, nurturer of children. I know, you're saying, "And?" This is the embarrassing part because that's it. It never occurred to me there was an "and."

I wouldn't have traded my life with anyone, although my thoughts sometimes fixed on the seductive notion of getting a solid eight hours sleep or having an uninterrupted adult conversation.

When I was a kid, I was very clear about my future. I'd earn my living as a commercial artist, marry a newspaperman and have lots of children. All those things happened although the artwork quickly sidelined to paperhanging and scraping layers of paint off second-hand furniture, and re arranging everything. The furniture re -distribution was a good habit; I could tell who came home after curfew when a foot crashed into a newly moved table.

My formative years were lived on the exit edge of several passing eras. I was too young to know what the depression was, but it certainly overshadowed my childhood. My father always had a job and we never went hungry but the anxiety of those times turned me into what you might call the ultimate oxymoron-- optimistic worrier. That's a person who feels it's a near certainty that the world may crumble tomorrow, in fact it probably will, but today looks good.

World War Two replaced the depression in my worries. There were new things to be terrified of; I mean what if Canadian children, like the children in Britain were forced to wear those hideous gas masks with the mutant eyes? Every night I went to bed fearful that we'd be bombed right out of our house, but I did have enough sense to be grateful that I was a female and didn't have to join the armed forces.

I saw all the Andy Hardy movies and was ready to put my heart into adolescence but that coincided with the war, and teen age outbursts were probably considered subversive. The wildest thing I did in those days was to turn into a permanent string and tin- foil saver.

Aside from a gap year living with my aunt in Toronto, I lived at home until the day I married. My father went off to the office from Monday to Friday and half days on Saturday. My two brothers were expected to fill the furnace sawdust hopper twice a day and cut the lawn and I was expected to peel potatoes and dust and know how to pour tea, and you can bet that didn't mean dangling a tea bag from a string into a cup of hot water.

Sunday was roast day and on Monday we had it cold. I dreaded the cold lamb Mondays because it was always curried in a yellow- green sauce on a bed of rice and it looked and tasted deadly. By the time I was an adult I discovered that it tastes wonderful with careful mixing of spices. I think my mother got hers from a sadist.

Excepting the lamb, my mother was a good cook who wasn't particularly interested in kitchen appliances or gadgets and we didn't have a refrigerator in our house until I was twelve years old. Until then the iceman hauled fifty-pound blocks to the icebox on our back porch every few days.

All of us post- depression kids knew our roles. We kept our elbows off the table, didn't talk back and we were expected to regularly attend various levels of school until we got some kind of diploma. That generally marked the signal for boys to shave regularly, wear three- piece suits with skinny ties and work in an office. At the same time the girls got their first polyester dresses and shoes with three-inch heels, and married the boys who had found their offices. The girls were expected to have a couple of children, perform charitable deeds and learn to play killer bridge, so the good clothes were saved for christenings and family parties.

While I was still young enough to dream romantically about the future I knew I would have children and I knew that they would be absolutely perfect. God knows, I'd spent enough time analyzing every mistake my parents had made; you wouldn't catch me raising children in a household where there were conflicts. Yes, I said that.

I would be the modern day Marmy March. I know, there's a large possibility some of you have never read "Little Women" and you don't have a clue who Marmy March was. Well, she was poor and decent and while her husband was off fighting some unidentified war, she stayed home and raised four spunky daughters who hardly ever complained and were perfect bricks about making do. Marmy still managed to have a hard working, faithful maid and that freed her up to be out a lot, performing good deeds wrapped in her tattered but neatly mended gloves. Her daughters were all splendid women and the memory of poor little Beth can still bring tears to my eyes. Anyway, I wanted a more prosperous version of Little Women in my house.

Somewhere in the process of growing up, opening the first bank account, dating, marrying, having children, and starting to care about the cleaning power of detergents, any priority plan I might have had lost its momentum. The larger things in my life were planned more or less on the spot. Getting married, buying a house, having babies, buying sick second hand cars.

Hal and I were both average middle children in a family of three well- spaced offspring and statistically we were cinches to raise two-point-two children, drive a navy blue sedan and play Canasta every Tuesday night. Listen, in time we had a shot at all those things; but we skimmed over the 'point two' so quickly, we were forced to consider buying a station wagon or a bus unless we wanted to make two trips, and we were too busy folding diapers and working overtime to handle the third.

We were raised in adjoining Vancouver neighborhoods and shared many of the same friends, although we never met until we were grown.

As kids, we knew how to make slingshots out of forked branches, fastening them with red rubber bands cut from old inner tubes. We played in the plentiful vacant lots, building forts and preparing for battles. The fun was in the preparation, so we didn't actually spend much time at war. Our parents seldom intervened and children were left on their own a lot, despite what you might have read.

We knew that wearing your rubbers or gumboots all day in the house or school could affect your eyesight permanently and I know my mother tried the cabbage patch birthing theory on me because I used to leave my dolls out in the vegetable garden under the cabbages at night. In the morning I was bitterly disappointed to find the dolls hadn't become live babies.

If you caught measles, and everyone did, you had to rest quietly in a dark room and avoid reading or you might lose your eyesight. My mother also solemnly told me that swallowed cherry pits would sprout in my throat and eventually cherry leaves would grow. And gum—if you swallow gum it sticks to your stomach lining forever and impedes digestion.

About those gumboots; eventually they developed a leak, generally at the toe end and my big brother was delegated to patch it. He'd take a piece of that everlasting red inner tube and glue it to the leak. This red patch was mortifying to me and I can't recall anyone else suffering that fate. Everyone else had black patches or replaced the boot; I was never sure which it was. On rainy days, when I needed the boots, I'd find a big Maple leaf and plaster it to the patch and then shuffle along carefully to school.

Our mothers were home coping with ice- boxes and wringer washers and waiting for the Chinese greengrocer to come by the back alley in his ancient model T Ford with the back part cut out to resemble future flat-bed trucks. The fish man came on Tuesdays in his old modified Ford and the bread man and milkman came every day with their horse-drawn carts. Mr.Philps, who lived two doors away used to run out with his dustpan and broom to collect the horses' leavings for his garden. The rag and bones man called his arrival with his horse drawn cart, down the back alley. No one ever seemed to stop him because we wore our clothes until they turned themselves into dust cloths and bones went into the soup pot.

In my mother's circle, it was assumed that if a woman worked outside the home it was because her husband couldn't support the family on his own. They said to one another proudly, "My husband wouldn't think of letting me take a job."

Mom had a maid until the onset of World War Two so she managed to get away to play bridge once or twice a week and attend frequent tea parties. Our maids never wore a uniform but we hadn't reached the democratic manner of all eating together. She ate her meals in the kitchen and came to take away plates when Mom rang the little crystal hand bell on the table.

The onset of world war two meant that the family maids went off to work in war-related factories and the Japanese cleaning ladies and their families were cruelly stripped of their properties and shuttled off to Canadian-style concentration camps.

Our moms were on their own, dealing with food stamps, turning the lawns into potato patches and making blackout curtains in case the Japanese decided to bomb us.

That was the last black and white war. There was no question in our minds that God was on our side and Adolph Hitler made that premise easy to accept.

My big brother went off to join the air force and by the time the war ended, he was twenty-three and had lived an entire lifetime. He successfully eased back into civilian life but what does it do to you when you come home a triumphant decorated hero and settle back into being just another citizen working at an ordinary job?

Chapter 2:

A NEW BRANCH ON THE FAMILY TREE

1949-51 Old age security payments begin

1952 U.S. explodes 1st hydrogen bomb in Pacific

1953. Eliz 11 crowned.

Playboy mag first published, not allowed in Canada

I met Hal when I took a job with the Kerrisdale Courier, a weekly neighborhood newspaper. Hal attended university classes daily and sandwiched in the newspaper job after classes. He acted as editor while I juggled the roles of Women's page editor, secretary, emptier of waste baskets and, the critical one, wrestling a bunch of nine year old paper carriers into order once a week. Talk about auditioning for your future life's work.

I remember the first time I saw him walk into the office. He was rail thin and wore a wine V-neck sweater, had a floppy blond pompadour over his forehead (very IN) and a cigarette hung out of the corner of his mouth. His hands shook slightly, presumably from lack of sleep and he radiated nervous energy. We both earned $27.50 a week.

He rushed in after classes each day and settled at our shared desk, cigarette dribbling smoke from the corner of his mouth, and a phone tucked under his chin, using any available moment to ruthlessly edit my copy, taking insensitive aim at my obituary notices.

"In this paper, people don't pass away, they die, got it? Die."

It was not love at first sight.

Our dates were not what I'd been used to. I was used to my dates taking me to the Georgia Hotel bar with the mandatory separate entrances for unescorted men and women. As I recall, no matter which entrance you chose, you ended up in the same big room.

Beer was less fun than coke floats but we were conscious of our new adult stature so we deadened the bitter taste by sprinkling salt over the froth. We'd have a beer, possibly two for my date, lots of discussion and then the boy would take me home on the streetcar.

You couldn't buy liquor in the more sophisticated night clubs, so people smuggled in paper bags containing their bottles of alcohol. If you were hell -bent on buying it you located the closest government-run store, then you wrote out your order giving your name and address and you signed it swearing that you were over twenty-one. The clerk at the counter took the form and went to the racks to get your order, wrapped it in a paper bag and took your money. You weren't off the hook just yet. By law, you were then expected to go straight home with the purchase, the seal remaining unbroken until you were safely indoors.

When I dated a university student, we'd either go to his frat house to shoot pool and drink rye and coke or we'd be off to some organized dance. Eventually some of them could borrow their father's car but mostly transportation was the streetcar or bus.

Dating has changed since my courting days; that's because we had them. My children seemed to find their mates without actually spending a nickel on the movies or dinner out and they believe a corsage is something made of whalebone that our great grandmothers wore to give them tiny wasp waists.

Hal was putting himself through university and had no time to consider fraternities but he was active in U.B.C's publications board (he wrote a mostly humor column once a week, titled, "Gobbledygook."). We socialized with this group of people.

Our first date was combined with business. The Kerrisdale Arena had just opened and Hal was to cover the first hockey game from the press box. He knew beans about hockey and at least I knew who Foster Hewitt was. I wore my best poodle skirt and was dismayed to find that the press box was unfinished. Above my head I could see a platform without walls, but containing two chairs. I sighed, then hiked up my skirts over the stiff crinoline and climbed a crude ladder leading to a platform. This was the press box. We picked up enough from the dialogue below us and from what came on the scoreboard to make a passable attempt at covering the game, while he cheerfully told me about the time he worked as high school sports correspondent for the daily paper without ever having a free moment to see any of the games. I remember chatting calmly and gripping the stool tightly, praying I wouldn't tip over the edge into the crowd below.

Not long after, we were standing in a movie line-up early on in our dating when he said casually, "I'm looking forward to the day when I am married."

I had never in my life heard of a man even thinking that and I had no idea how to respond. It wasn't personal then—he didn't necessarily mean me. He just wanted to be married.

Our relationship warmed up and graduated to "lights off," a signal familiar to all responsible families with daughters who were dating in the 1940's. A farewell left-handed wave to parents meant the porch light should be left on and the wildly waved right hand meant go ahead and blow the fuses. We hadn't dated long before the lights were automatically turned off but if they forgot and left them on, Hal was unfazed

He was always strapped for cash so we pooled our meager funds for dates and depended on public transportation to get us where we wanted to go, leaving us with lots of time to get to know one another. On the first and last time in his life when he had cash surplus of seventy-five dollars he bought a decrepit green Studebaker named Maggie, who was old and crotchety and chronically parched for gas and oil. One memorable day she ran out of brake fluid and we coasted safely and miraculously through a red light at the busiest intersection in town. If I caught my children doing that they would be grounded for ten years.

I spent more and more time with that skinny guy with the floppy hair. I don't remember a moment when I thought I was madly in love. I just couldn't imagine not being able to see him every day.

He proposed in a park across from English Bay, after sunset. We walked for a while under the trees and stopped to spread down the car rug. It was so dark we hadn't realized we were stationed directly across a pathway, and if we hadn't been so intent on an agenda that was going to affect the rest of our lives, we might also have noticed the almost constant flow of couples picking their way carefully around us. I still don't think it was necessary for that man to mutter, "For god sake, say yes and get off the trail." He did speed us up, though, and I said yes and we got off the trail.

We made vague plans to marry after he finished university .We did have a life plan of a sort; after getting married we would save enough money to get us to England where he'd begin a distinguished newspaper career on Fleet Street, and during the brief time it would take for this to happen I would continue working before starting a family. London seemed a good place to raise children. We had the notion that the English popped the little mites into boarding school immediately after nanny got them potty trained and they were returned years later with all the rough corners smoothed off.

One day, in the blink of an eye, our vague plans became a firm wedding date.

It happened when Hal's mom Amy offered us, for a nominal rent, the two top-floor rooms in her three-bedroom bungalow, with space for a hot plate and electric kettle, a shared bathroom and a shelf in the downstairs fridge.

We thought that was a lovely idea and immediately set the wedding date for Sept.7 of the next year.

Amy was noted for being a tad controlling, in fact she would have given Mussolini stiff competition. Somehow in the flush of getting wedding plans started, we didn't consider this personality flaw a hindrance.

One night when we were at her place for dinner, she marched us upstairs to the vacant rooms, and told us exactly where the furniture would be placed, beginning with the bed. That would be directly over her bedroom.

Way off at the opposite end of the city, and for a monthly rent of $45, we found a basement suite in a tiny bungalow occupied by a fertile couple with eight children. "How can they possible keep on producing children when they haven't any place to put them," we smugly asked one another.

God got us for that. The place offered an enormous living room with adjoining bedroom and kitchen, and when it was necessary to use the bathroom, a phone booth- sized room with no tub but a shower that never quite shut off, the route was through the basement door past the coal furnace. I never got over the fear that some nameless behemoth would grab me on the way, and I took to rushing inside and slamming the door, an exercise that forced the landlord to conclude that either I had a serious bladder problem or we fought a lot. .

Before the wedding we painted the ugly brown Masonite walls a cheerful chartreuse shade and one end wall a splash of Chinese red. There was a window in that room, high up on one wall. It didn't give any light but it was nice to know it was there.

My mother joyfully devoted the next part of her life to the phone, committing large sums of money to flowers and petit fours and declaring that absolutely no one has a chocolate wedding cake so put that out of your mind young lady and my father said it would be worth his while to give us the money and a ladder and my mother cried and said how can you be such so callous with your only daughter and hardly anyone asked our advice, although we did get to choose our sterling silver flatware pattern, just the thing for a couple who couldn't even afford to have a telephone installed.

Mum, who could have ended World War Two faster if she'd been in charge, worried about my cooking repertoire, Belgian meat balls and tinned finnan haddie on toast, so I bought a cook book and began to study it in earnest.

It was Mum's fault, really; she'd breeze into the house from bridge and tear through the kitchen organizing a meal, shooing us out of the way until it was time to set the table or do the dishes. Hal was a decent cook, having earned his university fees one summer working as a cook on a commercial fishing boat, but it never occurred to us that he should take on this task. Today's system of sharing the chores makes better sense and back then no one could beat my husband at making French toast. You can be sure no one was trying.

Our families got together for strategy plans; weddings don't just happen, they're calculated events. We were called to the summit occasionally about the color of the flowers or the length of the veil and to be truthful, this did not hold the full attention of my beloved, who was by this time juggling a night shift reporting job at the Vancouver sun while finishing his last year of classes. He could look reasonably attentive while the discussion waged on over calla lilies versus sweetheart roses but he was using the time to rough out his assignments in his head

I envied his capacity to tune out, and he had it perfected by the time we were enduring heavy monologues with adolescents on whether or not waist- length hair was acceptable for boys, even if it was going to be washed every three hours and that meant the drains would be clogged for the next week.

On the eve of our wedding he stopped off at the apartment to leave some clothes before heading off to his bachelor party, and ended up absent - mindedly putting the final touches of paint to the last wall, which we'd abandoned for lack of time. His work was evident the next day when I slipped his wedding ring over a chartreuse, puckered finger.

1952 U.S, explodes first hydrogen bomb in pacific.

1953. Eliz 11 crowned. Playboy mag first published, not allowed in Canada

1954. Lawrence plaza, one of first Canadian malls, opens.

We had a brief honeymoon, brief because you can only go so far on a little over a hundred dollars, particularly when one of us spent sixty dollars of it at the last minute renting a car, which precipitated a heated discussion. That was swiftly settled by my mother's vehement,

"I don't care if you never speak again for the rest of your lives; you're going to that church and you're going to get married and that's final."

The general wedding style in our era was to stick to the rigid service including the use of the word, "obey", then retreat to the family home or rented hall to hold the festivities. We opted for a rented Victorian mansion. Sit-down dinners were becoming the vogue but we had finger sandwiches and the ever-present petit fours and tea, lots of tea.

The wine was reserved for the toasts.

It was quiet, formal and mercifully brief.

We drove to our honeymoon destination, Harrison Hot Springs, a nearby resort town surrounded by breathtaking mountains and pine trees and we stayed in a cabin just big enough to hold a miniature kitchen and a double bed. The next morning when I was making the bed and tried to push it against the wall was the moment I painfully discovered the bed was bolted to the floor. I still muse about why they did that.

We quickly ran out of money and landed on the doorstep of good friends in nearby Chilliwack. They gave us their bedroom while they camped out in the living room with their baby and made us meals and it was a lovely honeymoon.

That's quite a change, decompressing between engagement, marriage and finally, real life. It's like breaking in a pair of new shoes designed to last a lifetime; you begin gently and wiggle about making adjustments until shoe and foot are a perfect fit.

Eventually they get a bit scruffy, a little loose and at times you might get tired of them, but if they're well-made, they prevail.

Hal discovered a new craze, a horsemeat store nearby, and I cooked him steaks, chops and even liver, always using tongs to avoid contact. I wasn't girl-horse crazy but they had such nice eyes so I stuck to scrambled eggs.

After I'd mastered basics like meat loaf and pot roast and we had enough chairs, we began inviting people for dinner on Sunday evenings, arranging the menu to fit the silver meat platter and covered silver vegetable dishes. It was tacitly agreed that horsemeat would not be on the menu.

One flaw in our perfect little apartment was the regular- as- clockwork Sunday activities of the eight children upstairs. Those children lived exemplary lives from Monday to Saturday; in fact, we used to wonder if we had dreamed their existence. The one exception was on Sundays; oh, we knew where they were on Sundays.

This was the day that we could sleep in until dark if we wanted to, or that's what we thought. Instead, at the first faint ray of dawn we were snapped awake to the beating of seven million wooden spoons on the door located squarely over our bed. Nothing kept those children from their favorite Sunday pastime and our only comfort was the knowledge that they would be dragged off to mass for one glorious hour.

Someday, we solemnly promised one another, we would have children who spoke only in whispers and knitted for recreation.

It occurred to me years later that their devout and bossy grandmother who lived next door might have considered it unseemly for us to remain indoors when the church bells were ringing. She probably egged on those children.

Three months after our wedding I was pregnant and blissful with joy while Hal managed to hide his panic, wondering how we would cope on one small salary and no health insurance. Each morning I optimistically poached a breakfast egg, quickly lost it and trudged off to catch the streetcar for the one-hour ride to work, my hormones protecting me from serious worry.

Fleet Street was slowly nudged into the background as we coped with small exigencies of our new life. A more pressing notion was that life would be less expensive if we saved for a refrigerator and scrapped the second- hand wooden icebox we kept in an unlit storage area. The problem wasn't just hauling the fifty pound block of ice from the ice house many blocks away without a car, but once we got it home one of us had to shine the flashlight into the icebox while the other, the one who wasn't pregnant, eased it into place around the margarine and milk. This was usually the time that the stench invading our nostrils reminded us we'd forgotten about the fresh crab we bought two weeks before.

In late November we tried out the heat registers for the first time and found they were all card- carrying virgins. The spiteful coal furnace flatly refused to send warmth our way, and instead spewed its bounty to the sweltering closely packed family upstairs, forcing them to open doors and windows to keep breathing while we huddled below in layers of sweaters.

This was a mixed blessing of sorts because it gave us the incentive to move. Our options were slim; we could build a bomb shelter, which was gaining some attention in those days, but we settled for a move closer to the city center, even though the rents were higher. Admittedly this was not particularly logical, now that we would soon be reduced to one salary. We would look for a place near a park to wheel the English pram I was borrowing from my sister-in law who was between babies at the time. And there had to be windows. We would seriously consider outdoor plumbing before we would do without windows ever again and that took care of any bomb shelter thoughts.

For seventy-five dollars a month rent we found a lovely little one- bedroom apartment in a converted mansion in the South Granville area, complete with fridge and stove.

On moving day we were dismayed to find that the odds and ends we had collected to furnish Stalactite Heaven were not going to fit.

The enchantment of hand painted Delft tiles surrounding the working fireplace in the new living room distracted us from studying the actual size of the room. I've seen larger sentry huts, or so I thought. We advertised the extra oak table we had planned to cut down into a coffee table and a few other odds and ends that wouldn't fit and netted enough to buy a tiny wardrobe-dresser, which squeezed into one of the two hall cubicles, and a Bathinette that just fitted beside the bedroom closet door. Hal's brother Art made the crib and it fitted in beside our bed with a couple of inches to spare.

I quit my job in my eighth month and we were managing despite the higher rent. Maternity benefits were available by this time but we reckoned that the baby was our responsibility and not that of the government, so I didn't apply.

I felt like a duck, a fat duck and distracted myself by perching on a sturdy crate and painting baby-like fairies and animals on the crib and baby dresser.

My doctor had been around long enough to deliver me twenty-odd years ago and judging by reports through the family grapevine, his methods hadn't changed in the intervening years. Luckily, just before my due date he retired and left me in the hands of much younger Obstetrician.

My labor started around 6:30 on a Saturday morning, just after Hal had left for work. I lay on my side in bed, watching Monsieur le Pussy Cat's paws darting in and out beneath the crack under the bedroom door.

I got up and wandered down the hall to the kitchen to make a peanut butter sandwich and a cup of tea and found the cramps interesting.

"Why do women make such a fuss about little twinges like this? " I asked the cat.

I called my sister-in- law, Dodie, who was excited and said my brother Bob would drive me to the hospital when it was time.

"Uh, Dodie, we live only three blocks from the hospital. I'm sure we could walk."

Dodie wouldn't hear of it and phoned Bob at work, many miles away, to tell him to stay close to the phone.

I called Hal and told him to stay where he was and said I'd call if the twinges were closer together than the present eight- or- so minutes.

Dodie called for regular updates and then each time called Bob, who had to rush from one end of the warehouse to the phone to find out that nothing had changed.

In the early afternoon, the spacing was a more regular four minutes but those were no longer twinges and I stopped thinking about peanut butter sandwiches.

When Hal got home at three thirty, I was making a serious attempt to break the fireplace mantel in two.

"Call Dodie, "I gasped.

Bob made amazing time and reached our place quickly for the one- minute drive to the hospital.

Despite our haste to reach the hospital, Mark took his time.

He was born ten hours later, just after one o'clock on Sunday morning. Although the contractions ran together, my labor hadn't progressed and I was given a complete anesthetic for the forceps delivery and didn't see my baby for several hours.

When the nurse brought him in the next morning I couldn't believe I was a mother. There was this squirming seven pound one ounce little stranger who had found room inside me for all that time. He had enormous owl eyes and the nurses spotted signs of red hair resembling a halo on his seemingly baldhead. He looked perfectly content to be on the outside at last and I fell instantly and permanently in love.

Mark was a gentle little boy, quiet and noticing everything. He would look after his siblings with care and took his self-designated leadership responsibilities seriously. In a more peaceful world he would have made a fine monk.

I can't remember why but I chose not to breastfeed. No one in the hospital ever made me feel guilty about my choice, although most mothers did breastfeed. My mother-in law considered it her duty to comment that if she hadn't breastfed she wouldn't have felt like a real mother and I refrained from snapping back, "Motherhood does not depend on the mammary glands."

That was the only negative moment.

We had after all, the pressure cooker. I mixed the Dextra Maltose and water, bottled it, stuck the nipples inside the cap-covered bottle and cooked the whole thing for, I think, about seven minutes. Yes, there were times when I forgot I had used the last bottle and had to mix up a new batch at three in the morning.

Parenthood begins deceptively. At first there are flowers and gifts of bootees and tiny overalls and the beginning of an enormous supply of clip- on bow ties. Then you're home alone with that small person and you make a discovery that had previously eluded you - parents don't know what they're doing.

Think what we might have done with that information when we still lived at home with our parents.

When the baby cried we didn't know why and once the safety pins were checked and he was fed and dry, what was left? After all, you can't just say, "Hey, why are you crying?" They won't tell you. And if they spit their dinner back at you, are they allergic? Or overfed? Or bored? Who knows?

Dr. Spock helped us deal with most problems that could possibly involve a child. All we had to do was have a thermometer ready and check the index. We weren't always any surer about why the baby cried or whether he was overfed or underfed, but we learned that he wouldn't break and love can get you through. The baby did his part, developing precisely according to the standards set out in the book and when the book said he would get his first tooth at six months he produced it on the actual date, although we were positive he smiled at least two weeks early.

My mother told me how much easier life was now with jars of baby food available at the stores. In her day the baby's food was cooked, then mashed and scraped through the sieve. Come to think of it, she always had a nursemaid to help her.

Our only extravagance was the pediatrician who ordered that I use only fresh oranges for the daily juice. You squeeze it, and then run it through a fine sieve three times, poking it with a spoon to get the liquid through and into the bottle. Baby had to have only the yolk of a fresh egg, so I saved up the whites and made angel food cakes regularly. You could count on it as refreshments when visiting other new parents. Mark was put on homogenized milk when he went the off formula and he gained so much weight I skimmed the cream off the top of the milk bottle for Hal's coffee and baby got the less fattening remainder.

We bought a miniature washing machine with a tiny wringer and I learned to do the diapers by attaching the hose to the tub faucet and doing the final rinse in the tub.

Yes, one day the hose slipped off and water ran from the bathroom down to the living room, leaking through to the downstairs as well. Mercifully the apartment below was vacant at the time.

After mopping up I had used all the dry sheets and saved one towel for the baby's diaper while everything hung on a rack to dry in front of the oven. There was a clothesline in the back yard but this was Vancouver so it was raining outside as well as on that day.

The pram was not only enormous it was the closest we ever got to Britain and it did double duty as a grocery carrier as well as a baby holder. We propped the baby sideways at one end, leaving room to stow aboard a week's supply of strained bananas and string beans and hamburger everywhere else and when nice ladies stopped to admire the baby, chances are they'd to find themselves coochee- cooing a bag of apples with the baby hidden away at the back.

Our new- home euphoria lasted until the baby was learning to crawl and there wasn't anywhere for him to go; there was just enough floor space in the bedroom to sidle from space between the bed and crib around to the closet; the hall was full of baby dresser, coats, rubber boots, and a door that had to be opened to let people in and out.

The kitchen was big enough for one cook and one person to dry the dishes. Off the kitchen was a tarred floor balcony big enough to dry the diapers and put the baby out in his basket to get ultra violet rays but too rough for crawling. That left the living room for the baby to try his new skill. But he was cut off by the high chair beside the rocking chair where the Monsieur le Pussy Cat was sleeping on the unfolded diapers. The typewriter sat on the oak table most of the time and underneath we kept the boxes of unused typing paper and envelopes. After a while Mark developed the knack of gathering his feet behind him and taking a wild rabbit-like leap over any obstruction smaller than an easy chair.

Hal's mother wanted to move into an apartment and offered to sell us her one-and-a-half storey bungalow with no down payment and we figured we could handle the monthly payments if we rented out the two upstairs rooms to some quiet person and the basement room with bathroom to university student. After all, we got this far without any money so we'd manage somehow.

We now had a house that was technically ours, complete with a quiet schoolteacher renting the second floor and shared with us the bathroom and a shelf in the fridge my mother-in law left behind, and a cheerful but far from studious university student occupying the basement room.

I recall that the fridge, placed beside the sink, gave off an electric shock any time I reached from the sink tap to the door handle.

It was hard for us to believe that we had a house and a baby when those two things seemed so far out of our grasp. We were thrilled with our new existence but were still short of space with the tiny bedroom, a small living room, a kitchen with adjoining miniature dinette and shared bathroom. At night when we were ready for bed, we set up a borrowed folding crib in the living room and moved Mark out there. The bath table fitted in beside the bedroom door and we kept the pram on the front porch.

The road to upward mobility was temporarily detoured by the big, mean- tempered coal furnace that I was obliged to feed during the day. I'll grant you it at least knew how to produce heat, which was an asset after our experience with the landlord's furnace. Our over-sized slag heap wasn't willing to wait even five minutes for a new feeding and if I didn't come running fast enough it heaved a deep sigh and faded away, forcing me to start from scratch with paper and kindling and little bits of coal until the mix was just right. I was uncomfortably aware of my role of landlady and swore never to let the tenants freeze while under my roof. Today I still get giggly with joy when a touch of a button starts the furnace purring.

The baby graduated to a stroller and we took long walks in the afternoons. I took my teaching responsibilities seriously, pointing out everything that moved.

"See, sweetheart, there is a robin on that branch; oh and look, see the big truck passing by."

The baby steadfastly refused to look anywhere but at the cracks on the sidewalk. He must have memorized every crack and probably knew the first names of every worm we encountered after rain showers. His face had all the animation of a parsnip, but he looked forward to those walks. I could tell because he'd pull his coat out of the little wardrobe and tug on my skirt until I got his message. I think he used up all his animation just getting his message across.

He did finally develop a spirited look when he discovered fedoras, which practically every man wore in those days. He chuckled when his grandfather or father let him wear the precious hat and he stroked the small feather invariable tucked in the band.

His new passion got out of control the day I took him downtown to the Pediatrician for a check-up. At the bus stop, I hauled him out of the heavy metal stroller and folded it shut, clamped the bus ticket between my teeth, twisted the diaper bag around the back of my neck and got on the bus. Then I relaxed while the baby sat quietly on my lap and marveled at being taller than the passing cars. The trip back home coincided with rush hour and three busses went past before one stopped to let on a weary mother, enthusiastic baby, stroller and diaper bag. There wasn't an empty seat and we were wedged upright half- way down the aisle. It took all my strength to keep a grip on the stroller and shield the baby from being crushed. I couldn't move my arms but Mark could. He took a long, studied survey of his surroundings, smiled a heavenly smile and breathed, "Hat." Then he swiftly scrambled the hats of four men packed in around us, saving the one with the blue feather for his own head. Four outraged men glared at me and the best I could do was murmur, "He loves hats."

The back yard was fenced, with lots of room for the baby and Monsieur Le Pussy Cat to play and there were masses of raspberry bushes and two enormous cherry trees. This was before freezers existed and fruit was preserved in glass jars and stacked neatly on shelves in the basement. Our mothers came over on weekends and picked pails and pails of the gorgeous succulent cherries and "put them up" in a preserving kettle full of boiling water. Cherries were the only fruit that didn't take kindly to this process and while they simmered they turned into pale little pebbles and lost their flavor. We had enough jars to last for twenty years and guiltily hid them in the coal room for the next family to find after we moved on. We did notice though, that our mothers always firmly refused to take any jars home with them, and we suspected it wasn't completely an unselfish act on their part.

One morning I put the baby out to play on the sheltered porch, closed the door and some hidden force prevented me from walking past the fireplace wall, all because of that jog to the left which didn't serve any practical purpose. It didn't look right with a chair tucked in there, and the standard lamp looked fine but it was the only reading lamp we had and it was needed by the chesterfield, and it finally became a handy catchall corner for teddy bears and wooden blocks and old magazines. That very second I knew I couldn't live with that jog another minute. We had talked about building a desk in that alcove and installing a new mantle to unify the design, but it was one of those vague things, intended for when we could afford it.

Downstairs in the basement, I found the black metal rod I'd often used to smack shut the furnace door. Later I found out it was called a wrecking bar but once it was in my hand and before I could think it through we no longer had a complete mantle. We had half a mantle and the remainder took a forty-five degree turn toward the ceiling. I nervously reminded myself that Hal's cousin was an architecture student and had offered his guidance when needed, during a weak moment when he was losing at our penny ante poker game, and besides, we simply couldn't live with that jog any longer.

Hal took it very well. He walked in the house, kissed us both and wandered right past the bent mantle, giving it only foggy something-seems-out-of-place glance. He finally noticed it the next morning when he was searching for his cuff link that he thought he left there. He had, and I'd caught it before it rolled into the fireplace. He stared at the whole wall for a few minutes, picked up the wrecking bar and stared thoughtfully at me, shook his head and said,

"I'll call my cousin. Maybe we can get started this weekend. "

We painted the built- in desk a soft eggshell blue and the new mantle gave the room a stylish appearance. For our anniversary my parents donated a large over-the- mantle mirror and we recklessly ordered a cord of wood for the fireplace. Once the construction was well underway, and with just a little subtle subliminal suggestion, the two men decided they might as well do something about the small high window overlooking the house next door. They replaced the panes with glass brick and framed it in a shadow box effect, resulting in soft light filtering into the room.

Those were such joyful days. We were in our own house and we had the most incredible baby in the world. I remember sweeping the kitchen floor one morning and feeling such a rush of pure happiness. This is what it's like, I thought. He'll come in the door in a few hours and our baby is playing in our own back yard; life is perfect.

And it was.
Chapter 3:

ANOTHER BABY AND A BIG MOVE

1954

The U.S.Supreme court rules that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. Sabine/Salk—polio vaccine introduced.

Canada's first subway line completed in Toronto.

Marilyn Bell swims Lake Ontario.

McCarthy hearings underway

1955. Davey Crocket fad.

Drive in movies were wildly popular

Bomb shelters were gaining popularity by mid-50's.

Mid 50's marked beginning of challenge to adult authority, change of work ethic

*******

I felt apologetic about having only one child, though goodness knows one takes up the larger part of a day. Mark looked so tiny playing in the back yard with only Monsieur le Pussy Cat for company that I was convinced he needed a companion. Hal thought that the cat should be enough but in a weak moment, cleaning up after a joyful first birthday party in the back yard when the guest of honor was allowed to poke his fingers into the cake and lick them afterwards, he said oh what the heck or something like that and soon I was pregnant again.

THE PILL was introduced the year Mark was born but I never considered taking it. I naively thought it was meant for the unmarried women who were becoming increasingly vocal about their sexual needs that until then men had been claiming for their own.

Besides, people seemed to be having larger families and two was just a simple beginning. That's what I thought.

We finally got around to discussing how many children constituted a complete family when I had reached the stage when sleep was possible only by tucking the ballast in the small of Hal's back. I was packing several mystery novels and my trousseau nighties in the suitcase along with the tiny hand-made hooded sweater Mark had worn home from the hospital. Hal was searching through the drawers his clothes shared with size two tee shirts, trying to find the mate to his navy blue sock.

He said, "Well, we're certainly short of space and goodness knows where the new baby will go but at least this is the last one and we can start saving for that move to England."

I was mulling over the merits of packing nail polish in case my utility- style nails grew during the enforced idleness when his words seeped through.

"You can't be serious about having only two measly children," I gasped, and he countered with,

"That's a measly two children, and of course I'm serious."

He stared dubiously at a grey sock that wouldn't, even in a dim light pretend to be related to the blue one.

"Besides, I can't believe anyone would want to fill a house with children where there's only one bedroom and a shared bath and didn't you learn anything from our first landlord with all those kids and no place to put them?"

Since I'm telling the story and we were happily married, let me just say that what followed was an exhaustive debate and when it finally ran down, we learned this about one another:

a) He thought two children of any gender were a family.

(b) I thought three boys and a girl were a family.

(c) And while we're at it, it's his job to take out the garbage.

We finally ran out of words and breath and struck an amiable compromise; we would have three boys and a girl and we would move to Toronto. By no stretch of the imagination is Fleet Street in London the same as King Street in Toronto. I've never ever seen anyone on King Street wear a bowler hat, for instance. He would switch his career to writing for magazines as soon as someone would hire him, and later on we would buy a garbage disposal.

But first there was a baby to be born.

We still called them labor pains in those days. Go ahead and call them contractions if you think it will hurt less. I was a little more experienced so that when labor began in the early afternoon I arranged to go to the evening movies with a friend, who had the dubious pleasure of keeping track of the contractions. Back home, it was around midnight when I attempted the break-the-mantle-in-two trick, I was willing to admit that it was time to head for the hospital.

Our generous upstairs tenant offered us her car for transport to the hospital and Hal had been following me around clutching the car keys, a horrified look on his face. I shouldn't have shown him the part of "Canadian Mother and child manual, where it said, "If an arm or a leg appears first, go for help."

We dropped Mark off at his grandparents' and I spent the rest of the drive clinging to the door handle, promising myself that no one could make me get out of that car if I didn't want to.

All hospitals had the same drill, the famous shave and enema. Try holding still for that when your contractions are one minute apart

Grace Hospital was a Salvation Army Hospital with a no-nonsense approach. You place the laboring mother on a hard gurney until she proves herself worthy of softer bed. I apparently didn't make the cut because labor wasn't progressing on that hard gurney and I repeatedly threw up.

By that I had been in various stages of labour for about sixteen or so hours when they finally wheeled me into the delivery room and gave me a complete anesthetic. No one explained why I didn't deliver the usual way but I eventually learned that my babies tended to arrive face down instead of face up and that might account for it. In those days I wouldn't have known what question to ask and no one ever explained anything.

At eight o'clock in the morning Hal pried himself off his makeshift bed of three chairs to inspect our brand new son and we agreed we had again produced a superb specimen. Scott weighed seven pounds four ounces, his green eyes were fringed with double lashes and he had probably already attracted the attention of the girl babies in nearby cots. I have no doubt he found a way to criticize the doctor's delivery methods and hasn't closed his mouth since. He was gorgeous.

Babies spend a certain amount of time sleeping and you can't be certain what sort of personalities they're harboring. In his case, Scott didn't seem to think that sleep was important and we quickly learned he was born smack in the middle of his adolescence. As soon as he could muster a few words, and that seemed to take only fifteen minutes, he made demands exceeding his capabilities, insisting that he be allowed to ride the bus to town alone while he was still in diapers, and arguing that he should be allowed to stay up until midnight like all the other three - year olds he knew. He always seemed to be in a rush to be at any other stage than the one he was going through.

By the time he actually reached his chronological adolescence you would have thought there wasn't anything left for us to fight about, but this didn't stop him from giving it his best shot. It does make one nostalgic about England and nannies.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Back at the hospital, the new father had to hurriedly return the car, book off work for the day, find some un-rumpled clothes and rush to a job interview. When he returned to the hospital in the evening he looked pale and disoriented but was pretty sure that he had accepted a job moving us to Toronto in a few weeks' time. His new salary of sixty six hundred dollars a year seemed enormous and we were certain, incorrectly as it turned out, that we could now afford to send out his shirts to the laundry.

The baby developed jaundice because of an ABO blood incompatibility and when we brought him home and tucked him into his bassinet he blended perfectly with the yellow lining. We changed him into blue nighties, to act as a marker. You can see we were becoming cool parents, not easily panicked.

His bassinet took up the only available space left, directly in front of the closet door, not that it mattered. Rule number one of parenthood is that any new clothing entering the house is size 2X or less and is stamped with green rabbits or toothy squirrels, leaving the parents coping with the clothes they discarded before the wedding, wisely retrieved by their mothers who knew better.

Fortunately men's' suit lapels didn't shrink or expand noticeably from year to year and there was only one tie width. Either that or we were too preoccupied to notice. My brown Harris Tweed coat wasn't going to wear out in a million years and I made Hal promise not to bury me in it.

We moved Mark's crib into the short narrow hallway leading to the bathroom, his crib flush against the doors to the linen cabinet.

When it was necessary to get clean sheets and towels out of the linen closet, I had to push the crib from the bedroom door to the bathroom door, get what I needed and roll back the crib.

Mark took his time learning to walk and when he did, he lurched about in a strange crab- like style, scuttling sideways to maneuver past the moving cartons and the cat took to sleeping on top of the refrigerator.

The baby was two weeks old when the moment I had dreaded had come. Hal arrived home from work looking happily expectant; he was about to do something wonderful and I knew what it was.

"I've got a surprise for you; my aunt is coming over at seven to baby sit and I'm taking you to the movies. I just realized today that we haven't been out alone together since Scott was born and you must be ready to claw the walls."

What I really wanted to do was become a human barrier over the bassinet and defy anyone to tear me from my baby; it just doesn't get any easier. The first time this happened, we left Mark with his grandparents and a visiting uncle and I almost stopped breathing with the wild desire to get back to my child. The movie was a comedy and I had to be ready to laugh when the audience laughed and later, see how fast I could choke down the mandatory after movie milkshake to get the evening over with.

Hal flew east to begin his job and find us a house to rent and I juggled two babies, warned the downstairs student and the upstairs schoolteacher that the house was up for sale and tried packing between formula mixing and diaper washing. The wringer washer we inherited with the house hated for me to be idle and amused itself by snatching up a diaper and wrapping it round and round while I nervously tried to get hold of a corner; then the rollers suddenly snapped open, and once my heart beat returned to normal, I'd spend the next half hour unwinding the garment.

Scottie was six weeks old when I tottered on the plane with a baby under each arm and a bag full of baby formula, toys, changes of clothing and optimistically, a mystery novel. The baby had a cold and Mark was violently airsick and we had to put down at the Calgary airport for a few hours because of a lightning storm. I couldn't get a hotel room because of the annual Stampede and just don't ever talk to me about cowboys.
Chapter 4:

HURRICANE HAZEL

1954

Macarthy witch hunts in full force—with the potential to ruin the life of anyone considered to be a communist or sympathizer. No proof required

The first Canadian subway opens in Toronto.

Korean War ends on July 27, 1954.

Best film—Caine Mutiny.

***********

We rented a house from playwright Ted Allen, who was moving his family to London. It seemed fitting that we should have his house, probably the closest contact we'd ever have to the writing profession in England.

His mother occupied the basement suite and sometimes her husband visited. They became surrogate grandparents, each one gracefully showing a preference for one child. When Mrs. Herman had one or two of her friends over for tea in the afternoons, Mark helped eat the cookies and responded to a little Hebrew.

We mourned the absence of the familiar stucco and cedar houses but slowly accustomed ourselves to mile after mile of brick houses, most of them joined together at the hip. The few people we met spoke with feeling about their need for privacy in their homes and yet in the evenings you'd see them settled on folding aluminum chairs on their tiny front porches, silently staring at the porches across the street.

Another difference was the alleys, or lack of them. Every Vancouver block had back alleys, where the fish man sold the fish from his truck, as did the Chinese greengrocer and the garbage men took away the garbage and the cars were parked out of sight in the garages. The absence of a back alley meant the garbage had to be picked up at the front curb and there were no more greengrocers and fish men.

We hadn't finished settling in when we saw this garbage pickup phenomenon for the first time. One morning we ran to the front window to identify the commotion, in time to watch our neighbors camouflaged in hair curlers, bathrobes, anything handy hurriedly carrying out soggy bags at arms- length and dropping them on the boulevard. Some people had sturdy cans with their house numbers painted on the side, so the garbage men would know who owned them after the lids rolled under the wheels of the truck.

After the pickup, the task was reversed and the cans and squashed lids were returned to the back yard. Sometimes that meant marching them through the entire house, from front door to back, because houses joined together didn't always have access around to the back.

Our amusement disappeared fast when we realized we were now members of the morning brigade and Hal had to chase the truck up the street with our bags.

We learned our lesson; either get everything out fast or it's ours until the next pickup, a week later.

Laurel hedges wouldn't grow in this climate, leaving to us rather monotonous choices- privet, a spiky, expensive and slow-growing shrub, or Chinese Elm, which was cheaper but grew tall and fast and was the devil to keep clipped.

Our bungalow was red brick with white trim and green shutters, exactly like every other house as far as the eye could see. The shingles were uniformly gray and the hedges were privet and precisely two-feet tall. Every flowerbed sported pink and white petunias and each television antennas leaned from the roof top at the same angle.

We learned never to leave the house without first tying a red bandana to the front door handle, otherwise we'd end up driving backwards down the street muttering, "I think we just passed 175, so we're getting closer."

We set up the cribs and toys in separate bedrooms and there was a swing in the fenced-in back yard. Mark's room and Hal's study were on the finished lower level, technically the basement. Scottie was tucked into the room with the green plaid wallpaper, next to our bedroom. We didn't have to move anybody anywhere at night before we went to bed. We all had our own space. We had space and lots of time and we didn't know a soul. In short, we were homesick.

All the young mothers in the neighborhood disappeared off to work each morning while the Bubbies did the baby tending.

Scottie got plump and beautiful and saved up his crying for late at night when I walked him round and round the small house, singing the only children's' song that I could remember at that hour, "I'm a little teapot short and stout". He didn't seem to mind the repetition a bit and besides, he wasn't such terrific company at three in the morning.

If we were planning to move out east today we'd do it in the fall, when the countryside is unbelievably stunning. The weather is just right and the leaves are turning. Instead we arrived in June, just in time for our first eastern summer.

Air conditioners would not be in the average home for years yet and we relied on small electric fans that wafted the hot air lazily in circles. We kept fresh ice water in the fridge and cornstarch on hand for the babies' prickly heat. We slept on top of the sheets and carefully avoided touching one another.

Perspiration didn't describe what was dripping from our bodies—it was sweat. My aunt used to say, "Horses sweat—people perspire." Well, she lived in a cooler climate.

We had been used to tub baths but now we took delicious tepid showers and learned to slide away from the thin plastic shower curtain that wrapped itself like a clammy shroud around our bodies.

Mammoth shopping plazas were new to us and Lawrence Plaza, the very first, was within walking distance. That was my chief entertainment when it wasn't too hot, the babies were packed into the pram and we set off in search of shop windows to explore and to watch the activities of the people who lived around us, but seemed so removed.

The babies preferred visiting the nearest of the plentiful construction sites, to watch enormous power shovels dig out an ever widening excavation. Now Mark's vocabulary made perfect sense once you caught on to the rhythm; each word ended in "ow", rhyming with "wow." We were called "Mow" and "Dow" and when he fastened his eyes on the first steam shovel, a lifelong admiration began and he begged to visit the "sh-ow" not to be confused with his second favorite, a grader, called' "gow".

I put him out in the fenced back yard one morning while I bathed the baby before settling him into his pram on the front porch. The meter reader had arrived while I was busy indoors and he left the back gate open so by the time I went to check on Mark, he had disappeared.

I left the baby with Mrs. Heinz, who screamed hysterically when I told her what had happened; I was used to her by now and knew this was equivalent to my grandmother briskly setting down her tea cup and announcing,

"Well, we'd best start searching."

I reasoned that Mark would be looking for his beloved "sh-ow" and drove to the construction site. The workmen had stopped for lunch and no one had seen my child. I drove in wider and wider circles, with no sign of my baby boy.

I returned home shaking with fear, and called the police. A bored but calm voice replied, "You want to report a missing child, ma'am. What does he look like?"

"We'll he's two years old and he has a sprinkling of freckles on his little nose and big blue eyes and he's wearing gray corduroy pants and a white tee shirt and a little blue blazer piped with yellow cording and blue sneakers and white socks with a red and blue line at the top and---".

"Lady," broke in the by now amused voice, "Does the kid have red hair?"

"Red hair—yes, of course-- didn't I mention that?"

Mark had taken many wrong turns and ended up on Bathurst Street, notoriously busy and noisy. He was about a mile away from home when a kind family spotted him and took him in while they called the police.

We thought we were doing all the right things and we were and still we knew now our babies would never be completely safe, no matter how vigilant we were.

The weather had abruptly changed and I was getting a painful lesson in the meaning of cabin fever that week in October. It was never going to stop raining and the house wasn't big enough to contain a restless two year old and a grown woman who suddenly wanted her mother.

Hal was unnecessarily cheerful as he completed packing for an overnight business trip to nearby Kitchener, a city about fifty miles to the west. The gloomy weather seemed more long lasting than a typical Vancouver rainy season, and I glumly wondered who the liar was who told us that Toronto rains only last a matter of minutes before the sun came out again.

The croupy baby had kept us up most of the previous night. We set up the electric kettle on a chair by the bed and boiled water to make steam, with a plastic tent draped from the headboard over our bed and the kettle, and we took turns holding him and singing to him while he barked that frightening cough. By morning he seemed better and was sleeping quietly by the time his father drove off to his meeting.

In midafternoon I left the children with Mrs. Herman in exchange for her grocery list, and slogged to the plaza several blocks away to pick up her things as well as baby aspirin and cough medicine and some escapist reading matter.

By the time I'd walked half the distance my Burberry was soaked right through and all around me umbrellas capsized under the weight of the wind and rain. The rain slashed down so heavily that I couldn't make out the store signs across the street.

It was a relief to return to a warm, dry house even though the baby was feverish and fretful and Mark was starting to sniffle. It promised to be a long evening. I wished I knew someone to call just to say, "What's new?" but there was lots to do keeping the baby warm and soothed and finally settling Mark on the chesterfield wrapped in a quilt and listening to his records.

I'll never forget the gut wrenching feeling when I glanced out the window around four o'clock. A river of brown, agitated water with white caps raced past the window, where the front lawn and road should have been. How could this be happening in a residential area?

Mrs. Herman wheezed her way upstairs.

"Oy, my god, we're ruined, water is everywhere! We're going to drown."

Before I could think of something comforting like, "No, we can't, it's impossible to drown in the suburbs," she ran to the telephone and sobbed her fears to the telephone operator who, up to that moment, though she already had all the trouble she would ever need.

Water was seeping into the basement apartment and I persuaded Mrs. Herman to call her son who lived a few blocks away, to take her away to his house for the night. When he arrived he looked worried while insisting that we'd be all right but his eyes didn't look assuring.

I felt very much alone.

Hal phoned to report that the rainfall was heavy in Kitchener and was Ontario known for this sort of thing? I interrupted his lovingly detailed description of a splendid four course lunch to announce that the front lawn had disappeared. Between the two of us, we decided it made perfect sense for him to drop everything and make the fifty- mile run for home, driving the wheezing Austin that was mulish enough to cough and sputter to a halt if it didn't like the direction we turned the wheel.

When I hung up the phone I turned on the radio and learned for the first time that there was a Hurricane named Hazel headed in our direction. I wished I had a city map to give me an idea of whether we were on high ground or, god forbid, low ground. It would have been more practical to look for the exact location of rivers and creeks but until then I thought hurricanes consisted of fierce winds and tidal waves that invariable struck the shores of Florida or perhaps the Suez Canal. That's what I thought about hurricanes, when I thought of them at all.

This storm had begun near Granada, then pounded Haiti and wound its way erratically past Florida, took out part of the South Carolina Coast, and savaged Pennsylvania before heading toward the eastern end of Lake Ontario. By six in the evening, the downpour had reached the torrential stage.

I fed the babies and tucked Scott back into his crib and wondered if he could hear my heart hammering. After I settled Mark in his bedroom on the lower level, I spotted a small stream of water seeping from under Mrs. Herman's apartment door and when I opened it to investigate, a frigid stream of water rushed over my feet.

The river outside had made a right turn into the basement and had already crept half way up the furniture. I took off my shoes and waded in to stack what I could on the counters and tried to decide what to do with the lighted seven branched candelabra on the coffee table. This wasn't the time to tempt fate by blowing them out in the middle of the Jewish Sabbath, so I moved it to the sink away from anything flammable and left it burning, hoping it might provide protection to less than devout gentiles.

I scooped up Mark and took him up to our bed, and salvaged what I could of his clothes and toys that weren't already soaked, and then saved what I could from the study. There weren't too many places to hang things to dry because we normally used the clothesline off the back porch.

The radio announcer made it clear that this was a disaster, with loss of life and cars stranded all over the highways. I was painfully aware that I had committed my husband to that and he was driving without a car radio and probably didn't know this wasn't an ordinary Ontario storm. There wasn't anyone to call and no one to tell me where we might go or whether we should go.

Then the power went off and I sat at the top of the basement stairs, lighted candle beside me and watched the water slowly creep up and finally settle at the second step from the bottom. I looked out the window and could just make out candlelight in the windows nearby. There were no rowboats in sight and rooftops weren't floating by. The only reasonable thing left to do was go to bed, so I gathered up the baby and we snuggled in beside Mark to keep one another warm.

Surprisingly, we all slept.

The next morning was unbelievable. It was like any normal day; the sun was shining, there was hardly a puddle in sight and the front lawn was back in place, the power was back on but the furnace was still out.

I crossed my fingers and called the overworked furnace repair service and explained about the two sick babies and within an hour we had heat again. Scottie seemed a bit better and Mark's cold was about the same. My throat tightened when Mark asked, "Where's Daddy?" and I couldn't answer him. I made endless trips back and forth to the window and listened to radio reports of devastation. I boiled pots and pots of water, obeying the instructions of the radio reporters, and filled the bathtub, just in case.

To keep from going mad I held trivial little talks with myself while I fed the babies and shoveled some of the mud out from the lower level. I'll go back to Vancouver and get a job and raise the boys by myself. No, I'll stay here and get a job and raise the boys by myself. Should there be a funeral or memorial service. What are widows' weeds? Buy a black veil. As penance I'll go without mascara for the rest of my life. What will I do without him?

Then I recognized the most beautiful sound, the spluttering of our wonderful, unfaithful car, chugging into the driveway. In came the dear departed, his clothing coated with mud but he was blessedly alive. He reported that the car had behaved like a champion for the first part of the trip home, until the moment it coasted down a hill and sank to its axles into a lake of water. My resourceful hero waded uphill to the nearest house which by then had lost its phone service and was offered warmth and comfort, sandwich spending the night in a junior sized bed with spurs hanging from the bed post and a stale under the pillow.

Four miles away from us an entire street of houses was swept away, killing thirty six people. Most bridges had been destroyed and flooded houses that still stood were thick with glutinous mud. Our house stood in the center of a wide circle of destruction. Inside the circle, high winds and flooded basements were the extent of the damage but the area outside that circle was like a combat zone. Hal had somehow survived when, on his route home, people had been swept away to death in their cars. Eighty one people died that night and close to four thousand lost their homes.

So many people have their own interpretation of God; we don't know why we were spared but we were made forcefully aware that we had better make use of every minute.

Chapter5:

SHE'S GOT WHEELS

1954

Polio vaccine introduced

My life was a series of adjustments in those early days. I was five thousand miles away from home and family. We lived in an exclusively Jewish neighborhood where the moms all had jobs, leaving the kids with elderly live-in Bubbies, Hal was downtown at the office, and my idea of a thrill was a trip to the Pediatrician once a month.

I was ripe to become Suzie Homemaker, and that's what I did.

The furniture and floors were so loaded with wax we were in danger of crashing through to the basement. Women's magazines became my lifeline and I studied the recipes and table decorations, now that we had a table, one with a Formica top and wrought iron legs.

I fantasized over Thanksgiving pictures of father sitting at the immaculately arranged table expertly sharpening the carvers and preparing to cut into the enormous butterball turkey resting on a platter cluttered with little green leaves and kumquats. Mom, the woman responsible for this extravaganza, is carrying the brussel sprouts through the swinging doors, her apron spotless. Give or take an hour and she'll be left with the cleaning up, including the spots on the carpet.

I couldn't relate to that lady and I wipe my hands on my apron and yet I was obsessing over elegant place settings and lavish meals with only one husband and two babies to impress.

I needed help.

Funnily enough, grocery shopping was the catalyst that saved me from this domestic tunnel vision.

Friday night was our grocery shopping night. We owned a small second- hand Austin bought with our share of the Vancouver house sale. We'd have a quick dinner, pack the babies in the car and head to the supermarket, armed with a detailed list.

Of course, it worked best and faster if the children stayed outside in the car with their father, but they all insisted on coming inside. That meant ditching them for a few minutes before checkout to ferret out the pickled walnuts, toys, and cartons of gum and other necessities of life.

Husbands can spend good quality brain time checking the unit price of soap when all you want is one pink bar to keep on hand for guests and when they spot a bargain of two dozen rolls of two- ply toilet paper, they snap it up triumphantly and you're left trying to figure where to store it. We won't even discuss his baby-amuser skills.

As I recall, it took about three of these Friday night sessions before the love of my life produced a driver's manual and informed me that I had an appointment to take a written preliminary drivers test in four days' time.

"Listen, "I whimpered, "I can't learn to drive here, in this city. Everyone's in a rush and the babies will be in terrible danger. Let's wait until the children are grown and married and in the meantime I'll walk the two miles to the supermarket by myself on Fridays."

He should have accepted that deal on the spot and he could have saved thousands for the extra insurance, maintenance and you can bet a second car would be on the agenda.

"Listen," he said, using his "I'm being reasonable and she's not" tone,

"I'll leave the car with you every day and I'll take the bus to work. That will save on the parking headaches."

In those days, a lot of the sample questions in the manual seemed to deal with candlepower, which made no sense to me then or now, but I memorized the stuff just in case, which turned out to be a good idea.

I passed the written test and lessons began Saturday morning. That was the moment when I found that the gentle, rational soul I married in good faith was the monster of teachers behind the wheel.

We began on the busiest highway in North America, and then we wove our way through narrow, traffic -congested neighborhoods where small children carelessly threw themselves, their soccer balls and hockey pucks into the middle of incoming traffic, in this case, me. Godzilla was particularly adept at directing me to thread my way past groups of placard waving demonstrators (Lord, how I envied them—they were pedestrians) and at some point we would happen across a traffic cop making unidentifiable hand signals and I never could break the code.

"My god, you almost ran over him. Didn't you see him signal you to let the parade by?"

The dreaded test date came and I wasn't ready. I would never be ready. Old Iron Jaw took a long lunch hour and arranged to meet me at the testing centre, cruelly situated in the middle of the city. This was the city of Toronto, people, not a small village.

My examiner was a burly guy who probably worked out in the ring each morning before brutalizing everyone at work. His mouth was curiously shaped as though it was clamping a fat, soggy cigar between his brown teeth and he snapped out his instructions around it.

"Turn right adda corner, "he mumbled through this invisible obstruction.

"You mean you want me to make an illegal turn?" I asked, perfectly willing to do it if he said so. That was his idea of a trap and I found his sullen personality so intimidating that the driving alone wasn't a problem. God knows my changeling husband had indoctrinated me thoroughly.

Finally we came to a mercifully quiet side street and he instructed me to pull up alongside a parked car.

"Yark," he mumbled. I had a dreadful feeling that he meant I should park between two cars with barely enough space between them to allow an anorexic pedestrian through.

By this time it was getting through to me that if I flunked the test we could return to the old ways, so I took a deep breath and carelessly whisked the wheel into position and the car breezed smartly into place, wheels flush against the curb. We both got out, examining the results and I tried not to look astonished.

He wasn't quite through with me.

"Whaddat sign say?" He seemed to be pointing up the street.

"It says smoke Sweet Caporal cigarettes and I think I can make out the smaller lettering underneath—"

"I meant that No Parking sign at the end of the street, not the cigarette sign at the end of the next block."

"Okay lady, you passed, "he said over his shoulder as he walked away to take on the next victim.

That wasn't the worst part. Once the papers were signed and the money paid over, I was expected to drive myself home. Alone. The sooner the better, since the car was parked in a thirty-minute zone and the Green Hornet was already no doubt flipping out her book and licking the end of her pencil.

I waved what I hoped was a nonchalant farewell to the man I used to treasure and set off for home, but not before heading east when I should have been travelling west and my fingers were frozen into claws.

When the tremors subsided, a message slowly seeped into my mind -I had wheels and I could drive.

No more Suzy Homemaker.
Chapter 6:

YES KIDS, THERE IS A SANTA

Our lives gently settled back into normal routine. Let's see, in three years of marriage there had been a significant job change, three moves including one three thousand miles from home base, we'd had two babies and a miscarriage, lived through a hurricane and a first grey hair sprouted from my head. The weather turned cold and colder and our neighbours said what we would eventually say,

"You should have been here last winter; now THAT was cold."

We hadn't quite come to grips with the full meaning of Toronto winter as opposed to drearily- raining-but -not frigid Vancouver weather. We were attempting to master this when we ran smack up against another challenge, leaving us with a permanent mistrust of Santa Claus, brass bands and any stories we heard at our parents' knees. It seemed to me that adults, people older than we were, had misled us about Canada's most nostalgic treasure, the annual Eaton's Santa Claus parade.

I can't understand how the country's founders didn't grasp the fact that cold is cold and anything to do with St. Nick should be held over until summer and that especially means parades.

We seemed to have a knack for learning the hard way, and that's because the start of something new always seems so easy. I looked up from the newspaper one night and gleefully announced,

"Oh! I can't believe it; the Santa Claus parade is this Saturday; isn't it incredibly lucky that we're here right now so that we can take the children?"

Hal didn't even look up from his section of the paper.

"Aren't you forgetting that this takes place outside, far away from central heating? I've seen you look horrified when people drive past with skis strapped to their cars."

I was indignant.

"This is different; the sun always shines for the Santa parade; my relatives were raised here and they've told me all about it. It's like a miracle."

In those days PARADE meant the annual Eaton's Department Store Christmas parade, with seemingly miles of floats and a million rouged school kids wearing heavy leggings under brilliant costumes, all the Disney animals, and of course, Santa, who one year, so the story goes, actually had a heart attack and was found dead when the float pulled to a halt. Personally I think that if the story really is true, that he died of exposure.

This long dreamed of experience turned out just a shade better than locking oneself out of the house, sopping wet and wearing only a bath towel, with the clink of bottles signaling the imminent arrival of the milkman.

Our expectations had been so high, or rather, my expectations were high and my husband had been willing to be a good sport and see this through, mumbling about first aid stations and hypothermia.

We're not talking Florida weather here and the natives know it is wise to dress as though preparing for a wilderness endurance contest without the faintest hope of seeing washrooms or hot dog stands. Unfortunately, we were not yet natives and we hadn't yet grasped the fundamentals for survival.

We got the babies up early on the Saturday morning and the grey sleety skies didn't diminish my enthusiasm.

"Who are we going to see today?"

I asked Mark. He gave me his best owl eyed look and returned to spitting toast at his brother.

"We're going to see Santa,"

I chirped, full of good cheer and a desire to stimulate the children with this wonderful custom; they, in turn, over the long winter would prattle in adorable baby talk about all the things they remembered. They'd remember it clearly just the way all my relatives had and they still could describe many of the costumes, after all these years.

It was a good thing we started out early because we were following long lines of other cars full of eager expectant parents and children who pressed their wet noses against the window glass and looked as though they would rather have been home mixing the cereal with the soap flakes while their parents slept.

We found a place to park as though it was foreordained and then we slipped and slid several blocks to locate a thin opening in the crowd. We noticed several fathers shoving their children into the crowd until they reached the curb and sat down; then the fathers retreated back where they couldn't see anything, clustering together to pass a leather flask back and forth.

"Is there something we don't know about this?" Hal asked wistfully.

Our thin raincoats weren't any protection against the ice pellets lazily attempting to slash through our flesh as we each held warmly clad infant dead weights in our arms and then up to our shoulders, so they would get a good view. We could hear bands passing by usually playing Jingle Bells and we caught occasional glimpses of anything that walked on stilts and some people on the floats threw gum and candy, which landed with unerring accuracy on our wet hair. Hal remarked once through chattering teeth,

"They're eating that stuff from your hair, wrapper and all; does gum digest if it's swallowed whole?" We creaked our arms up and down one at a time, shifting baby from side to side to restore the circulation to deter gangrene and finally lifted the children off our shoulders to study their faces for encouraging looks of delight and gratitude. Zero. They could have been just as easily amused standing stoically in front of a drug store peddling cigars out of their stiff little hands.

I turned to Hal and asked through my blue lips,

"So where did we go wrong? We were really trying to be the perfect North American traditional parents, so what happened?"

"Well, we know now that our raincoats are not meant for eastern winters and even though the children are wearing snowsuits, sleet is falling on their faces, they're miserably cold and too small to ask us what we think we're doing. In fact, Scott hasn't uttered a single word, and that's a big tip off. Just whose side of the family is responsible for telling us about these parades?"

I felt a tug of guilt.

"Well, I think my relatives are responsible. My parents had been raised in Toronto but never spoke of actually SEEING the parade. My two aunts spoke of it often, but I don't recall them saying they had actually BEEN there. We've probably pioneered this event for the entire family, do you realize that? I'll bet your family didn't have a hand in actually spreading false propaganda, they probably just accepted what the newspapers reported, and we know they never get anything right."

That was probably not a good thing to say to a former newsman but he was too cold to take any further offence.

The reindeers' backsides finally retreated down the avenue, marking the end of the ordeal and we stumbled on frozen limbs over to Eaton's and Simpson's Department Store to first check out their spectacular Christmas window displays and then to thaw out and visit Toyland. There we encountered every other parent with children waiting for the crowds to thin so they could retrieve their cars and go home. No matter. It was warm and I knew that when I was safely home I would not emerge until spring thaw, whenever that was.

Mark had missed his nap and was not amused at the crowds jostling him about. He finally announced his displeasure with ear shattering bellows. We tried the usual hushing sounds, which always make it worse, and people were nudging one another signaling their amazement that two people couldn't keep their children happy on Santa Claus parade day. Hal's attention was finally diverted from the electric train display when the woman next to him said, "Ought to give that kid a hiding."

Then he swept Mark onto his shoulder and motioned me to follow him toward the exit, calling out in a clear voice,

"There, there, little boy, we'll find your parents."
Chapter 7:

DID WE JUST BUY A HOUSE?

1953

Winter raged on relentlessly although there were moments when we marveled at the abundance of crisp blue skies in contrast to endless sullen gray rains we were accustomed to.

We can't explain what happened next. It might be closely related to the monotony of stuffing and un-stuffing small children in and out of snowsuits or it might have been the nuisance of pulling on warm boots, mufflers, coats, hats and mittens just to take out the garbage. It might be that we hardly knew anyone and we couldn't plan anything to do with the house because it wasn't our house. It could have been any of those things.

It was March and there weren't many spring blooms in evidence. In fact grass would have been a pleasant sight. Lilac buds still resembled unfurled sticks although the odd crocus poked through the slowly thawing earth. More seasoned natives explained that an easterner might wear long johns and two mufflers one morning and by mid -afternoon would be rummaging through the summer storage boxes searching for something that won't stick to the back. It would seem reasonable that flowers would be confused about when to make their move.

We began spending Sunday afternoons in the Austin with the baby tucked in the canvas Carry Cot in the back seat and Mark and the classified ads on my lap, touring housing developments. Now this can be an entertaining source of free entertainment as long as you keep your wits about you.

Words like "housing developments', "suburbs" and bedroom community" were products of the fifties. We snickered over reports that home owners in some subdivisions were expected to conform to rules governing house colors and the height of fences. Apparently people were expected to fork out their life savings to blend in like homogenized milk, along with their drapes and their life styles. No clotheslines were permitted in the backyards of Toronto's Don Mills, at the time the trendsetter in housing developments.

I asked Hal, "Who are these people we keep hearing about-- the ones with leisure time?" I have two children and a wringer washer and cloth diapers so I don't have any leisure time, and you're coping with a full-time job as well as free-lance assignments so you aren't a member of the leisure class either. But it seems to be settling around us."

"They might be the people who put their money into new cars and automatic dishwashers and clothes washers before having children, "murmured Hal.

"I notice that there are two-car garages now and a car for each side. And the steaks at the supermarket are getting thicker and barbecues are popping up everywhere.

All I knew was that butter cost 63 cents a pound and we stuck with the cheaper margarine, which you bought in a plastic pouch, unzipped and popped in the coloring and kneaded the mess until it turned yellow. That was supposed to make it more palatable. How come the dairy farmers got away with that rule for so long and how come we stood for it?

This was a particularly fine spring day. The snow was melting and the tulips were finally showing signs of pushing up through the frozen puddles. Our destination was Thornhill, a small town thirty-minutes north of the city.

We meandered through mazes of developments, some with houses joined together despite an abundance of land everywhere. Finally we drove down a long paved road arched by enormous elm threes. The pavement ended and we jolted over the dirt road to the site of the model home in a development called, "Pleasantville."

With one look we fell wildly in over with the long, low house that bore a close resemblance to western style homes. It was an open plan, with the galley kitchen opening into the dining area opening into the living room area. The living and dining room "picture" windows ran from floor to ceiling, and the basement was big enough to hold a workshop as well as restless children on rainy days. It would have too, but we didn't think to consult the children first and even then they were perfectly aware that the best place to play is above ground in the kitchen, right under their mother's feet.

A salesman hustled over wearing a plaid suit any racehorse would be proud to call his own.

"Well you folks are really in luck. I can see you love the house and we just happen to have one cancellation for the lot across from the Mill Pond. The excavation has begun and the crew will start construction next week."

He reached over and tweaked Scottie's cheek. The baby didn't spit up over him, generally the true test, but just regarded him coolly. Personally I think the plaid won him over.

"Oh no, "I smiled, "We're not ready to buy a house yet."

Hal looked up vaguely from the half-inch gap in the living room parquet and nodded his head in agreement, then startled me by saying, "But as long as we're here we might just as well take a look."

We spent a few minutes convincing Mark that the toilet wasn't hooked up yet and pried the baby's new tooth from the salesman's padded shoulder before we got into his car. He drove carefully over dried ruts where roads would be someday and past a beautiful pond with towering willows banking the shore and a few ducks honking their welcome. We stopped beside what might be a corner lot, judging by the way the dirt roads intersected, and sure enough a tidy pile of red bricks sat in readiness beside an open excavation. Across the dirt road was a pasture full of sheep wearing bells around their necks, a scene straight out of House and Gardens.

The excavation didn't look big enough to house a couple with two children, though I suppose it was, as long as they were four tidy people who didn't clutter up the place with books and hobbies and more children. To be fair, we were hardly ever a couple with two children. If we could have foreseen the future we would have bought up the largest barn we could find, with separate stalls for each inhabitant.

In record time even for us, we signed a paper and gave the salesman a cheque for thirty-five hundred dollars, as down payment on a house costing seventeen thousand nine hundred dollars. Interest rates had just risen to 5%.

On the long drive home we talked excitedly about where we would place the furniture and we'd buy a wheel-barrow and build a swing and have a house warming as soon as we got to know enough people.

Then we got around to wondering just how we might make the cheque good by Wednesday morning, not to mention how to swing a mortgage. We wondered if we should have seen a lawyer before we signed anything, we then we agreed we couldn't afford a lawyer anyway and we loved the house.

Several long-distance calls later, we worked out the details of two mortgages and two demand loans and we had $103.22 in the bank. Then we got ourselves a lawyer who had an irritating habit of rolling his eyes while he lectured us about what we'd done.

"Well, anyway, "I said as we signed the papers committing ourselves to twenty-five years of mortgage payments, at 5% interest, "The resale value is a big factor. After all, Thornhill is not too long a drive in rush hour from the city."

"Thornhill?" barked the lawyer, "What made you think you were moving to Thornhill? Your new house in Richmond Hill and that's a good five miles further north."

It was like old times with hall-filled cartons scattered through the house, lists taped to every door, cupboard, bathroom mirror ("last thing, check behind shower curtain for shampoo, plastic shark"). Even the windows held taped messages ("search bk yd fr sweaters, toys").

My mother phoned regularly speaking in a throbbing, what-have-you-done tone and my mother-in law's letters ruefully suggested we had married too young but she'd stand by us (well, her son anyway) no matter what. No matter what, what? We were so caught up in having people assemble our very own house that we didn't have time to waste on details like security and peace of mind.

We drove up to inspect the site every couple of nights and that was lucky because we prevented a workman from installing the bedroom window so that it was facing the driveway next door instead of into our back yard.

I wouldn't say that I got especially shrill about this but I was still smarting over their refusal to widen our specially asked for laundry chute in the bathroom. They left us a hole that required threading each item through, one washcloth at a time.

We had a tougher time over the house exterior because the builder had us all in a legal arm wrestle over house colors, including shingles and trim, written in the contract as "quality control." The color co-coordinator, and he swore there was one, must have been dazed with overwork by the time our place was done. We arrived on the site one evening to find the place tarted up with glow-in-the-dark coral, dark green, light green, white, black and salmon pink. Round-the-clock phone calls finally budged the builder when I threatened to picket in front of the house on Sunday, the day that guaranteed a lot of interested home buyers. That didn't mean we could pick our own colors but at least they reduced the number of hues going on our place.

"It's moving day, "we greeted the boys. "Soon the big truck will come and move all our things to the new house and you can play with the lambs across the street."

The baby seemed unmoved by this staggering news and Mark barely glanced up from his toy tractor. We quickly bundled them into their clothes and followed the lists around, collecting extra diapers for the car so they wouldn't get lost and retrieving the shark and shampoo behind the shower curtain. The soggy cereal bowls went into the carton marked "Misc., open soon" and we warned the movers to step carefully up the front stairs, which were now a wet, bright orange red. This touch-up had been done for the new tenants but the painters got their schedules mixed and came two days early. By the time I came out to the porch to bring in the baby in his pram they'd already painted around the wheels.

We used a contingency plan to keep Scottie occupied while we supervised the move. You need one when you have a baby who has been on his feet and constantly on the move since he was eight-months old. He hated the feel of grass on his bare feet so we spread a blanket on the back lawn and plunked him there, shoeless, gave him his toy shark and saucepan and left him with Mark nearby for company. Hal checked him shortly before we were ready to lock up the house and he reported that for such a small baby that child had a cold stare that could build an iceberg from a drop of water.

The new house looked welcoming when we pulled up just ahead of the van. The rooms echoed to the sound of our footsteps and everything smelled brand new. First thing, I established ownership by lining the kitchen shelves with yellow and white checked paper, then carefully arranged the unbreakable dishes and Bunnykin bowls and mugs on the upper shelves and stored the pressure cooker and copper-bottomed skillet under the counter by the stove. The walls looked pale and naked without paint or paper but we found an agreeable spot in the kitchen that proved handy for parents to scribble notes and the children learned the meaning of "double standard" when they were forbidden to crayon on any wall surfaces.

A department store truck pulled up with the new refrigerator and we soon hurried off to the town's one grocery store to buy tins of frozen juice for the special racks and packages of frozen vegetables for the the-the top freezer.

We loved that refrigerator until it got older and turned mean. I'd give a firm tug on the handle and suddenly I'd be spread-eagled back against the stove, handle in hand, wondering how to get at the chicken inside to make dinner. When the handle did open properly, the plastic egg-holder on the door had its turn, flinging all the eggs at our feet. We called it the automatic egg-smasher.

The moving fan had barely disappeared from sight before we were luxuriating in the privacy and the space and we agreed we'd never need anything more from life; except a telephone, once the lines were installed, and that took months.

Who would have thought that the time would come when a door with a lock would be sweeter than chocolate cake? The front and back doors had locks and so did the bathroom but the bedroom doors made do with handles.

When a needed a few minutes to escape from the din of everyday life I'd head for my sanctuary the bathroom, and then only for a limited time before a little fist hammed at the door with the announcement that it's owner had to go potty. You could be pretty sure that he really wanted to play with the toothpaste tube, but there was the outside chance he really meant it.

We stopped tiptoeing around for fear we'd disturb people downstairs and the boys took to the mud as though they'd been born to wallow.

Scott chatted non-stop while he investigated his new surroundings and Mark was quieter. He missed nothing, though, and while he seemed to be directing all his attention to the mud castles he was building in the front yard, he could tell us who to call to get bread and milk delivered and when to watch for the lady in the truck with the big dog in the back, who turned out to be the person who delivers brown eggs on Tuesday afternoons.

The open plan seemed wonderful, so light and airy with sun flooding through the enormous picture windows; I could work in the kitchen and keep an eye on the baby in his playpen in the dining room while Mark played outside in the mud.

Open plan style dictates that tidiness shifts from virtue to full-blown necessity, parents with small children marginally excepted, and we relied on the hall closet to hide the unfolded diapers and thirty-six hundred Tinker toy pieces when the minister came to call.

Actually, I mean ministers. Plural. With so many people moving into town that had more church spires than television aerials, each pastor hurried to stake his claim, making it essential for the householder to keep the tea and packaged Peek Freans ready along with two matching cups and saucers on the top shelf in the kitchen. Opening the door to the clergy meant that my name automatically went on the bake sale lists all over town and the minute the phone was finally installed I was besieged with requests to deliver two lemon pies to a church by Friday, no later than four o'clock, with the warning that "Meringues sell better than plain."

By this time I could wrestle my way through one pie with a homemade crust and the help of a lemon pudding mix. and my meringues took a turn for the better after we finally bought an electric mixer, but it was useless to protest that I wasn't a member of any congregation. The relentless caller was too busy marking off the list, "new people. Corner house. 2 lem-mer, Frid.") to pay any attention and I would ask Hal to stop off at the bakery in the city, the one that produced pies that looked home- made. I did try to do my part, but often the requests came during teething or croup or when Scott broke out of his playpen again.

It made good sense for each family to declare themselves Anglican or Presbyterian or one of the dozen other choices, because, until then, we were at the mercy of countless committees that could affect our future in the town, both socially and economically. Consider the outcome if you refuse to join the Altar Guild and it turns out the president is the wife of the only car repair service in town, or worse, you turn down the plumber's wife who is recruiting for the Missionary society. It was wiser to make a declaration and stoically accept the pledge envelopes and plead pregnancy to avoid committees. This is how it was in the mid- fifties.

When I had more children and thought I should worry about their moral fiber, I'd polish them like altar brasses and take them to Sunday school. While I waited for the fiber to take hold, I'd sit on one of the lovely, worn pews in the simple century-old church and listen to the minister's view of morality.

Hal had the right idea. He figured his morale fiber was as good as it ever would be and he stayed home to enjoy the solitude.

Curtains weren't at the top of our priority list and those big windows remained undraped for many months. What seemed more urgent was to have a lawn to cover the mud at the back and then fence it all in, preferably electric with barbed wire and ground glass on top, to keep Scottie from wandering off.

Our dining area was part of an ell shape, sunny and open with windows behind us and beside us. All meals were eaten there because the kitchen was too small for table and chairs.

We were getting our own back for the times we drove slowly through housing developments and watched families in their un-curtained dining rooms, the children playing to the audience outside by balancing the spoon just so and letting fly with the mashed potatoes that cemented to windows in five seconds flat. We'd watch a child take a handful of unwanted string beans, squish them in his hand and let them slide under his chair. We never got used to the audience and at the sound of an idling motor; we froze the fork full of shepherd's pie half way to our lips and prepared to hear from the open window, ratings for our house and our decorating taste.

"What on earth do you think they plan to do with those windows, Harry?" and, "look at that car, will you? How could they afford to buy that house? And that couch reminds me of that ratty one we tossed out last spring." They were probably right.

I wish we hadn't been curious enough to take that Sunday drive into the city to see for ourselves the building that owned our mortgage; it was unsettling to realize we had committed the next twenty-five years to a stern looking marble palace undoubtedly equipped with fabulously expensive heating system. What we had hoped for was a solid, sturdy log house exuding good will and a style where each client was known by name and not by number. We were beholden to this showplace mostly because out new house slightly resembled Vancouver homes despite the brick.

If that sobering sight weren't enough, it took one or two aftershocks to shatter our fantasy that a brand new house remained trouble-free for years. It's those little learning experiences that alter that starry-eyed first-time buyer look to one of deplorably ignorant but learning fast, hard-eyed homeowner. No matter—despite the unexpected problems, the house had become home we'd no more abandon it than we would one of our own children.

My adrenalin surged the day the sod was delivered and rolled into an instant front lawn. I loaded all the toy tractors and trucks in the wagon and pulled it around front for the boys, but lawns do not thrill little boys, lawns thrill parents and they moved everything back to the mud. The workmen left rectangles of earth for a future garden and as a token beginning we planted two dozen tulip bulbs, which flourished for years.

The Creek. Scott circa 1958

Without even realizing it, our lives revolved THE INSPECTORS. If the Inspectors weren't pleased with the wiring presently hanging in bunches by the front door, then the wall couldn't be plastered and if the pipes in the house failed their test they couldn't ever be tucked out of sight behind walls.

The builder made his life easier by announcing he couldn't do another thing to the house until THE INSPECTOR passed judgment. We couldn't understand what that had to do with the bathroom taps. We had to turn the hot tap on and off with a wrench and we truly felt we deserved a tap with a handle. We were also quite certain THE INSPECTOR didn't have to inspect anything before the living room was supplied with baseboards and we were indignantly aware that THE INSPECTOR was not responsible for the fact that the painters still hadn't removed the glow-in-the-dark paint on the east gable.

Then one morning I jumped up from the breakfast table and began nervously twisting my napkin.

"My god, what is it?" demanded Hal. His eyes swiveled around the room searching for clues for my agitated state.

"They're gone. THE INSPECTORS are gone. I haven't seen one for days, not since they approved the laundry pipes. I feel so alone." We were too. We knew we had just lost the only people with the authority to make the builders do anything. The foreman preferred to believe that our house was finished and he wasn't about to stand around discussing minor details like baseboards and tap handles and glow-in-the-dark paint. He was also not prepared to explain why white caps formed on the river flowing through the basement every rainy day. I began making personal calls to the construction shack two streets over.

"Yeah, lady, you gotta problem. We'll take a look when we can, but we got a deadline to meet. Besides, my record show your place is finished, "said the foreman, spitting his wet unlit cigar into the coffee can by his feet.

I walked away from the shack knowing that I didn't have the upper hand and in a few hours I would sadly face Hal with the news that nothing was ever going to be done and we just as well buy a rowboat and try to adjust. Suddenly I stopped and the boys crashed into me. I took a good look at them, like two little ducklings in their bright yellow slickers and shiny black rubber gumboots.

"How would you boys like to stay at the workmen's shack this afternoon?"

'That shack you mean? You mean that shack? That you said we couldn't ever go into and bother anybody?"

"That's the one. Follow me."

We slogged back through the muddy field to the shack where the overworked gotta-meet-a-deadline foreman was still nursing his mug of coffee, probably laughing to his crew about silly housewives who insist on those picky little finishing touches. I planted myself squarely in front of him, blocking his aim to the coffee can.

"My children haven't anywhere to ride their tricycles on rainy days, and as you know there aren't any sidewalks. You won't get that water out of my basement so there's only one thing to do, you will have to keep my children entertained today, and make sure you keep them away from the heavy equipment."

I squished off for home' leaving behind two delighted children, one of whom already had a reputation as a non-stop asker of questions, often three or four times to one question. There was barely time to get the kettle boiling for a quiet cup of tea before an urgent pounding almost added a broken door to my "work to be done" list.

The foremen and some crewmembers stood there, two of them clutching the boys. "Okay lady, where is this problem? We'll do it right now but just keep that lippy little kid away from us."
Chapter 8:

STEVEN IS BORN

1956

First hard drive disc is invented

Hal's writing space for his free-lance work became increasingly cramped. We set up the card table in the bedroom and I often found him crouched over the typewriter with a child perched on each knee, while hair from their Davey Crockett hats floated into his nostrils.

We splurged on some Masonite panels that resembled thick dark-brown cardboard and Hal built himself a small study in the basement, furnishing it with a second-hand desk, chair, file cabinet, his Remington typewriter and a padlock for the door.

He papered the flimsy walls with Playboy centerfolds, a special attraction for the neighbourhood kids, who jumped into the light well to peek through the window to admire Mr. T's wallpaper.

The room endured for a long time but the dampness from the un-vented dryer tended to glue all sticky surfaces together and we regularly had to steam open envelopes over the kettle before mailing out his copy.

The days were getting shorter and cooler and the geese practiced flight formations for their seasonal departure from the pond; we listened for the creaking sound of their enormous study wings as they passed overhead in vee formation. The flies were under control, the basement was dry and we were truly finished with inspectors. We were also happily unaware that when winter arrived we wouldn't have any storm windows.

We took advantage of an unexpectedly warm and probably final Saturday mornings to sit on the back step, carefully placing our feet on stray bricks. The boys played quietly nearby in the sand box.

I still felt seventeen years old and suddenly felt shy sitting beside this man. "Hey, I said softly, "Do you realize we're a married couple with kids and a house and a car? Four years ago we couldn't imagine a time when we'd have a house and kids. Now we own things and some are even paid for and we've got healthy kids and our chief worry is that they'll fall in the Mill pond."

"Yeah, it's not clear to me how all this happened; we just seemed to be in the right place at the right time and everything went according to some tidy plan; certainly not ours."

I said, "I still remember when Mark was too small to talk and do you know what I heard him saying this morning? He was arguing with the Bartram boys about who caught the biggest sunfish and he shouted at them "Git offa my propitty." And when Scott dropped the can of fishing worms, Mark told him to "wizen" up.

Their amused father reached behind him to place his empty coffee cup in the milk box and said, "I guess before long they'll pick up juicier expressions. You should be able to monitor them more easily As soon as I finish this new assignment and we order the back yard sod. After that, we'd better get to work on building a fence before the builders complain to the union about Scott helping them whether they want it or not."

"On the other hand, "I interjected smoothly, "We should get started with the next baby soon and there won't be much expense at least until he's born."

He looked up with alarm,

"What's the rush? We finally have three bedrooms and some privacy. Scottie isn't even a year and a half yet, though it seems much more, and shouldn't we get those two corralled before we let the next one loose in the neighbourhood? And another thing—what guarantee has we the next one will be quiet? We could do with another shy one."

Curiosity alone did us in this time and I was once more making monthly visits to the obstetrician and knitting a lacy shawl for the christening.

There was a teetery balance to our marriage because Hal was a romantic who seemed to believe that one of these days the banks would declare a surplus and immediately reward all their customers. He often brought me home a bouquet of roses and the next day had to dip into the housekeeping fund for lunch money.

Over the winter and spring we managed to pay off the new storm windows and Mark carried around a green toad in the pocket of his little yellow cardigan.

There were few houses nearby and the boys could walk from our back door down the slope of our yard and across to the creek that flowed from the pond. It was a dream-like setting with huge flowing Willow trees and tiny minnows and sunfish darting over the stones in the stream. Out of sight most of the times were raccoons and muskrats and the occasional fox.

Scottie spent entire mornings sitting quietly on the bank with his fishing pole dipped into the creek. He started off with a bent pin and graduated to real hooks with bacon or worms for bait.

One day when my pregnancy was far along, I got a call from my neighbour Mildred Savage, whose house down the street backed onto the creek.

"Now don't get upset."

"Okay, I won't. Why?"

"Scottie's stuck up a tall tree."

"I'll be right over. Do you have a ladder?"

As I neared Mildred's yard, I spied Scottie sitting high up on a tree branch looking tiny and worried. I'd have to climb up the length of Mildred's ladder and another few feet beyond to reach him.

She glanced at my bulge.

"Stand back. Here I go."

She was a tall, stately woman, one who seemed more at home in an indoor setting, staring down politicians at town council meetings.

She hitched the ladder against the tree and marched up briskly, wearing her sensible pumps, nylons and knitted dress. She edged up past the top of the ladder and looked the panicky child right in the eye.

"Slide down into my arms right now."

No one said no to Mildred and he obediently let go of the limb and dived for her arms.

We bought bunk beds and moved the boys in together. If only we'd had the foresight to invest in a factory that produces those things. The boys enjoyed lying on the top bunk and pushing their muddy bare feet against the ceiling to make perfect footprints.

That whet their appetites for stagier productions and they finally hit on one that never failed, passing it along to each new family member. The best place to try it out was in the narrow back hall, just wide enough for one generous sized person at a time. The child straddled his bare feet to the two walls, edging up until his head touched the ceiling. Then a silent wait for an innocent passer-by. It was like an icy chill creeping over the back of the neck; something wasn't right, but what? You'd be surprised how many times it happened before we learned to check overhead first thing.

We painted the nursery walls pink with brown highlights just in case our daughter arrived third instead of fourth and I re-lined the bassinette in pale blue with eyelet trim. I lovingly packed my suitcase with seven books that had accumulated on the night table along with sketchbook and pencils. We booked a housekeeper through the local classified ads and spent a Sunday afternoon timing the drive to the hospital twenty miles south.

I went in labor at the doctor's office during my weekly check-up and that took care of the planned lunch date and trek to the department store for size two training pants.

I had the car that day and phoned Hal to say I would pick him up outside his office.

"My goodness no, I can drive to the hospital and it will give me something to do." I assured him cheerily, but when the next contraction came and the car went into spasms as well, I pulled over to the curb and we switched places.

Natural childbirth was just getting a toehold at the time, but I had read everything available on the subject and devised my own trial and error method to get through the labour process. When I was pregnant with Scott I read "Childbirth without Fear," and as I recall the message was that while it isn't a picnic, if fear of childbirth can be controlled, then so can the pain. During future pregnancies I read up on the Lamaze method and that was comforting. I breathed according to the written instructions while I was imagining that I was a duck bobbing on top of a swelling blue wave. The trick was to concentrate hard to stay on top rather than slip down into the painful dips.

Hall was enjoying a book saved since Christmas and looked up to say, "Are you okay? Listen to this sentence, you'll love this"

"Well," said the nurse, "doctor is on his way and we'll just take you into the delivery room. Does Daddy want to come along?"

"Come along? Come along? Nobody said I was supposed to come along." He looked wildly at me. "Do you want me to come with you?"

I didn't care if the entire local basketball team came along just as long as the doctor showed up in time and there was anesthetic on hand.

Hal gratefully headed off to the awaiting room and I concentrated on being a duck.

This was the first time I was offered an epidural so I was conscious for the birth. Steven was born at three in the morning, weighing seven pounds six oz. He had enormous blue owl-like eyes like Mark's, a nose like a miniature ski jump and the look of an old soul.

From the beginning he found it amusing to be throwing in his lot with parents who were struggling to learn what he already knew. From the moment he could fasten his tiny fingers around a hammer, he built wooden robots. He had the strongest sense of self I have ever seen in a human. Peers never dismayed him. He always SEEMED perfectly reasonable; he'd fasten his big blue eyes on us, agree with everything we said and continue doing just whatever he planned to do in the first place.

We took him home dressed in the little hooded sweater his brothers had worn and a new blue nightie with drawstrings at the feet. The boys were delighted with him.

"What's his name? When are you getting the next one?" The washing machine is broke."

We had carefully read up on the best way to introduce a new baby into the household and bought a couple of plastic dolls that wet their diapers after being fed bottles of water. These were received with whoops of laughter and,

"You mean the doll gets a bottle and wets its pants and you play with it?"

While I was tucking the dolls away at the back of the top linen closet shelf, the boys gave their new brother his very own fishing line and a small can of bait.

And now we were five.
Chapter 9

THE RUNAWAYS

Blame it on sleep deprivation, but whatever the cause I let a rebellion get way ahead of me and the next thing I knew Mark and Scott were noisily preparing to leave home.

It was clear to us that by the time they were house trained and good company and their manners were so improved we could take them anywhere that they would strike out on their own. I just wasn't prepared for them to do it at the ages of five and three.

Truthfully, Scottie had declared himself earlier than that, but had always backed down and given us a second chance, but one day we had blundered beyond forgiveness. As I recall, we would not agree to outlaw baths and that was the final straw.

At first, I thought it was so cute, the way they were asserting themselves.

They marched into their room at the end of the hall and began opening drawers, selecting clothing and throwing it into a pile on the floor, separate from the normal piles on the floor. I crept quietly back to the living room to report to their father, who was sipping a cup of coffee and murmuring, "Maybe we could compromise on one bath a week."

The rebels were ready to head the wagons out, or wagon, singular. In this case, a sturdy Flyer that had been a Christmas gift when we were okay parents. Flyer was pulled up smartly to the back door and the clothes, stuffed into my lavender and cream king size pillowcase, were tossed on board. A box of animal crackers that were supposedly hidden on the second shelf behind the tapioca was added to the collection along with a tin of peaches, though I didn't see any sign of a can opener. Not that they knew how to use one.

Their father decided to try reopening negotiations; "Would you like to step inside and talk about this?" "Nope. We're goin' and we're not never cummin back," sprayed Scott, not one to overlook a chance to get in another hundred words. Off they went, managing to gather a rag tag troop of fans trailing at the rear.

I had observed that visionary look on Mark's face; a look I've learned to dread. It meant that he was planning not just the night's campsite, but was moving along to tomorrow, when they would shoot buffalo and trap possum for food. I nervously commented on this to Hal, who seemed to be taking the affair quite calmly, in fact he pulled out a book he hadn't had a chance to read for months, a Christmas gift.

"Don't worry, "said my fair weather friend, "I'm banking on Scott's love of comfort to drive them home by nightfall."

He settled in his armchair with a tray of cheese and crackers and cracked opened his book, looking relaxed and calm. I sat directly across from him with my arms folded, sighing once or twice. It took five minutes. He placed a saltine in the book as a page marker and announced, "I think I'll just take a stroll down the block and see how the wagon train is making out. Care to join me?"

"Me? Oh, goodness, no. I'm going to be too busy cleaning the copper pots; they haven't been touched since the first month of our marriage. Besides, one of us should stay with the baby."

He returned to cheerfully report, "They're parked at the vacant lot at the end of the block, and they've got their fishing lines in the stream. Did you know they got away with some bacon for bait?"

He returned to his book and refreshments and I took the opportunity to straighten their room

The phone rang and Hal went to answer. He came back down the hall to report.

"It's Mrs. Wilson, next door to the pond. Is she the woman with that under bite who sells raffle tickets for lost causes?" She wondered if we knew that the boys just got into their pajamas and are making some sort of tent arrangement out of blankets. You'd better talk to her."

"Hello, Mrs. Wilson, so nice of you to call. Yes, the boys are just having a little adventure, but we're keeping an eye on them."

She droned on in her relentless voice,

"They've come to my door twice now asking for cups of water and they said they've run away from their cruel parents, and I know what children are like, but what am I supposed to do?"

I laughed my soft, understanding maternal laugh I keep for such emergencies and explained that we had just read them an adventure story and they wanted to test life out on their own, and not to take their vivid imagination too seriously and if they became a bother, why just to let us know.

"No bother," she laughed back her voice firmly implying that she had two little girls who loved their parents and their home and wouldn't dream of running away.

"Boys will be boys," she smirked, "And where did you find that lavender and cream pillow case? It's the exact pattern I need for the guest room and isn't it a crime, the price you have to pay for decent sheets?"

By the time I had waxed their bedroom floor and darned those socks that had accumulated over the past six months and made a batch of chocolate chip cookies and their favorite banana loaf, the pioneers still hadn't returned and the sun was rapidly disappearing. Hal was more than half way through his book and had opened a tin of smoked oysters, varied occasionally with a bite of still warm cookie.

The phone rang. It was Mrs. Wilson, this time with a hint of steel in her voice, the same voice that convinced us to contribute to her Save the Turkey Buzzards fund, although we weren't sure there were any of those in Canada. She thought we might like to know that the boys had used her bathroom three times, leaving the seat up and that she had given them cookies since they hadn't been given any dinner and if we had plans for the evening to let her know because she just might want to go out herself and someone should keep an eye on them and she couldn't ask her baby sitter to take on that job. She hung up before I could finish telling her that we hadn't asked her to interfere with our children in the first place.

The refrigerator was desperately in need of cleaning and the clattering distracted Hal enough that he put down his book and went downstairs to tidy his workbench, musing that he hadn't seen its surface for some time and I heard joyful comments when he discovered his missing extension cord and later his circuit tester, and once he brought it upstairs to show me I realized that was the thing Mark had used on his birdhouse as an aerial.

The house was now in excellent order and we sat together in the living room discussing all the cute things they did when they were still confined to their playpens. We agreed that it was hard to be the grown up parent and it must be equally hard to be the little kids, but since we were bigger than they were, it was time to take action and besides, it was dark out there and neither one of us wanted to hear from Mrs. Wilson again. We briskly marched down the street, noticing that our walk was attracting shadows to the various front windows that we passed.

"Just wait until their kids learn to walk," I muttered, and Hal unwisely pointed out that one of those kids was already old enough to mow our lawn regularly.

As we approached the campsite, our flashlight zeroed in on two little forms huddled in front of their wagon, slapping at mosquitoes and not looking too happy. They seemed glad to see us and wondered if any zoo animals had escaped lately. We said we hadn't heard of any but best to take precautions, as we bundled their things on the wagon and headed back to the ranch.

Mark said dreamily, "Maybe tomorrow we'll start building an ark and we can fill it with animals and float down the stream and."

We rounded off the evening with bowls of cereal with an extra sprinkling of raisins, one cookie each, a taste of the banana loaf followed by a brisk tooth brushing to serve as a reminder that they were back in a house of rules.
Chapter 10:

PETER, CHARLIE AND THE PLUMBING

1956-57

Ellen Fairclough appointed as secretary of state in Canada, first woman appointed to Canadian cabinet.

Russian Sputniks one and two launched. First satellites in world, challenging technical superiority of west

***************************

We don't recall ever having just three children. Perhaps it's because we went from three to four children with lightning speed.

For the brief time that Steven was "the baby", I have a vague recollection that he was an obliging little creature who confined his fussy time to the hour when I was preparing dinner. I'd roll the bassinet into the cramped kitchen and sing to him while dinner was cooking and by the time it was ready he'd been fed and was willing to go quietly to sleep rather than endure another round of "Bye Baby Bunting." I did manage to write a few notes in his baby book and there's a lovely lock of butter blond hair glued on one page, but still we really don't clearly remember being parents of just three children.

I felt distinctly "off" that fall day when I left Mark and Scott with the sitter, wrapped Steven in his bunny bag and set off to see the doctor. After we settled in his office we discussed the weather, the children were all fine. His wife just had another baby and they were fine also, and I finally got to the point of my visit.

"I've been reading up on these symptoms I've been having, and probably because I'm so busy and tired, I seem to be having a false pregnancy."

An examination proved my theory to be incorrect and the doctor told me, between chuckles, that I'd made his day, although not necessarily mine, so I took the baby back from the nurse and returned home.

I phoned Hal to tell him that I wasn't suffering from some obscure disease that would require at least two weeks of undisturbed bed rest, but had apparently turned two sheets of the calendar instead of one, rendering our child planning system a little out of kilter and we would be having our daughter and final child sooner than anticipated. As a matter of fact, she was due on the heels of Steven's first birthday.

When I went down the hall to tell the boys, they might have been a touch more excited if I'd broken the news that the trash would be picked up on Tuesdays from now on. They kept their eyes glued on whatever Annette Funicello was saying, probably something profound like: "be nice to everyone except mothers who want to give you a little sister".

I turned back down the hall to study the nursery. This was the tiniest bedroom and it had been our intention to move Steven in with Mark and Scott when he was old enough and put our daughter in the nursery, but now the two babies would have to room together for a while, at least until Steven was walking. Then we'd have to look into triple -deck bunk beds, or a higher ceiling.

The smell of the beef stew wafting from the kitchen made me feel decidedly queasy. Mickey Mouse and his gang had sung their farewells and Sea Hunt began. We never could convince the children that the actor's name was Lloyd Bridgess. They were sure it was C. Hunt.

To keep my mind off the cooking smells I concentrated on the newly discovered problem of having to monitor their programs; the previous week we learned we'd been on a hit list and were in danger of being permanently zapped as a result of over active imaginations fired by something the boys saw on television.

It began simply enough; Mark and Scott trooped into the kitchen twenty minutes before dinner, asking for chocolate chip cookies. I refused them because we were having macaroni and cheese and they didn't like it because they thought it slipped down like snails and I wasn't giving them the opportunity to plead full stomachs. They wandered across the street to visit our neighbour Claire, who did not have any children and as a result she was always in good humor and welcomed brief visits from local children.

She looked up from her weeding.

"So fellas, what's new?"

"We're going to kill our parents."

"Why are you going to do that?"

"Because they won't give us cookies. We're gonna kill them and eat all the cookies and the peanut butter and chocolate milk and ice cream in the cupboards."

"What happens when you kill them?"

Big sighs. "You know- It's like the cartoons. You yell and show all your teeth and a big cloud comes up and they disappear."

Clair dropped by to warn us to watch for big clouds and a lot of teeth and since we weren't anywhere near our three score and ten, we took a careful look at everything they watched on television, mindful that it would soon be four against two.

Sunday nights grouped around the television watching Disney World was not our idea of an absorbing evening, but we were newly grateful to old Uncle Walt for his gentler approach to life. We particularly noticed that the parents on his shows always lived right through to the end of the program, although not without a lot of hardships along the way.

In what seemed like the blink of an eye I was back in the hospital having what my mother unkindly termed my annual vacation. We weren't that surprised when Robin Elizabeth turned out to be an eight-pound redheaded boy named Peter, and he took his sweet time arriving. His full name was Peter Robert, but the boys immediately dubbed him "Peter Rabbit", so we switched it around to Peter Martin Robert and they gave up on developing that. The baby spent his first few weeks in the bassinet beside our bed and then moved into his own crib in the nursery, with Steven.

Peter was born with a sure sense of squatter's rights and heaven protect the person who dared sit on his bed or borrow his toys without permission. Even when we were dressing him for the journey home from the hospital, I sensed that he was taking stock of every chocolate- covered caramel and would demand his share as soon as his teeth came in.

Although we hadn't produced the three boys and one girl we had planned on, if plan is the word, Peter was special and definitely intended for laughs. He was amiable and gregarious and didn't believe for a minute that he was anything but a grownup in child's clothing. He couldn't understand why he shouldn't address our friends by their first names and always called his father Hal, though I was always "Mom," because one of us had to have rules.

The maternity clothes made their way back into the neighborhood and I was so tired I could actually fall asleep in the middle of sprinkling the raisins into the rice pudding.

Mornings were the busiest time. I got the older boys clean, dressed and organized and then strip Steve out of his sleepers and into his bath in the kitchen sink. He was a chubby blond angel and let me blow on his curls and kiss the back of his neck before he was dressed in the third-hand overalls and went out into the play pen. Then I filled the nursery Bassinette with warm water and it was Peter's turn.

The first few weeks with a new baby are pretty basic; keep them fed and dry and hope they'll have the decency to get off late night feedings. After six weeks I began dressing him in outfits and we stopped referring to him as, "The baby." He loved his bath and smelled the way babies should smell and went off cheerfully to nap in his pram on the front porch, then a quick check that each child was where I expected him to be. If I moved fast I could get at least one load of laundry on the line and the breakfast dishes off the table and soaking before it was time to get lunch started.

Breakfast time was when Scottie was at his most gregarious. He toddled into the kitchen and fastened his intent blue eyes on the breakfast preparations.

"Well, good morning, Mommy, and what do you have planned for this morning? Is that hickory-cured bacon I smell and farm- fresh eggs, with your freshly baked bread? Well, I'll bet you're going to serve it with your strawberry jam, selected from the freshest berries..."

I gave him a look and he scampered down the hall to get dressed. This was another example of television intruding on our lives—even the commercials seeped into their heads. I whisked the eggs and milk together, savagely plotting a menu that would stop him cold in his tracks. How would he respond to a lump of haggis? Or cold spaghetti sprinkled with fruit loops. Well, he might like that. Luckily for us both, he had a built in sensory system that told him exactly when to knock it off.

This was a special Friday. We had arranged to see the lawyer about paying off the second mortgage, thanks to a series of free-lance articles on ways to maintain an organized workshop, written by the same man who complained, "How many times have I told you children not to use my tools? Steven, bring back my vice grips immediately. A child still in diapers isn't supposed to know what to do with these things. Why can't I ever find anything?"

To mark this milestone we planned to spend the weekend in a hotel with demerits given for anyone discussing people under the age of six. I hurriedly typed out directions to the sitter, who knew the children quite well although she hadn't spent a weekend with them before.

"Breakfast is apple juice and soft boiled egg. Mark likes his in the eggcup with knitted hat, Scott wants his turned out on a toast and Steven gets his scooped into a custard cup. For lunch, Mark has peanut butter and jam sandwich cut in half and Scott has peanut butter and honey and don't cut in half."

She knew my rules about sweets—they were forbidden. The children ate only simple, nourishing food.

I didn't dare tell her that Scott would only drink out of the Donald Duck cup with the built- in straw and Mark liked his in the yellow plastic hippo glass and I hadn't even begun the instructions for feeding the baby. After some thought, I tore up the first set on instructions and wrote the bare facts, a brief outline of what each meal should consist of. After we escaped, they'd let her know the rest.

We did spend a lot of our time telling one another what wonderful children we had and wondered if the baby would recognize us when we returned. We also slept in and took long walks and prowled second hand shops.

When we pulled into the driveway, they spilled out of the house to greet us, the housekeeper following with the baby in her arms. He did recognize us and gave us both a wet kiss.

"Did you manage to find everything?" I asked the sitter.

"Well, Mark and Scott insisted on drinking their milk out of the coffee cups and they broke that big one of your husband's, but they ate everything and didn't seem too lonely."

After she left I opened the refrigerator and found the remains of apple and peach pies and French fries and there was no sign of my instructions. The children were fine and the house was still standing and how many sane adults do you know who would be willing to look after four small children for an entire weekend?

The seasons seem to run together when the children are small; one minute the most pressing problem is locating mates for seventy two odd socks and the next minute kindergarten is out and the summer stretches into surprises.

Mark took to wearing a captains' hat and he was the pastor of road kill. Since we lived on a corner lot, we seemed to have more than our fair share of squirrels that couldn't outrun the busy traffic. Mark was quickly alerted and he dug a grave into the ditch. He buried the wretched beast, then removed his hat and held it under his heart. The little ones, sometimes as many as seven at a time, clustered around him as he said a few appropriate words. I was never sure what he said since I watched from behind the living room curtain but everyone appeared to think this was a good send-off.

The novelty of having Mark home every day soon faded and the children searched for fresh amusements. They grilled us about our childhoods and they stored the information away, saving it for a time when they could use it altered versions as ammunition. We did change the tales about our unsupervised gang wars and slingshot raids and concentrated on how obedient and kind we were and we were left with the distinct impression that if they dared they would have called us liars.

We would manage the birthday party for Scott in May, then Steven's in June, Peter's in July and Mark's in August. We were unaware then that we would later fill in April and double up in July.

Each birthday meant either a sponge cake or a four-layer cake heaped with seven-minute frosting.

There weren't MacDonald's or chuck E. cheese, clowns, face painting or magicians to buy our way out so we did our own, as well as the entertainment.

Mark and Scott had relatively easy parties; they'd have six or eight little boys who thought it was wildly funny to chew with their mouths open and tell disgusting stories that centred around animal excrement or anything else that might "gross out" parents or teachers. I believe teachers were feared more than parents, so we bore the brunt of it.

Peter and Steven still required more structured parties, though not for long if they were listening to their big brothers as intently as I thought they were. The menu was the same hot dogs and hamburgers, ice cream and cake, but they settled down to games that were organized by the parent, and since most of the parties were on a weekday, that person was me. The party was officially over when I handed them their balloons and their bag of candy. They were then free to continue playing in the back yard or could head off for home in the neighborhood.

One Saturdays they played quietly in their rooms and let us get an extra ten minutes sleep and we were so thrilled that they didn't have any trouble talking their father into a trip to a pet shop to find a quiet animal that would be cared for exclusively by them. It had to be smaller than a dog and rats and snakes were definitely out. They returned home with Charlie, a guinea pig nicely marked with tan and cream fur.

"We're gonna feed him and play with him and take him fishing at the pond and you guys can hold him sometimes," Mark promised his little brothers.

Charlie's cage was placed on the desk in Mark and Scott's room, and that very first night we learned that while Charlie might be sluggish by day he turned into a whirling dervish at night, running wildly around his squeaky tread mill performing a guinea pig's version of baying at the moon. Hal tried oiling the parts and then the wheel thumped instead.

"Boys, come into my study, I want to talk to you." said their father after several weeks of thumping wheel. He explained that the animal was keeping us awake at night and they had to admit the noise often affected their sleep. We had tried moving the cage to the basement, but that encouraged Charlie to try harder to get our full attention.

"We'll take him back to the pet shop to see if the owner will give him to some other family, and in a while, we'll talk about another pet that would fit in better."

They left right after dinner, with Charlie tucked into a small cardboard box with air holes. I was feeling too remorseful to point out that his cage usually looked like something that Ratso in Midnight Cowboy would consider homey. I bundled the babies into their sleepers and wound up the music boxes to prepare them for sleep, and reminded myself that I was the one who fed and watered the beast, and call it what you like, it looks very much like a well fed, furry rat, and let's not quibble about the tail.

I heard the car and went to greet them in the driveway.

"Hi, Mom, look what we've got. Dad says we can play outside in the dark for half an hour and pretend these new flashlights are ray guns."

Their father looked amused.

"They were getting sentimental by the time I got the car parked and we asked the pet shop owner to take Charlie back. He gave me some pretty cold stares and told the boys he promised to find Charlie a good home, and then he insisted on giving each of them a quarter. Their tears were dry by the time we left the shop and went to the hardware store next door. Each one decided on a flashlight, which cost $2.25 each, and then there were the batteries, but that's still a lot cheaper than the table hockey game they had their eyes on."

The cage hadn't been put away before Mark brought home a new Charlie that a neighborhood boy was ordered to unload from his family home. This one was guaranteed to be silent, although we never got a straight answer about why he was being given away.

Steven did something with the tread-wheel to stop the squeaking at night but we were still kept awake by the nocturnal noises. This called for another talk in the study and I managed to be occupied feeding Peter his mashed peas and couldn't take on the task.

"Mark, we didn't agree that you could own another Charlie, and this one is even noisier than the last one. When I get home tonight, I expect that animal to have a new owner."

That evening, he called Mark into the bedroom.

"Sure, Dad, I gave Charlie away."

"And who did you give him to?"

"I gave him to Scott."

******

My neighbours often considered my rapid pregnancies as something that might be catching. On the other hand they were dazzled by my jewel among husbands who relished household repairs and tackled them on the spot, even if he had his coat on, the car keys in his hand and the movie started in twenty minutes. In fact I am the only woman I know who sometimes has to delay revealing the news of some mechanical disaster. So you're wondering why I'm not overjoyed. It may not seem like a problem but what would you do if you had the cheese soufflé planned for seven o'clock and he finds out at six - thirty that the children poured Kool-Aid in the humidifier.

On this particular evening I'd made an interesting casserole out of ground lamb, mint and lemon, guaranteed not to interest the children but a favorite of Hal's. And by coincidence I had also, that very afternoon accidentally flushed a diaper down the toilet and the plumbing had ground to a halt.

"Now, when your father comes home, don't tell him about the diaper until he's had his dinner. Is that clear Mark?"

"Yep."

"Scott?" "Yep."

Satisfied that the decks were clear, I returned to the casserole.

"Daddy's home," chorused the boys.

"Is that your Greek casserole that I smell? I'll just change my clothes.

"How's everything boys?"

"Fine, Dad," said Mark.

"Just great, Hal," said Scott."

"Daddy the toilet is broke," said Steven.

I turned the heat down low and we all sat on the basement stairs to watch.

"Now, I'll have to break this seal in the waste pipe and we'll have the diaper out in a jiffy."

Nothing happened.

"The seal is really firm. I'll just tap it with the hammer."

Whoosh...the seal gave way and a torrent of liquid waste hit him full force in the chest. There was a moment of silence.

He took a cautious breath and sighed.

"Well, here's the diaper, I think. I'll just put the seal back and wash the floor and have a shower and we'll have dinner."

The boys wandered off to sneak a little television and I checked the oven.

Much later in the evening, when the children were fast asleep and we finished tidying up the toys, it was too much and I exploded with laughter.

He looked up from his paper,

"You had a good day? Did one of the children do something funny?"
Chapter 11

VANCOUVER HERE WE COME

Best movies of 1958: Vertigo and Auntie Mame

First video game developed at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Time magazine Man of the year: Charles de Gaulle.

Stereo records introduced

Hula-hoops are a new fad

*******************

Summer was approaching and I was looking forward to a slower pace. Nursery school would be done and I could let up on the fresh pressed tee shirts and polished shoes. Aside from a couple of birthdays we should have a lazy time of it.

Next thing I knew we were three thousand miles from home.

Hal's vacation was coming and my parents offered airfare for all six of us to spend that time with them in Vancouver. Did they think this through? That would be two adults ("the kids" to them) and four little people under the age of seven. This was heavenly. We could show everyone what absolutely wonderful children we had. We could also visit our friends and catch up on their babies, visit our old childhood haunts and get a fix on how much homesickness was left.

I dropped those lazy-days-of-summer thoughts and tried to figure out how to make attractive outfits from my limited wardrobe of tee shirts and chino pants.

We arranged to take a midnight flight in hope that the children would sleep through the trip and it might have worked if Peter had been old enough to understand the plan. At the last minute, we eased the children out of bed and dressed the three older ones in their tan shorts and identical green blazers with gold cord trim. I wasn't dressing them alike for "cuteness". If one wandered off, I wanted to easily describe what he was wearing.

Each child carried a tiny green satchel just big enough to hold a favorite book and crayons, except for Peter, who would have to depend on his fellow passengers for amusement.

The stewardess gave us a little cot that hooked overhead; that little cot had no restraints of any kind, but then we hadn't heard of car seats either. I tucked Peter in and he spent the rest of the night hanging over the edge, defying gravity and shouting, "HI," at the weary passengers.

We took turns napping before switching to the aisle seat, ready to leap up each time the baby threatened to take a dive over the side. In the morning the pilot invited the two oldest ones into the cockpit and they were unimpressed. We wondered why they wouldn't let mothers and fathers have the thrill instead. We would have been impressed.

Just as the plane was heading down into the airport, Mark parted with his breakfast and Steven got out from under his seat belt and took off down the aisle, and by the time we got off the plane we were not that clean- cut couple with the adorable children. But we all did get off the plane, and the stewardess was gratingly effusive.

It was fun to be back and show off the babies, but unsettling to realize that Vancouver simply wasn't home any more. If I had been the type to threaten to go home to mother that trip would have put an end to that fantasy, since I had just come from home while mother lived in a place I didn't recognize any longer.

I strolled along Forty-First Avenue in Kerrisdale district, the core of my childhood and didn't recognize one familiar face. Where did everyone go? At least the Safeway grocery store was still there. I wondered if the meat market down the street still had the frozen food lockers at the back of the shop, where my father stored his winter supply of moose and deer meat.

Circa 2015 2756 West 37th Avenue

We borrowed a car and drove past our first house and found that the owners had stripped away the raspberry bushes and painted the outside a blinding green, but the back fence we had built ourselves was holding together very well. We passed my old family home and the same nasty green was apparent. There must have been a paint sale. We took the kids to Spanish banks, our "courting" beach, and they loved to play in the sand and watch the Tugs out on the water while we got reacquainted with the mountains in the background.

Eventually one of my children would live part -way up one of those mountains.

Most of the visit was spent at Point Roberts, an American-side property on the Gulf of Georgia, a thirty- minute drive from Vancouver. When I was growing up my parents rented one of Freeman's Cottages at Point Roberts for the entire summer. Each morning I scoured under rocks for a can full of spiny black worms and then I set out in a borrowed leaky rowboat, with a line tied to each oarlock and one to each big toe and a bailing tin close by. I was deathly afraid of water and never did learn to swim but I loved to fish. If I didn't have use of the boat, I'd sit at the end of one of the dock and catch small sole or bullheads. You eat the sole and throw back the bullheads. Sometimes I'd hook a dogfish, which resembles a small shark and has skin and fins like sharp needles.

The beach cottages of my childhood were referred to as "camps;" only easterners had "cottages." These rental camps were old wooden shacks with gaps in the walls so big you could see the outhouses at the back and the pumps situated ominously close to the outhouses. After many years we were in line to rent "The Crow's Nest,' which was a shack on stilts but had its own pump on the porch.

My parents were eventually able to buy beach property up by the lighthouse and they built a prefab log house complete with indoor plumbing and running water and even electricity. My father also bought a cabin cruiser with an inboard motor that seated six or eight. It was in that boat that for a beautiful moment my kids saw me as sportswoman of the century when I pulled in a six- pound salmon. Their description of that catch got more impressive each time they told the story, their arms stretched out as far as they could get, and I was the last person to stop them from exaggerating.

One thing was the same; the water was cold and rough and the beach was rocky and the children did just as we did as children, they gasped with shocked delight when a frigid oncoming wave rushed in and knocked them down. Then they climbed up on their feet and rushed back for more.

On our first day there, Peter celebrated his first birthday with a cake his grandmother had baked for him. Peter's first year had been shaky; he'd had his first asthma attack when he was six days old and he was frail. He wasn't able to crawl or roll over as early as his brothers. That trip marked the beginning of a stronger baby and he gained strength rapidly.

On our first morning there, we were all standing at the big picture window in the living room while Grandpa told the children about the whales that passed by regularly. As though he had pre-planned it, a geyser of water shot up in front of us and a pod of whales drifted by, slowly playing and rolling about while the show-off of the group leaped up into the air and danced on its tail.

We loved the visit but I found myself wondering how our house was faring without us and I wasn't mom to my kids when I was in Grandmas' house as much as I was her daughter with some cute little dolls.

Hal had to return to work a few days before the rest of us, so I was on my own for the return journey also an overnighter.

This time, we got a plane that didn't have facilities for a clip-on cot, and the baby and I were lap-mates. Mark didn't wait until the last five minutes before he parted with anything he might have eaten in the past week, and a sailor sitting alone offered to keep Scott sit with him, not realizing that he was condemned to five hours with a gregarious four-year old seatmate.

When the stewardess brought lunch, I watched Scott drain his carton of milk and nudge his seatmate,

"Thay, Mac, can you git me another milk?"

After a while "Mac" found himself escorting the young man to the door of the washroom, with a curt warning from me that the door can be opened from the outside young man and that's what would happen if he took too long.

The flight home was bumpy and the novelty had worn off. The children were like restless leopards itching for any unsuspecting prey to pass by.

We put down in Toronto to be greeted by a relaxed and loving father/husband who had had the foresight to arrange for a sitter to take over for the next few hours while we went out to an adults-only dinner together.

When we left the restaurant something in my back ceased to function and suddenly I was bent out of shape like a pretzel. I attributed it to a spasm and figured it would correct itself in a day or so. I managed to cope with the kids although it was hard to lift Peter out of the playpen when I looked as though I was battling a fierce gale. I remember one moment when Hal and I were out in the car and he parked so close to a steep ditch he thought the car would fall in. "Jump!" he ordered. I think that's when my back decided it would be best to heal in a hurry.

I've since learned that my back goes into spasms to signal that I'm undergoing too much tension, and six children in an unfamiliar setting fill those criteria.
CHAPTER 12

SITTERS WE HAVE KNOWN AND LOVED—OR NOT

Sitters come in a range of types, and you can't tell how they'll work out by their first appearance. When we first moved to Toronto, we called a responsible agency that sent us the first stranger we had ever left to sit with our child. She was a sweet grandmotherly soul in her sixties. We felt reasonably confident as we left and Mark waved to us from the front window. When we returned at midnight, he was still standing at the front window, fully dressed and his face swollen and blotched with tears.

The nice lady beamed at us.

"Little Joseph didn't want to go to bed until he saw his Mommy and Daddy."

We had better luck after that but we didn't go out often and then we moved to Richmond Hill and began the cycle again.

We found nice ladies who had lived in the town before the building boom. First, we had Mrs. Fox, who was a kind but testy lady but she lasted for quite a while before she retired.

There was a neighbor's teen-age daughter who at least seemed to understand about exits and head-counts. Our neighbour whose kitchen faced our kitchen reported that once we left, the fridge door remained open until we returned and we could count on a missing ice cream supply and pretty well anything that didn't classify as healthy eating.

Then an agency opened up in town and we worked our way through all their people with varied results and they folded after a year. It isn't that our children were menaces, but the turnover rate was high. There was one chirpy little woman who was never sure where the kids were, considered a healthy meal to be French fries and wieners and she chipped every dish she touched.

The worst agency experience was the woman who arrived with excellent references. We tried to overlook the black, skin- tight rayon dress that made us wonder if she had personal plans for when the kids were tucked in.

We were to spend Friday to Sunday in a downtown hotel and we did manage one night. She called early Saturday morning to report that Mark had thrown up during the night and needed us. We rushed home to find our little boy lying in a sorry mess, his pajamas and sheets unchanged. The sink was full of dishes and the children weren't dressed.

There was also a jewel that washed the dishes and diapers, cleaned the babies' white boots, bathed them before bed and looked around for mending to do. There is a special place in heaven for gems like that one.

Sitters became less important when my parents re- entered our lives when my father's promotion meant a five-year move to head office in Toronto.

Funny thing--When my parents married off their last child, they acted with almost indecent haste to sell the family home, buy a red sports car and travel as much as they possibly could.

The move east changed them back to their original state and those madcap hedonists transformed into doting grandparents.

We proceeded cautiously because I remember so clearly when Mom stepped in unannounced to begin Mark's toilet training. Just out the blue she deemed him ready for the experience but she neglected to check it out with him.

"Toilet training, "reported mom virtuously," can be accomplished with very little trouble. It just takes a little persistence on your part. Why I remember that you children were all completely trained by the age of six months"

I'm sure she meant six years but she was at an unfair advantage—it's me she's talking about.

The poor little kid probably suffered from numb- bum syndrome but she persisted until he tossed the diaper and used the potty.

There was a bright side to their-emergence into our lives.

Where else can you find a thoroughly dependable, loving and free sitter who walks in on Friday afternoon when I'm struggling with the diapers I didn't rinse out yesterday and calmly invite me to pack and spend the weekend at her clean elegant city apartment while she whips the children into shape? From glorious experience, I knew the refrigerator was full, the martinis chilled and the sheets were linen.

The first few minutes of the drive down to the city were spent relishing the promise of rest, relaxation and adult pursuits available to us, and then the conversation would invariable switch to,

"Did I tell you that the baby insisted on using a fork today and he was furious when the applesauce slipped through the tines," or, " We must remember to make an appointment with the doctor to have Scott's stitches removed."

The only thorn in this bouquet of roses was the inevitable phone call bright and early the next day.

"Those children are so beautiful and you would be thrilled to see them now. We scrubbed them all in a bubble bath last night and again this morning and they look so pink and rosy. We made them a proper breakfast and they ate every bite, and now they seem to have so much more energy. We're just about to put them in the car and get them some clothes because I couldn't help noticing their clothes are in threads."

In my calmer and rested state I correctly interpreted this to mean that they were having fun and the children were cooperating with the game plan, and we took turns making proper sounds of appreciation.

My mother remembers her own three children as well mannered, scrubbed angels who won perfect attendance ribbons at Sunday school, never fought and absolutely never had to be reminded to eat their vegetables. I'm the last person to dispute those memories since I was one of those perfect children but I clearly recall the time I was forced to sit in the dining room until bed time because I wouldn't eat any turnip and I haven't spoken to one since.

I also recall the time my father roared,

"I don't want to hear about another fallopian tube until I've finished dessert."

Reports to the contrary, we were not coping with fish forks and finger bowls at eleven months of age, but I will grant you that my brothers and I never rolled in wet tar after the road crew moved on, or dug up the tulip bed to locate the corpse of a turtle who died a year ago, although I do recall that when I was about seven and at Point Roberts, I had become enchanted with a tiny black chick. All the other chicks were yellow but this one was different and it was ostracized by the others. Finally, they pecked it to death and the farmer had tossed its tiny body into the weeds. I retrieved it and put it in a tin and stored it in the unfinished walls in my parents' room. I wanted it to be with family. I hadn't mentioned this to my parents who finally did a search to find the source of the unpleasant aroma and my father, refused to divulge the poor little mite's final resting place.

When the grandparents came to dinner, one child invariable gagged on the creamed corn and another would burst into tears because his brother got a slice of ham one millionth of a centimeter larger and we knew full well that neither one of them would finish it all anyway. That was when we heard the tales of those perfect children they had raised.

On the other hand, grandmother could separate out the stinker of the week, the one who scrambled a hall-full of rubber boots during recess and autographed the new bathroom paper with his own name and had the gall to declare he'd been framed. She'd give him her undivided attention, praise him lavishly when he buttoned his shirt almost correctly and by the time she was through the child was again feeling truly special.

By Sunday night, when we returned feeling spoiled and rested, her skin was still unlined and glowing, but there were dark circles under their eyes and no more fibs about the ease in which we were raised, and grandpa's back would mend soon and next time he'll remember four children on one back at one time is too much.

The only time we can ever remember Grandma's confidence slipping even a little was the time, a couple of years earlier, when she came to visit, and shared the room with Mark and Scott. One night, the boys wouldn't settle down and we had run out of threats when Grandma stepped in.

"Now, if you two don't go right off to sleep I'm going to have to get on the plane and go back home."

There was total silence for a minute, and Grandma decided she had won and started to close the bedroom door.

"Hey, Gramma," piped Scott, "You forgot your thootcase."
Chapter 13

A DORMITORY IS BORN

1960 "I wonder what an office manager does that I don't do?" I asked myself while I stared at a mountain of dirty clothes on the floor of the laundry room, trying to decide whether the outgrown corduroy pants were in good enough condition to be turned over to the next child and how many new pairs would we have to buy, and I wished they all had feet that matched so we didn't have to buy brand new oxfords all the time.

I admit I sometimes daydreamed of tucking my briefcase under my arm and driving home from the office to a dinner someone else had cooked, but on the other hand, who wants to drive home for an hour in rush hour traffic? And where is it written that I wouldn't be cooking that dinner?

I finished half the pile and went upstairs to start the slumgullion, a hamburger and anything else left in the fridge dish.

"Who's dripping blood on my freshly washed floor?"

"It's me, Mom. I got attacked by an arrow."

The boys had been inventing good blood substitutes for their games and I assumed the splotches were ketchup and water, though ginger ale made a nice frothy mixture. I followed the trail to the bathroom, preparing my hundredth speech on keeping blood outside where it belonged.

"Scott, you're bleeding. You're REALLY bleeding. "

It happened that Tommy Knott, Scott's closest friend, was given a bow and arrow set for his birthday. I don't care what anyone says; the toy manufacturer who truly believes a child will make do with suction tips on the end of an arrow is a childless fruitcake. The boys had removed the suction cups and whittled the tips to a fine point, and when they were satisfied they had the real thing, warfare began. I considered the wisdom of making this an educational vignette and telling him about the weapons Vikings really used, but I had a hunch they could figure out how to get their hands on axes and maces.

I called Mrs. Knott and explained what had happened and she was horrified and promised to remove the weapon and she said did I know that Mrs. Abbott was expecting again and the word was that I was and I said my goodness no, we had our family and did she play bridge as we needed a fourth next Tuesday?

I called my husband to remind him to come home on time because the sitter was coming at seven sharp and the movie began at seven twenty.

Peter came along and said, as always, "Who you talking to?"

"I'm talking to Mister Snerf."

"Who's Mister Snerf. There's no such person as Mister Snerf. Who're you really talking to?"

"Here, you speak to Mister Snerf," and I handed him the receiver.

After a brief listen, he tossed the phone back at me and roared, "That isn't Mister Snerf. That's Hal. You make me so mad!" and he stormed down the hall.

Now, my husband and I generally talked on the phone once a day and each time Peter insisted on knowing who I was speaking to. There is only one person I address on the phone as "Honey", and I didn't think it should come as a surprise that the caller was his father.

Then my phone rang again and it was Dorothy Turner to say we hadn't met but she knew all my children and she was awfully sorry that their dog Skippy had bitten Scott; well, it was really just a nip and didn't break the skin and it happened last Monday or maybe it was Tuesday because that was when the egg lady came and she remembered the dog got out when the gate was left open.

I said that Scott hadn't mentioned the incident and besides, our puppy had nipped at her Chris this morning and Fang was such a disagreeable animal she would probably have been pleased to tear him limb from limb if she didn't still have milk teeth, and we were trying to find a childless couple to take her.

I returned to the bread making. I don't know how mothers manage without a lump of bread dough to push around. With this lump in front of me I can work out any aggression in a productive way and have four perfectly wonderful smelling loaves to show for it. With good sense and a fair share of dramatic timing, the bread would be ready to come out of the oven just when school let out for the day.

Bread- kneading time was the best time to sort out problems. By the time the dough has been thumped and smoothed into the proper shape for the pans those niggling worries had fallen into better perspective.

I considered our spending.

I had an efficient accordion folder made of cardboard that tied together with brown ribbon, and every payday I went to the bank to withdraw some cash to take home and put in the envelopes; this had to last us until the next payday, in one month's time.

I put cash in the section marked "Groceries", and one for "Entertainment", which was a misnomer because it often was three dollars and there isn't very much you can do with that and one for "Egg Man", "Bread Man", and "Milk Man". I'd almost forgotten those days when all those items were delivered to the door. The eggs had bits of straw clinging to them; they were so fresh from the farm.

The money left in the account covered the mortgage payments of $78.23 a month, plus car payments, bank loans and a slush fund intended for insurance payments that came due over the year. This system worked reasonably well when Hal was on salary and we could count on payday coming punctually every two weeks. The system was flawed when he worked as a free-lancer.

I don't think we were the kind of people who could have handled credit cards. Not then. Our lives were best spent in cash and carry.

Once the money worries were kneaded out of the way, I concentrated on a CHILD PROBLEM. Mark was the child with the problem today. The Davidson boy was using Mark as a human punching bag every day at recess and Mark was reluctant to go to school every morning. I had driven over to the school at recess to see for myself and sure enough, the boy was shoving Mark against the brick school wall and shouting at him.

We appreciated Mark for his gentleness and I didn't want him to solve his problem by becoming another Davidson boy. On the other hand, he had to know how to look after himself, and there were brothers coming along who would look to him for guidance on self-protection.

I had been raised with brothers who owned boxing gloves, and I knew how to box. I would take Mark to the garage after school and show him how to protect himself, and I'd show him one good throwing punch, just in case. My hunch was that once he knew how to use him arms to protect himself, his confidence would get a boost and the bullying would stop.

The bread was ready to be covered for the final rising and my worries were under control for now.

What was it about the fall that made us want to plant seeds? All our babies arrived in late spring or summer, a coincidence we never caught on to until it was too late. This particular October day the trees were a dazzling palette of reds, oranges and yellow, the air was crisp and energizing and there wasn't a hint of a warning anywhere.

It was Sunday morning. We were sitting around the breakfast table admiring Mark's initiation as breakfast cook. He was the first to try out a new learn-to-cook rule, begun the minute I could see that four children were not as easy as two, and never would be. The candles were still warm on his seventh birthday cake when he found himself in front of the stove learning to prepare a complete meal for himself of bacon, eggs, toast, juice and milk. The boys were awed not only by the culinary skills of their senior brother, but also by the fact that he was allowed to handle the stove dials without risking contact with the wooden spoon.

They went off to dress and we sat idling over coffee, admiring the baby staggering about grasping at miniscule wisps in the light rays.

"How sad, "I began, "we've just about lost our last baby. Petie looks so much older since we cut off his curls and soon he'll stop boycotting the potty chair. I couldn't imagine life without him but it doesn't seem a complete family without a little girl."

Hal looked more alert and rattled his newspaper.

"We've got the four children we agreed on; it would be stretching the truth to call it planning. And we've got to find a way to enlarge this place and get a car with a radiator that doesn't boil over after fifteen minutes of driving,"

His voice trailed off as he watched the baby clap his hands with amusement, happy to be alive. He toddled over and climbed up on his father's lap and hugged him. He sighed the sigh of a person who knows reason is on his side but he'll buy just one more lottery ticket anyway.

"Well, okay, one more child, but that's it, and if it isn't a girl we'll have to wait until they all marry and bring home wives."

Now the only reason I mention this discussion is because I was unknowingly pregnant at the time and the suspicion persists that I set up that chat, and I swear I didn't. It was the season.

The children finished dressing and returned to the dining room.

Saturday was a special day.

"Is it time to go to Mary's store?" sprayed Scottie.

Mary's was a compromise we worked out when our earlier rule of no candy, no ice cream, and no junk food was rescinded after a group of grade two's got together to compare notes and our household was declared inhumane. The new arrangement was that any child with a minimum of 12 teeth could spend ten cents on candy each Saturday morning at Mary's variety store; a ramshackle shop biding its time until the main street was spruced up and down it would come. Ten minutes were allotted for decision-making, which is as long as it takes to thrash out the merits of jube- jubes over jawbreakers. Then Mary, in actual fact a somber, skinny man with a three-day growth of beard, placed the selections in a little paper bag for each child and we set off for home. I couldn't decide whether it was the motion of the car or the smell of the candy, but I felt distinctly woozy that day. The children finished the candy within the hour; a rule they never objected to then went off to scrub their teeth and that was that for another seven days.

It was obvious something had to be done by the time that fifth pregnancy was underway and I was back in the Black Watch plaid maternity dress. The house had shrunk. Mark and Scott had their tractors, steam shovels, toy helicopters, record player; dozens of records and overflow of books were in the bedroom next to ours. Steven and Peter shared the smaller room down the hall, opposite the bathroom. Their room was crammed with two cribs, bath table, an overflow of stuffed animals, cloth- covered books and what should have been a lifetime supply of diapers. We had no idea where the baby could be fitted in. The only un-used space left in the house was the so-called playroom; a large unfinished space in the basement, where no one ever played, and that didn't seem a suitable place for a bassinette.

One rainy Saturday we tested out the notion this space could be turned into a dormitory complete with bathroom and play space. We used the children as measures, standing them in various spots like chessmen. Then we paced out and chalked a plan that was to work successfully for years.

We planned the entire project around the bathroom.

We chose a corner of the paced-out basement and assembled the children. Then we worked out placement of the tub and close by, a long bench for them to sit while waiting their turn. That way, we could put in two at a time and generally one waiting and one standing on the bench being dried off. Then we planned the counter and washbasin. Hal designed a fold out step that under the sink so they could see themselves while they sprayed toothpaste everywhere. We can't remember it ever being folded away and when they grew taller they simply straddled it. A toilet and a large linen closet fitted in and we were ready to begin.

Our bank manager through some unexplainable banking rationale considered us good credit risks. A couple of signatures later, we were even more heavily in debt and the proud owners of a home improvement loan, which didn't have the ominous overtones of, say, a fourth mortgage.

We visited the local wreckers and found a tub, toilet and basin as well as a couple of windows to go into the interior bathroom wall. The local electrician cum plumber assembled everything that connected to heat and water while we spent evenings and weekends building the walls and ceiling ourselves. When we moved the boys downstairs just before the baby's birth, we dismantled the bunk beds and arranged them and the dressers into partitions so that each boy would have his own defined space. Each bedroom was in a row along the west wall, leaving free a large entry- way, which would eventually become the television-radio-music sitting room.

Our last and essential undertaking was to install an intercom system between the dorm and the hall outside our room so that we could hear if anyone needed us in the night. Later this was handy when they reached their teens and thought an exit through the window would be fine for an evening stroll, say at three in the morning.

"This will make the second July baby," my husband commented as he drove through the busy Saturday traffic. "I'm sure it would have arrived on your aunt's birthday tomorrow if you hadn't insisted on the castor oil."

He didn't know how irritating a month of Braxon-Hix contractions could be.

"It may be the first one born in this particular car, though," I hissed through gritted teeth.

The due date was the next day, July the fourth, but I got tired of waiting and took a dose of castor oil to speed things along. You suck an ice cube first and then swallow the oil mixed with orange juice and it isn't bad at all. What is bad is that once you've set the wheels in motion it's too late to use the brakes.

"How far apart are your contractions?, asked the nurse.

"Two minutes," I snapped.

Let's face it, this wasn't a party; there was a watermelon down there announcing it was harvest time. I was cranky and out of sorts and longed to be home catching up on the floor waxing or finding a cure for hangnails. I eased into the wheel chair and Hal followed with his prized book.

The minute I was as mentally prepared as I'd ever be for the main event, labor stopped and things were so quiet that I even invited a book report. A nurse wandered in and casually commented,

"That Mrs. Tibet next door certainly is some worker; her baby will be born in no time."

I took that remark personally because, believe me I was doing all I could. On the other hand, if Mrs. Tibet could manage to get her unborn child to obey her, she was off and running.

Despite an absence of born-cracking pain, I was declared ready to progress to the delivery room. We left the novel- reader resting comfortably on my bed after the nurse thoughtfully plumped up a couple of pillows behind his head.

Once we were settled, I found enough time to thoroughly commit to memory the green wall tiles and then turned my attention to the arched brows of the masked nurse directly in front of me while she stared intently down at god knows what. The door swung open and the anesthetist came in.

"Hello, how are we doing? Is our baby ready?"

Apparently our baby was not ready, nurse said, and he departed to administer to the woman in the next room, probably the resourceful Mrs. Tibet, champing at the bit to get home and put up a batch of strawberry jam before nightfall. I wondered out loud where the doctor was. They pointed to him having a leisurely scrub through the glass wall across the room. Then, the baby was ready and the anesthetist dashed in time to give me a couple of whiffs of gas, and Michael swooshed out into the arms of nurse Arched- Brows. From the beginning, that boy knew how to make an entrance.

I'd never been this wide awake before when the other babies were born, and as I certainly wouldn't be this way again I took a good look around me, even leaned over to check under the table. Then I lay back and the nurse placed an absolutely gorgeous baby on top of me, still exclaiming,

"Well, can you beat that; one minute she seems bogged down and next thing, he shoots out like a cannon ball."

This was always the moment I remembered why I went through all this; here was a beautiful quiet baby and underneath that placid little face was a personality and character itching to make itself known.

Michael had a fringe of blonde hair and the shoulders of a quarterback and in his previous lives we all agree he must have been an actor. We're only surprised he didn't try to bring along a trunk full of disguises. He grew to become a serious little person who preferred to live his childhood as somebody else, someone dashing and brave and swashbuckling, while, in his rationed real life he was known to walk miles out of his way to avoid confrontation, although he gave unswerving loyalty to those he loved.

After a few days of hospital quiet I was looking forward to returning to my own personal world. The little woolen jacket was yellowing and reaching the serviceable stage the day we brought Michael home. The boys were waiting for us in the driveway.

"Did you bring it? When are you having the next one? The washing machine is broke."

Hal carried the baby into the house followed by the children and then some neighbors drifted in to admire the pine cradle we'd bought at an auction, and possibly the baby in it as well.

I took the flowers and lovingly- read paperbacks out of the car, and the suitcase of maternity clothes that would soon be recycled through the neighborhood. A dog-walker passed by.

"Is this the house where they have all the kids? Hard to know where they could fit another one in that house. Someone should tell them where babies come from."
Chapter 14:

THE DENTIST

When Mark got his first tooth his father was so flustered he shook his son's tiny hand and Scott signaled his first tooth, actually two of them, when he bit into my shoulder. He was four months old.

Eventually we arrived at the teeth dropping-out-stage.

Mark walked into the kitchen just as I was pulling the bread out of the oven. He didn't ask for any but just stood there, waiting. I took a careful look at him and he appeared to be cupping something in his hand.

"If you're holding something live," I said, backing away from him, "I want to know what it is before you open your hand."

"Nope, it isn't live, or I don't think it is. Look."

And there it was, his first baby tooth had come out.

"Won't your dad be excited when he gets home? You can put it under your pillow when you go to bed tonight and the tooth fairy will come and leave you ten cents."

"Gerry Brannigan got twenty five cents. What happens to the tooth?"

"The fairy takes it away to help build a pearly bridge, so it will always be a useful tooth." It seemed heartless to tell him the tooth would be on its way to the garbage dump next pickup day.

Scott wandered in to check on the availability of bread before dinner and his eyes looked distinctly alert when he heard that money was the end product of losing a tooth.

"When can I get money for my tooth? When can I? How did your tooth get out, get out, how did it?"

They carried the tooth to the bedroom while Mark explained. I heard Scott say, "Gerry Brannigan got twenty five cents for his," and I made a mental note to warn their father to stand firm. After all, this was the first of an avalanche of teeth and there was no point in taking a reckless step so early in the game.

While the chocolate pudding was cooling, I went to check on the boys. Mark was on one of the swings in the back yard bragging to two little boys who hadn't yet met up with the tooth fairy.

"Where's Scottie," I enquired, suddenly feeling a prickling of nervousness.

"I don't know."

Why do I ever ask? I went back inside and down the hall to their room. He was sitting on the lower bunk vigorously attacking his front teeth with a hammer.

"Scott Kevan, just what are you doing with your father's hammer? You know you can't touch his tools without permission."

"I want the tooth fairy to take my tooth too."

A quick inventory didn't reveal any chips or cracks and I began a dreary gothic tale about the fate of teeth that turn into bridges before their time, to say nothing of what his father will do if he comes home and finds his hammer missing. We agreed that while life was not always fair he would wait to make his financial killing in a more reasonable way and in the meantime he would settle for one slice of bread before dinner. This wasn't simple kindness on my part; I wanted to make sure that the chewing action didn't cause any pain.

When it started raining teeth, we changed the rules and requested that the newest gap-toothed child place the tooth in a square of tissue at the right hand corner of the living room carpet. It was then up to the resident tooth fairies to run a spot check nightly, but sometimes we forgot and our live- in journalist was called on for another episode of their favorite characters, "Wiggle, Waggle and Woggle." While taking the trio through another adventure, he worked out a satisfactory reason why the tooth hadn't been picked up last night and if the gap toothed child would care to check under the carpet now, perhaps the fairy has now made a delivery.

The dentist was always a good sport about our expected visits, but then, why not? One hectic hour out of his life, poking into all those tiny mouths and he's well on his way to buying that high-speed drill he's been hankering for. And we haven't even begun to discuss orthodontistry. We began the visits when Mark had a respectable number of teeth to make it worthwhile, then we took Scott along to get accustomed to the procedure. Eventually Steven joined the procession and now it was Peter's turn to actively participate.

I believed in letting them try to handle new experiences on their own, staying close by if they didn't feel ready after all. My job was to stay put in the waiting room, nervously thumbing through two- year old Newsweek's, occasionally crooning,

"And when we're finished with our nice dentist, where will we be going?"

"To the zoo," said Steven hopefully. "Naw, her idea of a big deal is to get us to help in the grocery store when she buys five pounds of hamburger," snapped Mark, whose tastes in entertainment were becoming much more selective.

When it was Scott's turn, he came back to the waiting room carrying his baby tooth, which we'd arranged to pull to make room for a permanent tooth.

"Boy, I'm gonna put this under the rug and the tooth fairy will give me lots of money because this was pulled and that's worth more than one that just falls out," he crowed.

"Now just a minute, we didn't say anything about that. A tooth is a tooth and don't expect anything more than a dime young man."

He scarcely had time to launch into his "Why are you against me" speech before the nurse took Steven away and he returned after he fixed the loose part on the mirror scope. Then it was Peter's turn.

"Now, Petie, you'll be fine, just fine. The dentist will help you climb into the chair and your brothers have told you about all the things he puts on his tray and after he's through-"

"Yah, I know; then we get to buy five pounds of hamburger," he muttered as he followed the nurse down the corridor. I was still reflecting how money conscious they'd become when anguished howls carried down to the waiting room. I knocked over the magazine and jumped to my feet.

"Aw, Mom, nobody's going to hurt him, don't run in and make a baby out of him in front of the Doc."

I was perfectly willing to make fools of all of us to be sure my little boy was all right but managed to save face when the dentist appeared, shaking his head.

"He's crying because I won't pull one of his teeth so he can get a quarter from the tooth fairy. I even offered him a quarter but he insists his tooth has to go."

There was one baby tooth beginning to loosen and he said he'd pull it if that was okay with me. We decided that would be more agreeable than listening to the howls of outrage, suspiciously like howls of agony to the two little children who had just entered the office and already were trying to claw their way past their mother to escape the torture chamber.

Peter returned; his face blotchy but triumphant.

"I got my tooth pulled. Now I can get a quarter."

"Now just a minute, no one said anything about a quarter; you know the tooth fairy leaves ten cents and that's that."

But no one was listening anyway and we made the appointment for six months' time and headed for the car.

"Peter, what's that you're pinging on the baby's car seat?"

"Oh, that's the quarter the dentist gave me for losing my tooth." He promised me one and I made him give me one and tonight the fairy will leave me another quarter."
Chapter 15:

BATTERIES AND FROOTLOOPS

I'll tell you right now that if Fruit Loops and AA batteries are a part of your life, chances are you're conversational expertise is not on the A- list at dinner parties.

But it could be.

You're an unbeatable problem solver and you're perfectly capable of handling five conversations at once with perfect clarity. At a dinner party you might stop the table talk in its tracks by briskly solving the current war threat with a brilliant insightful comment that prevents further conversation.

Parenthood teaches you to think faster than the speed of sound and speak in clipped sentences, packing as much punch as you can.

The scenario you're living today is probably more like this: Your three-year year old insists you drop everything, including the baby, and teach him to tie his shoes right now, this very minute.

The baby foregoes the notion of pabulum and a bottle and fends for himself in the playpen while you sit down with the little over-achiever.

The 5 year old chooses that moment to rush into the room insisting he told you he needs a town watchman costume by this afternoon, and the 7-year old stalks in demanding to know why he can't go to see "Psycho" when all the other kids can and if he can't, why he'll go anyway because he looks much older and at this second the 9-year old says he's absolutely got to have twenty dollars for ice skates and on top of all this your husband walks in the room oblivious to the traffic problem and launches into a monologue on whether we should borrow five thousand dollars to pay off the rest of the second mortgage and use the remainder as down payment on a car, or pay the entire second mortgage and use the rest as a cushion or should we use the rest to set up an investment plan.

You turn to the three year old and say now make two rabbit ears like this and I'll sit here and watch, then look the 5- year old straight in the eye and tell him that he is to bring me the camping lantern from the garage and we'll check out the costume box in a few minutes.

Then swing to the waiting 7 year old and tell him he cannot see the movie and if tries he will do without chocolate pudding for a full month and of course I'll know because didn't I know when he went swimming at the pond without a grown up present?

Next it's time for the nine-year old, impatiently tapping his foot, to say we will go to the Skate Exchange on Saturday and pick out the best pair of skates we can find.

Back to the oblivious husband who is still working his way through the pros and cons of his dilemma. I run the discussion through my mind and have a hunch the interest rates will be lowered soon and we might do best to sit tight for now. He pauses for breath I say wait six months.

Case closed
Chapter 16:

GLEN ECHO

For years we didn't plan our vacations. We didn't have to because they were always spent the same way; I'd pop into the hospital to give birth and my efforts were rewarded with a six- day stay in bed. Meanwhile, back where the walls were shrinking on a daily basis, my husband arranged time off from the office, (they called it vacation time but compassionate leave was a better description) and he'd look after things while I got re-acquainted with my toe nails.

Once our timing was way off and he happened to notice that I wasn't pregnant. For the first time in our memory we were left with the question of what to do during vacation.

"Now that we've done our bit to add to overpopulation, we should be able to afford some sort of vacation," he began," and I've been doing a little research. "

"I don't know whether you noticed, but if we don't get some money together to add one more bathroom we'll have to make a rental arrangement with the neighbor's."

He gave me an absent smile and wandered off to his study, returning soon with an armload of catalogues.

"Camping is the answer," he said, although I certainly hadn't asked a question. "With basic equipment we can have a healthy outdoor vacation and the children will love it."

He pushed a glossy catalogue toward me, showing the usual shot of gorgeous campsite beside a sparkling lake and a relaxed couple sitting by the campfire while the clean children romped quietly nearby.

"Listen, I hate to burst this lovely bubble but I refuse to spend vacation time cooking over a campfire and what will we do about clean diapers for the baby?"

"We'll buy some disposables. I've heard they don't disintegrate the way they used to and we'll try putting on two at a time; we'll get by."

I finished hanging the clothes and later, while I stirred the marinara sauce I began to think that an outdoor family vacation just might be fun. Hal mentioned the idea to the children and they immediately got into the mood, playing campout in the back yard and planning how they would sling hammocks between trees and sleep out under the stars. The baby probably wouldn't be any more enthusiastic about toilet training than the others anyway so the bathroom could wait.

The next day I was hanging out the usual array of diapers and bedding and he was pushing the lawn mower around the forts and pretend cooking fires.

I said, "Listen, if we're going to go camping, shouldn't we be getting some information about campgrounds?" He stopped mowing and ambled over.

"Actually, I've been doing some research and I think I've found the perfect spot, only twenty miles from here. The beauty of it is that we don't have to tote tons of clothing and wet bathing suits with us..."

The penny dropped.

"Aha! Those sunbathing magazines have finally got to you, haven't they? You've found a nudist camp, haven't you?"

He eased back a few feet in case I turned savage and explained that he'd been in touch with the camp owners and we were invited to come for a visit. The chronic absence of a whole night's sleep and the chance to cut down on endless purchases of little shorts and tee shirts and little socks that immediately lost their mates made the idea sounded almost appealing. I might even get a tan, something that hadn't happened since my single days when my most significant problem was matching a beach towel to my new white satin one- piece.

In the days when I thought I might have a career I had spent quality time in art school and nude models were frequent, although at that time the male models were required to wear jock straps. One of our male models was eighty-five if he was a day and in his case, the jock strap was a good idea.

We were staunch believers in the element of surprise and didn't tell the children where we were going, or at least, not all of it, until they were safely locked in the car without any means of escape.

Lured by the promise of a picnic in the country they willingly gathered in the station wagon, wedged in between the diapers, baby food, chilled milk, towels, adult food, food for healthy eaters, food for picky eaters, toys, sunburn lotion and sweaters and no one noticed the absence of swim suits. My husband took a last minute scan and removed the cat from Mark's knapsack, replaced Stevie's three-foot robot with a lap sized one, substituted an inflatable whale for a never-seen-before snorkel and we were ready, two suddenly nervous adults, four small boys and a baby soon to turn one.

During the first part of the drive, the children chattered with anticipation about the swings and sandboxes that were undoubtedly more interesting than their own, and my husband loudly cleared his throat. When they got older, they knew that signaled, "WATCH FOR IT." "He waited for a pause and jumped in quickly.

"This is a special playground we're going to today, and it's especially meant for people who like sunshine and fresh air."

They agreed they liked those things. Then he sprang his little surprise.

He was met with absolute silence.

I could feel Mark's cold stare right through the back of my neck, followed by Scott spraying," Where is my thwimmin thoot?" Steven looked up from his robot and asked, "Daddy, did you bring the Robertson screwdriver?" and Petie asked," Are we there yet?" We had pin- pointed our trouble areas.

We reached the gates and, the written instructions in my hand I jumped out to open the padlock. We drove up a deeply rutted winding road, past a sign saying, "Watch out for pedestrians." We brushed past scratchy looking scrub brush and the occasional cow and one final turn led us into a parking lot with several cars but no sign of people.

We all cautiously got out of the car and the sounds of laughter and splashing rose to meet us. Mark and Scott edged toward the top of the hill and looked down. They made a lightning-quick decision and the mutiny was over; they flung off their clothes and raced down the hill. My husband murmured that he couldn't leave them by themselves with the pond nearby and off he raced off in naked pursuit.

"Nice day," spoke a pleasant voice spoke behind me and I got my first glimpse of a nudist, which somehow seemed quite different from the models I sketched at art school. It might have been the absence of a jock strap. He introduced himself as Bob, the club secretary and he wore a peaked cap with Alberta Wheat Pool on the brim, sneakers and carried a brief case. He tipped his cap and sauntered on, leaving me alone with three children and a desire to go home and polish the silver, if I could remember where it was stored.

Steven was still sitting in the car muttering about his malfunctioning robot, so I undressed him and settled him back on the seat. Peter, meanwhile, began pulling off his clothes and I learned with startling clarity why one sock always goes missing as he made a perfect fling into the brambles. The baby didn't require much more than a fresh diaper and turned down the bottle of juice I was more than willing to give him.

Then I noticed that the dashboard was quite dusty from the drive and when that was gleaming, the glove box needed straightening. "See water," Peter asked. Steven and the baby watched me for guidance and short of changing the fan belt with panty hose there wasn't anything more to do, so I undressed, painstakingly folding each garment and stacking it on the front seat.

I picked up the baby and positioned him into a fig leaf arrangement, took Peter's hand and urged Steven and Mr. Robot to keep up with us. The trail opened out onto a lovely grassy slope scattered with tanned bodies, squirrels, hyperactive kids, quiet kids, nature lovers, white strap marks, in fact all the things you find in any summer camp ground. Mark and Scott were splashing with other children in the water and Hal managed to keep an eye on them while chatting with a couple of stunningly tanned women without a single stretch mark between them.

Before the afternoon ended we had met a lot of tanned people and inspected a lot of campsites and chose one that we would use for the rest of the summer, during vacation and weekends. After we trudged up the hill to the car, Hal managed to subdue his amusement while he pried the baby from me and rubbed my arms to restore the circulation and the baby was unnaturally active all the way home.

We toured the army surplus stores and bought an enormous canvas tent with a stitched-in floor and net windows with roll up blinds. It had a musty, old-canvas smell. We engrossed ourselves in planning the best use of space and Hal made sturdy boxes labeled, "lantern fuel, camp stove directions, first aid," and so on.

We bought five little green sleeping bags and air mattresses, unaware that during heavy rains, mattresses float but sleeping children roll off into the river flowing through the tent, stitched floor or no stitched floor. We were finally on our way, the car springs begging for mercy and Steven muttering because the crush of bodies pinned his arms to his sides and he couldn't work on the new Mr. Robot.

The minute we arrived the older children raced down the hill, scattering their clothes behind them and a bemused stroller offered to keep an eye on them while we unloaded the car. It seemed an enormous task to round up the camping gear, a baby, two toddlers and a robot and maneuver all of it safely down the hill, across the common and down the glen on the other side past the showers and into our own campsite.

By our third trip, our pale bodies were dripping with sweat and dirt from old canvas. I noticed Hal admiring a well-tanned lady who obviously had something better to do on Saturday nights than starch little white shirts and polish Buster Brown oxfords for Sunday school. I managed to get his attention by asking if poison ivy grew around here or were those blotches from too much sun.

We got the tent up within an hour, thanks to the dress rehearsals we held earlier in the back yard, and also the help of a couple of passing campers who happened to notice the dip in the center of the roof and expressed concern about our actually surviving in case of a sudden wind squall.

We organized the neatly labeled boxes and arranged the little sleeping bags and air mattresses with space in between. We set off with the collapsible jugs to get water, one labeled," For cooking only," and the other, "washing only." After only one day we realized why so many campers grouped their campsites together, leaving them without privacy; they knew the best place to be was near the water taps.

I didn't make up this next part. By the end of the afternoon, after we had all been in the pond and felt clean and relaxed a clap of thunder sent us all scurrying for shelter; My first thought was to collect the children and run for the car but my Hal, who was no country boy no matter what he said, insisted that nothing could be safer than our woodland retreat. The children were delighted with their first camping storm and I appeared to be the only one to notice we had pitched the tent directly under a grove of trees undoubtedly begging for a direct hit.

To compensate for the fact that I had probably sentenced my children to almost immediate electrocution, I wildly announced we would have hot chocolate and scrambled through "perishables," while Hal tried to get the stove started. He pushed the red lever when the blue one was critical but we maneuvered Steven's slotted screwdriver away from him long enough for him to get us all straightened out.

Charged with confidence when the water was actually heating and we were still alive, I said we would have marshmallows as well, and by the time we had searched through all the boxes, our labeling system was destroyed. We also realized we couldn't have brought everything from the car because the marshmallows were still missing.

Hal volunteered to brave the storm and trudge back for the missing supplies. As we reconstructed it later, he pulled the marshmallows out of a carton clearly holding several jars of baby food and squished his way back to the tent. When I realized the enormity of the error, I quickly assessed three options:

a) Send him back to the car, gambling that he would be sport enough to return.

b) Go myself and consider being sporting enough to return.

We settled for the third option and the baby never looked back after he got his first taste of hot chocolate and marshmallows, followed later by hot dogs. It didn't seem to matter because I wasn't convinced we would last the night before the storm got us, and at least he's die with a smile on his tiny face.

The rains continued for four days and we kept the children superficially clean by standing them outside the tent for a few minutes to let the rain wash them down, especially useful after a vigorous game of burying one another in the mud. We used up all the peanut butter and had read the story books so many times that even the baby was mouthing the words, but luckily, Steve ran out of robots and turned his attention to building us wonderful tables out of tree branches.

One morning, Peter sat bolt upright in his sleeping bag and indignantly announced, "Someone wet my sleeping bag." and we had a terrible time getting it dry before bedtime. Then we ran out of gin and my husband volunteered to "go outside" and would replace the peanut butter and marshmallows at the same time, taking Scottie for company. We gave them an enthusiastic welcome when they returned with gin, comic books, liquorice
sticks, and essentials like plastic pails and shovels, bulk size hot chocolate powder and a jar of queen size olives.

On the fifth day the sun grudgingly returned and we left our smelly cocoon to greet it, playing into the hands of mosquitoes that had spent their rainy days planning this moment. It was either beat them at their own game or give in to cabin fever with even worse results, so we settled for sitting chin deep in the pond, encouraging the children to spit streams of water at anything that flew by.

The human body comes in an amazing array of shapes and sizes, as the children were fond of relating to us in high-pitched voices that carried into the next town. I was sitting under the Hawthorn tree with Joan, discussing whether it really mattered if we sent the kids back to school before the chicken pox scabs were off the face when we both sensed things were too peaceful and jumped to our feet.

At first glance, everything seemed to be under control. The boys were clustered together on the raft having a serious discussion with the volunteer lifeguard. A second glance told us that the lifeguard looked flustered; in fact he looked like a man desperately seeking escape and because Joan's children weren't involved she scampered away. I edged closer, though not close enough to take responsibility for what might be happening, but close enough to discover the problem.

I spotted the object of interest. The poor man had not been circumcised, a phenomena the children hadn't seen before. I briskly snatched up the baby and located my husband who was seriously considering a spot of volleyball, which under other circumstances I wouldn't have missed watching for the world.

"Your children are asking for you at the raft," I called out as I swiftly sailed past.

The second Sunday of the month was camp business meeting day and all members were expected to meet on the slope beneath the tuck shop, to debate mind boggling issues such as whether we should form our own volleyball league and was it okay for the bread man to stay for a swim after he made his deliveries.

We showed up to prove we were sports and positioned ourselves where we could be part of the group but also keep an eye on the children, who were roaming about waiting for permission to go back into the water. The baby was crawling at my feet. He had been learning to stand but was having difficulty getting upright on the slope. For a while he was content to crawl, carefully threading his way through sitting and standing bodies. He telegraphed the need to find something to hang onto to pull himself up and I realized with horror that his target was Rudy, the club bore, kneeling on the grass and reciting the virtues of nudist living.

I was too far away to stop Michael as he reached up for the only available support, unfortunately a particularly sensitive member attached to poor Rudy. The baby took a firm grasp and pulled himself to his feet, then released his hold and tottered off.

Rudy turned a peculiar shade of grey and managed to continue his speech for a word or two in a strained high-pitched voice before he hobbled off to his tent. Hal had observed this and quickly sidled off to study the pool for algae and I hurried over to Mark.

"Honey, will you please find the baby and bring him back to the tent for his nap?"

Chapter17:

SERIOUSLY? A GIRL?

1961-greatest films: Breakfast and Tiffany's, Guns of Navarone

1962: greatest film: To Kill a Mockingbird.

It was a relatively peaceful time in the household and you'd think that we would have simply counted our blessings, all five of them and moved on. And we almost did.

Then we got a little cocky. We had, after all, successfully camped outdoors with five little ones the previous summer and apparently we were oblivious to the hardships of the previous winter. We decided to do something about the little girl we couldn't seem to be able to produce ourselves. We applied to adopt a baby girl, preferably twin girls of any race or nationality.

I don't know which was harder, getting the agency to take us seriously or having to tell my mother what we had in mind.

"Have you forgotten you can't keep a cleaning woman because they find there's too much work?" My very thought when I hired them.

We persevered with the agency and first appointment for an interview was set for four weeks' time.

Then the children and I got twenty-four hour flu all at the same time and my healthy husband gallantly spent his weekend mopping up and washing endless sheets, as well as squeezing oranges for juice, some of which stayed down. The boys recovered nicely but my symptoms lingered on.

When I got back on my feet Monday morning and felt well enough to reflect back, I did some quick checking and a double take in that order. I didn't need a doctor's confirmation. I knew. I called Hal.

"You know, the funniest thing just happened. I mean, who would have guessed? I seem to be pregnant."

After his initial shock he managed a couple of feeble ho-ho's. Then he unkindly said,

"You can tell the agency people. I can't face their laughter."

This time around I was thoroughly sick of the tangerine dress with the Peter Pan collar and knife pleats and the years of shoes with sensible heels. I'd been washing cloth diapers non- stop for nine years and craved pureed spinach at restaurants. Nobody else liked it at home and I couldn't be bothered to cook it for one person.

When Hal arrived home that night he didn't get a chance to discuss our new discovery. Instead he found himself calming a flushed wife who had just finished a chat with a policeman.

"Uh, was this a bad day?"

"Was this bad day? It depends what you call a bad day. The plumber came when the toilet stopped up and I couldn't wait for you to come home and now we know where Michael's missing shoe went. Then Peter got mad at Mark and Scott and took a side arm swing that not only missed them, he spun around three times before he fell down and that made him even madder. He came tearing into the house but didn't stop to open the storm door first and had to have twelve stitches in his arm. Oh, and be sure to make a fuss over his bandage."

"Uh, how did the police man come into the picture?"

"Well, Steven and his pal Grant heard us worrying about the cars speeding up and down the road so they decided to help. When a car approached, they stepped out to the middle of the road, held up their palms and ordered, "Stop in the name of the law!" standing at attention while the drivers screeched to a stop inches in front of them. They can't understand why we're not giving them medals for helping with traffic detail. Then the policeman lectured me about keeping five-year olds off the road and in the yard where they belonged which I didn't need and I told him that if they patrolled once in a while small children wouldn't have to do their job for them. Then Scott said, "Way to go Mom," and the man marched away in a huff."

My own true love managed to keep a serious look on his face. "Well, just remember, our children are so busy upholding the law and keeping the neighborhood free of road kill that they haven't caught on to the fact that not all children go to bed at seven thirty every night; we'll get them all tucked in and by then, you may find some humor in all this."

It's pretty noticeable that timing was not our strongest talent; in fact I'm not sure it was included in our vocabulary in those days, but we did have a knack for targeting the exact arrival date for the babies. That's because they arrived on a relative's birthday. When the time was getting close, I called each of our mothers to ask,

"Who in the family was born around the end of April?"

This time my mother came up with the winner when she said,

"Well, let's see, there's your brother, of course, on the twenty-second. That also happens to be Easter Sunday, so you'd better get the chocolate rabbits early."

Then she couldn't resist making her usual heartfelt comment about my husband and a pair of rusty shears and as soon as I hung up, I circled the twenty-second on the calendar.

Easter Sunday was a perfect day, though to be honest I wasn't feeling grand. In fact I was feeling like the proverbial beached whale with the vapors. The chocolate bunnies and candy eggs had been hidden in the worn baskets with their original colored plastic excelsior and the children were happily smeared with chocolate by the time we pulled out of the driveway and headed for the hospital.

There's always that inconvenient labor to go through before the prize is handed over, and each time it didn't get any easier. I was content for Hal to wait in a room somewhere and I didn't want to discuss the method of sharing my room with the baby, either. This was truly the last baby and I wanted to savor the last few days of undisturbed peace and quiet I would get until this one was old enough for nursery school. Bonding had never been a problem. Getting some rest had always been a problem.

That yellow duck looked less perky this time, slipping over those silky waves then dipped down without warning, and it took all my concentration to get it on board again. As usual there was a screamer down the hall and I think it has to do with customs. The screams generally came with an unidentifiable accent, and those of us from British stock secretly admired her while we kept a stiff upper lift and whined silently. Whatever gets you through.

The doctor arrived looking very cheerful for a man who had been pulled away from an Easter feast.

"Well, let's see, when is this one going to face the cruel world? And more to the point, how will your husband take it when I tell him it's another boy."

Since the duck was on an up wave, I managed to reply,

"It's okay, we're naming him Nicholas Paul and he'll inherit all the clip-on bow ties."

Nothing went well; the anesthetist came in to administer the epidural and he had just completed the nasty part when the doctor declared there wouldn't be time to continue so I was given a couple of hasty breaths of gas while the doctor reached in with instruments to turn the baby out of the posterior position. That was not pleasant so when the doctor and nurses began to laugh, I didn't join in; in fact, when Nicholas was swinging upside down by his heels I looked for red hair and decided to go to sleep instead. Then, I realized they were telling me it was a girl.

"Okay," I managed before getting back to sleep.

Hal met the stretcher at the elevator.

"Isn't it wonderful? Your mother burst into tears and my mother laughed and laughed. I'm going to see the baby in a few minutes."

My part was done and I'd had more gas to allow the doctor to do some tidying up and all I wanted was to finish my nap followed by a roast beef sandwich that wouldn't produce heartburn.

I was feeling much better when the nurse brought in my miracle baby and I again fell wonderfully and permanently in love. She had a wisp of blonde hair and china blue eyes and I could see by her expression that she was another old soul.

We spent days trying to pick a name.

"How about Nicola Paulette, so we don't have to scrap the name we picked."

"How about Easter, since she was born that day?"

We finally agreed to make separate lists and compare them. I came up with Melissa Jan, and he came up with Melissa Jane, so we had her christened Melissa Jane shortened to Liza Jane, and finally, Lize.

We bought her a tiny silver bracelet and when that got tight we got her the next size and eventually she would wear the slender silver bangles that belonged to my mother and then to me, as young girls.

She became the chattiest little kid you could imagine and when she worked out her place in the mostly-male pecking order, and when that job was complete, she became quieter and never missed a thing.

Her passion was the outdoors and she could skate at the pond for several bone-chilling hours when everyone else escaped to a warm house.

When I was born, my conservative family considered that the worst fate for me would be to go through life an old maid. Our baby daughter was born in nineteen sixty two, the year one

Magazine published an article titled, "Should your daughter go to college? No, there are less expensive ways to find a husband." Then just one year later year, "The Feminine Mystique" was published and "Old Maid" became a card game and nothing more.

We had produced five sons and a daughter in nine years and eight months in a haphazard fashion Our children would grow to adulthood in a more efficient era and they would peg their family planning around office schedules, maternity leave and when to have the tubal legation or vasectomy. I read recently that the birth rate dropped abruptly in the 1960's. I modestly claim we led the trend.

While I was loafing in the hospital, Michael was recovering from chicken pox, and was declared non-infectious by the time we brought the baby home.

"Let's see her. She's little. Too bad you didn't have a boy. The dryer is broken. When are you having the next one?"

When I kissed Mark hello I noticed he had a strange sore on his chin, and soon all the boys had impetigo.

"Soak the scabs in warm water several times a day, use the ointment and keep them away from the baby," said the doctor over his shoulder as he left to spread joy to other households.

Scott, whose timing was sometimes less than adequate, chose that particular time to bring home two baby raccoons whose mother had been killed by a car. They weren't weaned and we agreed to keep one and the other one went to the neighbor who thought animals were more fun than children. We named ours Timmy and he had formula from a bottle each time the baby had hers. Hal was not crazy about sitting up at two in the morning feeding an ungrateful creature with sharp claws, but we coped for one month before we came out of our sleep- deprived daze and the children hurriedly found a family with grown children who welcomed Timmy with open and hopefully, protected, arms.

There were two things you could count on in those days—I would either be pregnant or had just delivered and that would be the moment Hal changed jobs.

When it was time for Melissa's birth, the magazine folded and he decided to begin a full time career as a free- lance journalist, and because we didn't have any capital, he turned a corner of our bedroom into an office. That meant one more for lunch and a pot of coffee always simmering on the stove, along with a new baby, a raccoon, impetigo and a frequent guest for meals, the man who co-wrote a radio show with Hal.

Michael recovered nicely from his chicken pox and impetigo and graduated to a little cot in his corner of the dormitory. He still began his day wearing a crib blanket pinned around his shoulders and kept his mask collection at the end of his bed. When he felt chilly, he topped it all with a coat that had been passed down to him, with a spare key tied to the buttonhole. It was his ambition to try that key in every lock in his universe.

He and Peter made a perfect contrast. Peter was are incarnate of every Errol Flynn movie; he was devil-may-care, a true swashbuckler of the 1960's, while Michael was the perfect Walter Mitty, imagining wondrous deeds and exploits behind his masks.

Fortunately he relied most on his imagination while Peter was obliged to try out his ideas, like sailing over his bike handlebars into a brick wall because he wanted to imitate Steve McQueen. I don't think Steve McQueen ever ran into a brick wall but I got the idea. On the other hand, Michael invented truly exciting stories, though my all-time favorite was a serious and prophetic school composition,

"When I grow up I'm going to be a comedy writer and get paid thirty dollars a week."

The baby prudently took herself off night feedings and settled down to observe the running of the household.

Someone gave me a Boy Scout whistle that was perfect for rounding up the children. It was so loud the rule was that if you're too far away to hear it, why then you're too far away. The other mothers were sure that a whistle like that was enough for any neighborhood and taught their children to drop everything and come running when it sounded.

We bought a big, one- of- a kind A- frame playhouse on stilts for the back yard, and we installed an enormous sand box area underneath. The house had steps leading to its own porch and it even had a trap door. It immediately became off base to parents unless they were coming to offer glasses of lemonade and butterscotch cookies.

The one steadfast rule in the household was that when Daddy was writing he was not to be disturbed unless the crisis was monumental, and that went for wives, too but if a minor crisis developed around the time he had a writing block, he was only too eager to drop everything and lend a hand.

One day when he really was busy and didn't have a block, he looked out the window and spotted Peter framed against the garage wall as a target while Scott took aim with the kitchen carving knife. He rushed to the door and thundered,

"Scott, come to my office, this minute."

They went into the house with Scott somehow in the lead. When they reached the office, Scott jumped onto his father's chair and flipped his legs up onto the desk.

"So, Hal how's business?"

Chapter 18:

PAPER ROUTES AND CELEBRATIONS

If memory serves, the boys started their paper route careers because I went to an afternoon tea party.

I am a fairly reasonable person until I'm confined in a room with a lot of women without any particular agenda, and that is when the worst comes out in me.

It brings back memories of my mother's bridge clubs and tea parties when I was expected to pass the watercress sandwiches and perform a tap dance. The dancing lessons were intended to relieve my shyness but they failed miserably.

As an adult, I'd be sitting with otherwise delightful women who began comparing their children and I was nervously aware that when they got around to neighborhood pranks, sheer numbers alone would make one or two of my children ringleaders.

In order to change the subject from who might have let loose the toads in the school lunchroom, I heard a voice say, and it turned out to be my voice,

"I don't believe that children should receive allowances after the age of ten and my children will all be expected to have paper routes."

That diverted their attention away from the toads and it was safe to turn to Mrs. Masters to ask if she had ever tried horseradish in her chopped liver and she told me about putting a smidgeon of dry mustard in the Caesar salad dressing.

Then some skinny mother-of-one described her absolutely excruciating childbirth, rendering her in a jelly-like stage at the prospect of ever going through that again. She turned to me and said, bitingly,

"You seem to turn them out like little hotcakes. You must have a high pain threshold, if you have one at all."

Okay, I popped them out in the rice paddy and was back in the fields catching up on the hoeing by lunchtime.

I was back home and mixing up the porcupine meatballs (it's the rice that gives them the name) when Mrs. Emory called to say the boys had missed delivering the paper that morning and I explained they didn't have a route. Then the route manager called and said he heard my boys were looking for a route and I said we'd discuss it and let him know. Mark came home from school to say he met the route manager who gave him his route list so he could start tomorrow and now he'd have to have his own alarm clock and did anyone know where the corner of Centre and Willow was, because that's there the papers would be left for pickup

Hal made a special point of announcing that under no circumstances would we deliver a paper, collect for a paper, or have anything more to do than read the paper, and we would have stuck to it, too if it wasn't for something called the chill factor. That meant no matter what the thermometer read, some winter mornings were so cold that the poor little things might have been found pitifully frozen in midair, attached to the paper they were attempting to toss onto someone's porch. That was when he drove them. But those were rare occasions; most of the time they persevered on their own.

Mark and Scott started, then Steve helped and eventually took his own route, and Mike helped and later took over Steve's route, who took over Scott's route, and Pete switched from selling TV Guide and got his route and when Melissa was old enough, she had a deal with Steve that he would deliver and she would collect and they split the take down the middle.

When Scott started his route, he planned all week just what he'd buy with his first pay; his room would overflow with toys, he would buy toffee and liquorice allsorts and have his own phone installed. When the moment arrived, he and Mark had flowers delivered to me. To this day that memory brings tears to my eyes.

Imagine their dismay when the children learned that despite their commercial efforts they were still expected to perform household chores. Their father stemmed a budding work stoppage when he looked up from the leaky pipe under the kitchen sink to enquire if that meant he didn't have to perform chores either, in which case he would call a plumber and cancel our weekend plans to visit the wrecking yard, where wonderful greasy things from cars could be purchased and turned into wonderful greasy things for children to build.

I can sum it up by the dialogue in the next door bathroom one bitterly cold morning. The kids were clustered around the heat register that always seemed to be the warmest one in the house.

The temperature was minus 9F.

Scott arrived home from his route and joined the kids clustered around the bathroom register

"Don't touch me or my ears will fall off."

************************************

I devised the Board, a plan that was to eliminate the need for me to nag about doing chores. The Board was a square of plywood attached to the kitchen wall; I hammered in six nails and each child's name was printed under each nail.

Each day I'd write necessary tasks on slips of paper and attach them on the nails, making sure that each nail had the same number of slips.

It took my creative children about three minutes to figure out how to outwit the board. The first one home after school shuffled through all the slips and took the preferred tasks and so on, and the last one home was left with the least popular ones. They all saw the flaw in that and for a while I could hear their feet thundering down the street and they'd arrive home in a dead heat, each one struggling to be first through the door.

It was time to streamline the system.

The top slip on each spike had a number circled on it to represent the number of slips that should be on the spike. They figured out a way around that and then I included the name of the child to perform the task on the back of each slip, confident they hadn't yet learned to duplicate my handwriting, which tends to be round and the w's are upside down. Of course, indifference is the child's ultimate weapon and that board could get pretty cluttered until one of us threatened to hold a family meeting, which interfered with their social lives and playtime.

*************************

Halloween was coming and the children got it into their heads that you couldn't get the planning underway too soon, say around September when school starts.

If we were really lucky, they didn't think of it until October first had rolled around but they were in full gear by the third week in October, when you could count on them keeping a careful watch on the weather. The sky was checked carefully on a daily basis for signs of sleet or worse, snow. Think about it-- the creative output of an entire household can be destroyed if the weather turns ugly on the big night. Picture a stunning costume created from two cardboard cartons, a roll of paper towels and one pound of silver glitter hidden from sight under a snowsuit, muffler and mittens. Unthinkable

We were forced to guard our meager wardrobes. The instant we spotted the children huddled quietly together in serious conversation; we flattened ourselves against our closet doors.

"Hey, Mom you don't wear that white fur sweater anymore do you?" signaled that my treasured trousseau angora sweater was in peril. When they were finally convinced we wouldn't budge and they could not under any circumstances borrow my velvet evening skirt or their father's paisley vest or anything else on the endangered list, they settled down to the exacting business of putting together their own costumes.

That's how the costume box came into being. The box itself was the sturdy wooden packing case that began life as our very first coffee table. During the year we'd toss in anything that might do for costumes such as the glittery green dress shot with silver thread that I wore when skirts were way up to here, a couple of fedoras I can't ever remember Hal wearing, and the red lamb's wool ski hat I never got much use of because I never learned to ski. Okay and I have a large head so it perched on top like a huge red mushroom.

You'd think they originated the word motivation when they were working on their costumes. Nothing could deter them from their tasks, neither a scratch hockey game nor a trip to the mall.

Peter achieved near perfection the year he was a grizzled cave man, wearing an animal skin that was once a fake fur bedspread and carrying an authentic club that explained the chunk of Plaster of Paris cemented to the bottom of the laundry tub. Mark and Scott preferred to dress as monsters until their early start on puberty when they switched to borrowed black leather jackets and drew on beards with my best eyebrow pencil. For Michael, every day was Halloween and he continued to wear his cape and mask but added the big Spiderman decoder ring to mark the occasion.

Steven stuck to his reality and generally wrapped himself into one of his father's discarded white shirts, dyed his face and hands green and went as the Mad Scientist.

I still get sentimental thinking about the year we attended my cousin's afternoon wedding and by the time we got home, Mark had each of them in costume including Melissa, who was going out for the first time. She was dressed as Little Red Riding Hood with lashings of Carioca pink lipstick and enough rouge to capsize her cheekbones and her four quart basket was covered with the special gift-wrap I was saving for the next wedding. She looked adorable and if I ever find out who lent us the red cape, I'll return it.

They were still in the safe years before sadists put razor blades in the candy apples but I still monitored their sugar intake and sorted through to confiscate candy cigarettes and those awful candy kisses, the staple of Halloween handouts and I was often generously offered all the black jelly beans, my favourite.

It might be that we had quite a few children and they all liked centre stage. I don't know. I do know that we'd count on a couple of days to restore our lives to a normal groove and they would already be warming up for the major event, the Christmas school pageant.

They were amazing; I had such trouble coping with the speed that seasons slid past; one minute it was September and I was waving them off to school, and before I've gotten used to their absence they're plotting Halloween, then before I've had a chance to replace my mascara and favourite lipstick I am fastening lists to every inch of the refrigerator door, with reminders of things to do before Christmas.

The days were filled with the musical sounds of snowsuit zippers moving up and down while small children went outside, then inside, then outside all through the day. I devoted my time to mixing special cookies, shortbreads, gingerbread men, and tucking them into special tins stored on top of the kitchen cupboards, and in the early days assuring each passer-by that Santa would too recognize our house even if we didn't have a fireplace. In the evening Hal got out his old plastic ukulele and played what we like to think were carols, using two chords and cheating on what might have been a third.

When it was time for the annual Santa Claus parade the children invited two friends each to watch on our television and we set to work popping popcorn and brewing hot chocolate. We'd play host to every child in the neighborhood, including the sophisticated little wretch that brought a package of condoms to blow up as balloons.

My mother in law tactfully sent us money to buy a twenty five pound turkey and my parents equally tactfully sent us a cheque to buy their gifts for the children, and Hal went off to work each morning carrying a lunch hour list (try to find a wooden locomotive and are there chemistry sets suitable for three year olds). Steven fell off the clothes drier while waiting for his thumb sucking blanket to dry and got his first set of stitches, and I was reading "A Christmas Carol" to them every night, changing some of the stilted words to hold their interest.

It took us a full twelve months to find new hiding places for the gifts, and as we got more creative, so did they. The freezer was good for a long while, particularly if the gift was wrapped in butcher's paper and labeled, "Liver." Then, my boxes of sewing scraps (for the day I'd languidly piece together a quilt) were good for objects that weren't too lumpy. The attic was perfect for a while. It was reached by sliding up a panel in the ceiling of the broom closet, and that didn't appeal to them once they tested it and found the insulation was prickly, they couldn't stand upright and there were no windows. Then they began playing spy games, the prickles were a minor inconvenience and we said goodbye to another hiding place. We relied on our childless neighbors across the streets that were quite willing to store rocking horses and oversize teddy bears.

"Let's see, the bear with the top hat is the Thompsons' and I think you own the pull toy with the wooden ducks..."

Back in the old days when we only had two children, we had a cute snapshot of the boys made into a Christmas card, and that developed into a yearly ritual. Sometime in October one of us would say, "It's time for that damned photo." And there was never a question, "which damned photo is that sweetie?" We knew all right. Generally when the time was right one child would be in the middle of a contagious disease that left blotches on the face or there were stitches from an accident with a hockey puck and then it was the second week in December and the thing still wasn't done.

By this time my mother called long distance to ask why she hadn't received the picture and it simply made her Christmas and we'd resignedly announce that the picture would be taken on Saturday, this coming Saturday, immediately after breakfast.

After some sullen mutterings they would brighten at the prospect of wardrobe planning. We established guidelines; footwear, including socks was mandatory and shirts and ties would be appreciated. The hair had to be moved back enough for eyes to show and we'd be ever so grateful for smiles.

After a hurried Saturday breakfast, we prepared for the inevitable fifteen minutes of wrangling. One child would recognize his favorite sweater with the red stripe and attempt to tear it off the borrower, doubling the fun by attempting decapitation.

And of course, one child looked, looked if you please, at his sibling and that started a round of, "Mom, make him stop looking at me."

Then the first flashbulb would fail and my once amiable mate would let out an exasperated roar that precipitated enormous crocodile tears, the kind that show in pictures. There followed a brief pause for sincere apologies after a meaningful glance at the transgressor.

By this time we had already offered enough bribes to give them total freedom and all our spare cash until they reached age twenty-one.

Then at the very moment we were considering trussing them up, pinning a note on their chests and leaving them on far-away doorsteps, a knock would sound at the back door. Lined up outside was a gaggle of junior hockey players armed with sticks and pucks but they couldn't play until we released the goalie and forward. Eureka! We had regained control.

The goalie and forward instantly snapped commands while each child skulked into place and forced a grim smile. We quickly shot the pictures and the group dispersed for another year.

They were allowed to put one parcel each under the tree on Christmas Eve and we'd do the rest after they were asleep. We sorted packages in groups so that we could easily pass them out in rotation and it was my job to sit with notepad and pen to jot down package contents and name of donor during the unwrapping. That took split- second coordination. In a few days' time, when they showed first stirrings of restlessness, they sat down with paper and crayons to draw a picture of their gift and print their names as a forerunner to writing thank you letters. Now that they are adults and some of them are away from home, I might just send them paper and crayons to see if that would make corresponding any easier.

Once the children were finally asleep, we carefully removed the stockings from the end of their beds to fill them, and that would be when I would remember one forgotten detail (one year it was the stuffed giraffe I had made who was still bald because I had forgotten to attach his mane and that had to be fixed in a hurry). At last, we were ready to creep back to return the filled stockings, and we headed for what would be with luck, five hours sleep.

Our children were capable of forgetting their own names, but it was firmly etched on their very souls that on Christmas morning no one could go near the living room until accompanied by both parents, and they were scrupulous about this rule. Now that I think of it it's the only rule they never tampered with. It was especially important when the morning papers were being delivered and the delivery boys were welcomed home like the heroes they were and warmed up with hot chocolate before the trek to the living room.

One year we had a steam shovel for Mark and child-size cardboard bank with play money for Scott, a green pedal car for Steven and a big striped tiger for Peter. We all walked together into the living room, and Mark and Scott ran to their respective shovel and bank. Peter toddled over to the pedal car meant for Steven, got in and drove off to his room, reaching behind to shut the door as he passed through. Fortunately Steve didn't know the car was for him and he loved the tiger.

On this Christmas Eve we sat together before the tree before bed when everything was in place.

"This year is calmer than some. Remember the year Michael popped up with German measles on Christmas Eve?" and the year when we just had three, they all developed chickenpox?

"Yep. And then Mark fell and dislocated and broke his wrist last New Year's Eve.

"Yep, this year seems calmer."

The Christmas that stands out most in my memory is the year of the Great Christmas Tree Caper. Mark and Scott were working on their shepherd costumes for the school Christmas concert, made from what had been two perfectly good camping blankets, Steven was building a miniature sleigh, Peter climbed up on the roof to tramp out his name in the snow as a reminder to Santa and Melissa said repeatedly, " Santa coming?" Michael was behaving like a saint, eating all his dinner, clearing the table without being asked and answering the phone properly. I recognized the signs and waited until the gingerbread men were iced and hanging on the tree.

"Well, Michael, I think you have something to tell me."

"Yah, Mom. Well, me and Doug—"

"Doug and I",

"Yah, well we volunteered to get a Christmas tree for our school play."

"Yes, I remember, your father let you borrow the hatchet and you boys were going to the woods to find a small tree."

"Well, we found a tree, but it turned out to be on somebody's lawn".

"yeees?"

"You see, we thought we could hear wolves howling when we got near the woods and on our way home we passed the Arden's' house and they had this neat little tree in the front yard and, well, our thinking made us do it. We chopped it down. Me and Doug."

"Doug and I."

"Yah."

My mind raced through options; tell the school Principal that he's harboring a hot tree, call the tree owner and try to find a plausible rationale for cutting down the tree and I don't think the wolf story will do it, pack up and leave town. I prefer this kind of crisis; my mind had other things to wrestle with, and there wasn't time to linger over it.

"Well young man, you get Doug and both of you go to the Arden's and apologize, and tell them you'll replace the tree in the spring when the ground thaws, with money you will earn; After that, we'll have a talk about wolves. And take gingerbread along for you and Doug, for courage."

The concert was an anti-climax. Oh, our children performed brilliantly as always and they almost sang in key. I have never seen finer Shepherds and Santa's sleigh was a success but our eyes were riveted on the puny little Blue Spruce leaning precariously from a pail, its paper chain decorations already beginning to droop with fatigue. Somehow we had imagined something more majestic, say eight or nine feet tall. I could have cut that sucker with my nail clippers in plenty of time to avoid the entire wolf pack.
Chapter 19:

DINNER PARTIES AND LAUNDRY

1965

Go ahead and ask me why the year nineteen sixty- five is entrenched in my memory.

Thank you.

That was the year the diapers were officially turned into dust cloths. The way it happened, I was carrying the two chipped enamel diaper pails downstairs to the laundry and realized one arm was swinging normally while the other one felt about twelve inches longer. I set the pails down and took off the lids and when my eyes cleared and it was safe to breathe, I saw that one pail was empty and the other only half-full.. My pulse raced. We were now a one-pail family and well on our way to zero pails.

Think of it- after eleven years and two washing machines this era was coming to a close, along with naps and peanut butter. Forget what I said about peanut butter; it's an addiction and you never kick the habit.

My life had centered on babies and debts and now I had only two babies and a bunch of little people wearing real underwear, and the debts were as bothersome as an old wart.

Think what I could do in the evening instead of folding diapers. Place the thick part at the back for boys and at the front for girls. Mind you, diaper-folding time is good thinking time. The folding is done by rote and the mind is free to rove. Mostly it roved in child-land.

When everything was sorted and the first load was swishing about I went upstairs to check on the boys. I had left them busily engaged in building a fort with the sofa cushions and now they had moved on to teaching Peter and Steven to make spit balls properly. If I didn't stop them now, they would have to spend at least half an hour after lunch scraping them off the walls and ceiling and I could get started on the ironing.

Sorting the laundry was probably my most creative time. The hands do the sorting and stuffing into the machine and the mind is free to roam about, although at first it was about the clothing. Why is it that the new clothes we carefully buy for the start of school quickly turn into old clothes? I defy you to study a playground full of kids on October first and spot any one wearing anything resembling new garments, which have to be a certain kind and color.

I thought about how much the children had grown without my noticing.

Melissa was now a walking confection, adorable in pink dresses and a pink ribbon tied in curls that sweetly framed her face like a golden halo.

Peter had lost his shyness at school and already we were getting notes from the teacher about his need to stop entertaining the class and get on with his long division. She was wrong, as it turned out.

Michael turned three and believed scotch tape was the answer to any problem. He used it to re-stick a tile that fell into the bathtub and he used a whole new roll of it to fasten the handlebars back on his tricycle.

This was also the last year all the children looked tidy at the same time. Brush cuts were on their way out and longer hair was gaining favor, though not noticeably with the parents who were willing to foot the bill for a trim. Our boys were still young enough to sit still for brush cuts and we clucked over the older boys in the neighborhood who began sporting shaggy hair.

I cleaned the big oak dining table and gave it a coat of wax and while the wax was setting, I made peanut butter and honey sandwiches and poured the milk, then returned to the dining room to complete one more task before polishing the tabletop. All I meant to do was extend the table to add one more leaf and that turned into a horror moment. One jerk of the table to pull it wider apart, an avalanche of objects rained to the floor with the ferocity of a hailstorm. It was an archaeologist's delight, which on closer inspection turned out several fossilized hamburger buns, bits of dried meat well on their way to becoming pemmican and furry chunks of beets and string beans.

How did they manage that without me noticing? I mean, I was always there, wasn't I? And when I left the room to get dessert their father was there. Aha. Hal was often at the table in spirit only because he might be working out a difficult article in his mind and you could play a bugle in his ear and he wouldn't notice.

And I thought they ate everything.

We loved the square oak table that could accommodate fourteen tightly squeezed in people. There was also a buffet with a small-carved wood mirror and a china cabinet with three glass sides and six matching chairs with plastic covered seats, which had originally been caned, and I eventually restored them.

We bought the set when the sight of our plastic- topped table with skinny black iron legs was more than we could bear.

A sweet middle-aged lady who invited us over to view her furniture answered our advertisement in the local town weekly.

"My parents had this set first when they got married, on the prairies, then we got it but I've got my eye on a new teak set."

We increased her happiness by paying her fifty dollars and took a few trips back and forth with the station wagon to move the furniture home.

In a frenzy of new-ownership I sanded years of wax and the odd cigarette burn off the table top and finished it with sealer and a few coats of fresh wax.

That took several days and my energy and enthusiasm were flagging so I did a short cut and finished the remaining surfaces in off-white paint, then I found some umber in my oil painting supplies and rubbed it over the surface for an antique finish and applied a sealer coat. This was to be a temporary measure until I had the time and energy to scrape down all painted surfaces and restore the rest of the beautiful oak. Thirty years later I got around to that and when I was all done, I realized it looked ridiculous and repainted all but the table- top.

We seemed more like a Father Knows Best family seated at the "new" table and I took years off my life working on their table manners. "When you are not actively engaged with your knife and fork, put your hands on your lap."

They didn't have to polish off everything but they were required to take two teaspoons of anything that seemed suspect. I distinctly recall an evening when I missed Dick Tracy and Inner Sanctum on the radio because I refused to eat the turnips on my plate. I couldn't. They made me gag and they still do, not that I've tried them since. My parents made one of those fruitless, "you'll sit there until you do," and finally, when we were all sick of that I was sent to bed. I wish I'd discovered a ledge under my parents' table.

We hardly ever took the kids to restaurants as a family unit. For one thing, it had to be lunch which was cheaper and there was always at least one child who required an afternoon nap and I had this deep-rooted belief that if little children weren't fed three nutritious meals a day and bedded down for a nap each afternoon, they would be wizened little creatures before they reached puberty.

On rare occasions we began taking the children out to dinner, to get them used to behaving in the outside world. There was a new franchise restaurant chain at the outskirts of town and it catered to families. Meals were cafeteria style and that gave us a chance to discuss the menu with them at home so that they knew what they wanted before we drove over. Once we arrived, I'd shepherd the children to a long table and their father would place the order, and when it was ready he helped two young ladies in black net stockings, pistols strapped to their tiny hips and with incredible cleavage above, carry the trays to the table.

Their table manners were quite decent when we were out; it's as though all the training I tried so hard to instill had been waiting for a reasonable time to be used.

Early on in my marriage, my mother gave me a piece of advice that really stuck in my mind for some reason, perhaps because of the intensity in which she said it.

"Don't ever", she cautioned, "Don't ever place food before your family unless there is a cloth on the table.

She shuddered as she said it. Well, I took that seriously and because there were eight of us at the table I used banquet-sized cloths and not all of them were drip dry, either. They were not the best part of the ironing, I'll tell you. Then, someone gave me a set of linen place mats and an even smarter person gave me plastic place mats. I decided that wasn't cheating and a banquet cloth then got hauled out of the ironing basket only if company was expected.

I had my own fetish- I liked all the glasses at the table to have stems and they had to match. This can't be done for any length of time with children in the house unless you buy them by the gross and we usually ended up with peanut butter jars and honey jars with bees and other logos painted on the outside.

I noticed that when we had roast beef, which they all loved, they sat with their chairs close to the table and not one scrap of food fell off their forks. On tuna casserole night, they sat well back from the table and I got the impression they were hell- bent on feeding their laps; everything landed there unless they got lucky and it went straight to the floor. Anyway, I don't make mindless threats the way my mother did. All I do is sit there with trembling lips as the tuna casserole streams quietly downward.

Our table conversation was like everyone else's. The teachers were cruel and unreasonable, the kids next door got to stay up until ten o'clock on school nights and the newest cuss words were tried out there. We had a firm rule about swearing. We knew we'd never be able to prevent it and to tell the truth, there was an adult member of our family who sprinkled his conversation liberally with mild expletives. The rule was that, if you're going to use the word, you must understand what it means and you must explain that to everyone at the table. I must say I was surprised when I found out what "schmuck" meant. I had to find a new description for the rude bully down the street who wouldn't let children play road hockey outside his house.

Steven. Strange that such a messy child could be so acute about details that interested him. Like the bed chesterfield.

We had bought a lovely old bed chesterfield at a country auction. The wood was a dark walnut, with carved arms and caning at the sides. We had to take it apart before we loaded it into the van that replaced the station wagon. When we got it home and tried assembling it in the family room, it would not close. Everything seemed just right, but the springs refused to fold up and slide into the seating area.

We struggled with that thing for two days. We gave up late in the first evening and started again the next day. By four in the afternoon we decided we must have left a vital part of the fasteners at the auction site.

The children wandered in and out during the ordeal, and offered advice, none of it too helpful.

"Thanks, Scott, but I don't think we want to force it shut and wire it in place."

"No, Michael. Scotch tape won't handle it."

"Peter, this room is not a gymnasium and these springs re not a trampoline."

Over the past two days, Steven had wandered in and out of the room, with his book in his hand. He came in and looked up from his book.

"Oh, you bought a chesterfield?"

"Yes, Steven, we bought it yesterday. You have had three meals in this room since then, and now you're noticing."

"Why don't you close it up?"

We explained.

He observed our struggles for a few minutes.

"Dad, you're putting this part in backwards. Watch this".

He corrected the problem and the springs glided into position under the seat. Have you any idea how insecure you can feel when the eight-year old straightens you out?

The town was rapidly changing also. Although the pond and creek retained their natural loveliness we couldn't simply walk to the creek from our back yard anymore; there were fences and new houses in the way. No more short cuts.

There was a shopping plaza less than a mile away. Before the plaza was built the town had one butcher shop and one grocery store. We were considered "new folks" despite the fact that we'd

Lived there for nine years, and grocery deliveries were not made to "new folks." The plaza became the hub of our lives and it was thrilling to push a shopping cart down the sparkling clean aisles.

We treasured the old Charlton hardware store at the other end of town, with its bins of screws and bolts sold either by the pound or individually; this wasn't the sort of store that forced you to buy a whole overpriced plastic wrapped package of three quarter inch screws when you only needed two of them. They carried brass rings for bulls' noses and other odds and ends I remember being sorry I asked about.

Some of the children had favorite trees to climb and sit on. Michael preferred the "climbing tree," in the front yard, just tall enough for a small boy and it kept pace with his growth, and Steven chose the pine tree directly across the street at Mr. Shot's house.

That tree was about twenty-feet tall and one day he fell off the branch to the ground. The wind was knocked out of him and we dashed over to carry him back to the house.

"I'm never going to climb that tree again, "he sobbed.

Five minutes later he was feeling fine and said,

"I'm going up that tree again. I know what I did wrong."

We watched behind the curtains as he swiftly climbed the tree.

A police car came by and stopped beside the tree. The officer got out of the car and looked up.

"Listen, fella, you're not supposed to be up there. Come down right now."

Steve climbed down and smiled at the officer, who returned to his car and drove away.

The Steve went back up the tree.

Hal paused on his way out the door the next morning and gave me as strange look.

"What are you up to?"

"What do you mean?

"Last night when the kids were arguing about eating their carrots, you got a far- off look in your eye; I've seen that look before and I know you're planning something."

"Oh. I guess I was thinking about planning a dinner party."

He smartly re-shut the door.

"No. No way. Not under any circumstances, absolutely not, forget it. The scars have barely healed from the last one, and that was only four months ago. You've got enough to do, let's have the next one when the kids are all on their own."

I don't know why that man gets so excited. It's true that I get a little edgy at some point when a dinner party is in the works but I need them the way I imagine the Queen needs to whip off her pearls and spend the day with the kids and the Corgis. On second thought, forget the queen; she'd never ditch the pearls.

"Listen, this one will be different. The baby is sleeping through the night and the children have always been wonderful about making an appearance and disappearing into their rooms until bed time."

"And you've planned a fourteen course meal with ingredients that can only be found in specialty shops that I have to search out between business appointments, right?"

"Wrong. This time we will have a simple lamb curry and there is only one little spice you'll have to find and I'll phone around to see who has it."

"Can you guarantee you won't take the house apart as if it contained dangerous bacteria and that you won't get manic about the last minute cooking?"

"Me? Manic? That was the old me, but I've relaxed, I roll with the punches. Trust me, this will be fun."

He drove off looking disbelieving and I hummed my way back into the house. The baby was settled in her playpen and Michael was sitting in a mud pile in the back yard. The others were in school.

Let's see. Should I trust the supermarket for the lamb or should I ask him to find some in town? Cold beer is supposed to be refreshing with curry; rice, crisp green salad. I'll make the fruit dressing. Strawberry bombe for dessert. A pate and crackers before dinner and we're smiling.

Dinner parties were my lifeline. I needed the challenge. My self-inflicted rule was that the menu had to be something I hadn't made before, and I had scrapbooks full of recipes I hadn't tried because I knew my adorable children would throw themselves on the floor gagging or gasping for a fire extinguisher.

Having my own party is better. I can handle the kinds of people I want to have over. I was getting tired of parties where someone would turn to me and say,"

And what do you do?"

I know it's a mistake to say I run a household and raise six children because I'll find myself instantly abandoned, left with some woman who is dying to give me her recipe for liver cookies. I

Better to say I breed cocker spaniels. No one knows what that entails, of course I don't either, but at least it's a respectable occupation. So the alternative is to give my own party and have people who already know one another; and its okay to work at home with the vacuum cleaner and the bread baking and the quick soaks in the tub with a book while the babies nap.

Now for the guest list; we could handle three couples. Then the drinks; he can handle that part. There- it will be simple and no fuss. Now just set a date and invite them.

By the time Hal returned home I was re-arranging the living room furniture.

"You've decided to do it, haven't you?"

"What? Oh, you mean the dinner party. Yes. How would three weeks from Friday be with you?"

"That gives me time to try to find an out-of-town assignment."

"Don't be so dramatic. I keep telling you, it's easier now that Melissa is older and this is a simple meal. I won't fuss."

"You won't fuss the way the way a coronation is a simple affair. Well, tell the children what you're going to do when I'm not around. I can't bear to see their little faces when they hear the news."

Children don't readily store away the information that there are rough spots to simple dinner parties. At the first announcement, everyone looked excited.

"Great. We'll help pass the crackers with the smelly things on them and we can put ourselves to bed."

The guests were asked to arrive at 7:45 when the children were bathed and in their pajamas. More to the point, the tub was clean and the guest towels were in place.

I considered most days to be Children's Day, but on dinner party night it was adults only and the children quietly and agreeably disappeared after half an hour with the guests.

The first stage of party- planning went smoothly, because I'd be engrossed in the arrangement of the centerpiece, the table setting and the menu. After that was settled I'd write a shopping list and a step-by-step cooking schedule and buy most of the groceries. After that, hardly anything could be done until the day before the big event.

That was the time for Hal to get fidgety, because a clean house was next and it had to look unused with all signs of life erased. Toys and unread papers and magazines were hidden away in closets. No one could sit where a cushion might get un-plumped. No one could make a sandwich in that suddenly spotless kitchen. I am not a neat person when I cook and after dinner there are always pots stacked sky high and the counter is completely covered. But not just before a dinner party.

The worst time for all of them was the morning of the big day. I was up and at work before the sun rose, cleaning everything. There isn't any point cleaning too early with a house full of children so the actual day is best. Hal learned that the best thing to do was take the children for a long drive or for all of them to fish at the pond. Anything but remain in what used to be their home.

On the day, the children were fed dinner at five o'clock and then were railroaded into the tub and into pajamas and banished to their rooms to listen to the radio or play games quietly. They would make an appearance when the company arrived and got right into the conversations as the passed the drinks and hors d'oevres. They loved it and their manners were impeccable. They also learned to make perfect martinis and vodka gimlets.

This time, we got a shock. The last couple to arrive came with their five-year-old child.

"We knew you wouldn't mind if we brought Agatha along; sitters are so expensive and she doesn't like to be left with them."

Agatha was quite a nice child on her own turf, but then she was rested and eating food meant for children. Our children made their appearance and they bumped into one another like a derailed train. There was an alien child in the room. And they knew the rules about adult dinner parties.

"Agatha has come along with her parents. Would you like to take her with you when you go to watch television?"

I could see by the look on their faces that they would not under any circumstances be in the same county with Agatha, but I was spared hearing them say so because Agatha whined to her mother,

"Aggie wants to stay with Mummy and Daddy. I want dinner now."

That was the way the evening went. I was damned if I was going to offer to make a separate meal for one more person.

The child was tired but refused to go to bed; she whined and kicked the table leg all through dinner. The curried lamb reminded her that her dog ate similar food and I ignored pointed suggestions from her mother that I provide a simple lamb chop that I didn't have anyway. I didn't have one of anything. The child spat the wild rice over the cutwork cloth and the Strawberry Bombe was not a hit with her either. I had no idea one strawberry could fasten itself permanently to a mirror for life.

We adjourned the few steps from the dining area to the living room while I got the coffee. Agatha's mother heaved a deep, dramatic sigh.

"Agatha is feeling very uncomfortable; she isn't used to indigestible food and I think we'll just have to take her home."

We all made clucking sounds of false regret and they bundled their whiny child off to her lamb chop.

Then the evening began. No one mentioned children, and two of the men leaned against the kitchen counter while they polished off the curry.

It was a lovely evening.

CHAPTER 20

THE YEAR OF THE TUNNEL

Skirts getting even shorter1964

Beattles are given tickertape parade

We had just finished dinner. There hadn't been one ugly word about having to eat fish and the tidemarks on their wrists proved they'd at least passed their hands under a tap, perhaps even accidentally brushing them against the soap.

Scott left his can of fishing worms off the table and Mark didn't complain once about his new glasses.

"There's still some sun left, are you all going to play kick- the- can again tonight?" innocent eyes turned towards me.

"Oh no, we're going to go down to our room and I'll read Treasure Island to the guys," replied Mark with the look of a seventeenth century saint.

"Tunna," said Melissa, and Mark quickly said, "gee, she's learning to talk real well; see how she said treasure?"

A quick glance to one another and a silent agreement was reached to save the English lesson for another time. They were excused from the table and quickly clattered off downstairs. Children don't actually run or walk downstairs. If you didn't know better, you'd swear the refrigerator had broken loose from its moorings and was hurtling down at express train speed.

We both had the uneasy feeling that something was wrong with the picture we had just witnessed of our children posing as obedient polite children, but we tried to reassure each other that they were growing up; after all, mark was eleven, and so mature for his age. "That explains Mark, but are you going to tell me Scott really wants to go downstairs and read treasure island when he could be fishing at the pond?" the pessimist poured another cup of coffee and the conversation got sidetracked as he helped himself to the last piece of chocolate cream pie, an enormous clue right there.

Each day after school they rushed home to change into their scruffiest jeans and played quietly downstairs, emerging every once in a while to go outdoors for a while. Melissa followed them back and forth, murmuring,"tunna." there wasn't any fighting and I caught up on all the darning and tried out the recipe for marinated salmon with caper sauce.

A part of me knew I would pay for taking advantage of this quiet spell to catch up on errands and reading, in reverse order.

We'd recently had an addition tacked on to the back to the house, a necessity we couldn't overlook any longer when the snowsuits were piled so high by the back door that a small child was in danger of getting lost until spring. The former kitchen window was now a large pass through overlooking the family room, down three steps from the main floor. We had a mudroom built by the back door and added a study off our bedroom. The south wall of the basement dormitory opened into large crawl space entered at waist- height, and Steven made a couple of boards on casters from old roller skates, to slide from one end to the other in search of the missing hamster cage, or, often, the hamster.

The mystery was solved one morning when they were in school and I was wrestling the dormitory into control. I walked over to the crawl space entrance to see whether they had dismantled the fort made out of my best comforter and three crib blankets and my foot skidded over a loose floor tile. I stooped down to pick it up and found that the tile covered a square piece of board. Underneath that was a hole about two feet deep and two feet wide and closer inspection revealed a bottle of beer and a half full package of cigarettes in a dented coffee can at the bottom.

When they got home from school, I was waiting. Mark and Scott dashed in, made only one peanut butter and honey sandwich each and raced downstairs. Soon they came back up, more slowly.

"You found it."

"I did. Now, would someone please tell me what I found?"

Scott looked pained. "See, I told you she's never get It." he sighed. "It's a tunnel. We're building an escape tunnel right through to the street and over to the millpond. Just like that movie we all watched. See, we've even got bags with drawstrings under our jeans so we can fill them with the dirt we dig up, then we go out in the yard and release it, and you never caught on."

Foiled once again by a larcenous crew with faces of angels. Melissa stood by, clutching Mark's hand and murmuring, "tunna."

"What did you dig it with?"

"Well, we used the crow bar and pick axe dad used to build the fence, but the neat part was when we got through the cement and started digging up the dirt; we cut up the juice cans you were saving for recycling and shaped them just the way the men did in the movie."

"Tell me, is there some reason that you couldn't have just walked out the front door, if you were in such a tearing hurry to escape?"

"Aw, mom..."

"We will discuss this after dinner, when I may be feeling more rational. That will give you time to explain the bottle of beer and package of cigarettes. In the meantime, you can start figuring out how you will turn that tunnel back into a basement floor."

When I informed their father that we had lost those perfectly behaved children and gained the beginning of a tunnel, he was torn between the shock of a hole in the basement floor and a grudging respect for his ingenious offspring.

They were instructed to pool their money to buy a bag of ready- mix cement and had to spend a boring Saturday morning helping their father plug up what was probably the best, if not the only tunnel in town, all the while receiving a cautious lecture on the need to shore up excavations as one goes along.

We were still shaking our heads over that one when the furnace mysteriously shorted three times in one week. The third time was after midnight, and the repairman, who was also a neighbor and the plumber and electrician, came over puzzled over this irregularity.

"Can't figure it out; everything seems fine, but we'll look more closely this time."

After a few minutes he let out a howl and we came running.

"It's that little feller of yours, the one with the mask and the key tied to his coat. Look what he's done."

Michael had been wandering around with his pet nail for some time, but he didn't seem to do anything more than test it out in keyholes and we let him keep it. He had apparently graduated from keyholes and looked for greater challenges. The furnace was a treasure trove of mysterious crevices to poke nails into, and when the nail wedged in one hole, he abandoned it just before it fused into the wiring. If his timing had been different his days as the caped crusader or a human would have been history.

We considered hiring a warden to stand guard whenever we needed time to buy groceries or try for a night's sleep. The next morning, Michael was given a graphic lecture on avoiding nails for the absolute rest of his life, and that certainly made an impression because although he can hammer a nail today, he's a better typist. I confined him to the back patio with his toys so that I could keep an eye on him and reassure myself that he was alive and well, when an unusual sight at the back of the yard distracted me by the playhouse.

Steven and two friends were standing with shovels at the edge of the sand box when one boy suddenly jumped down and disappeared from view. That couldn't possibly be, because the sand box was right there, only two feet deep, and I could see the sand. No, I could see sand piled up at one end. Then the next boy slipped from sight followed by Steven. I dashed outside to solve these phenomena and found another tunnel in the making.

"Steven! You boys get up here this minute. How could you? We told you how dangerous a tunnel is."

"But mom, this isn't dangerous," objected Steven in his pleasant, reasonable- scientist voice. "See, dad said the other tunnel was dangerous because we hadn't shored it up, so we did it right this time."

I looked down and saw a couple of flimsy tree branches and some one- by- twos left over from the family room construction.

"Steven, if you ever attempt another tunnel, with or without shoring up, you will be confined to a special cell we will have built in the basement and we won't let you out until you are thirty five years of age. Do you understand?"

"Do I get my own television and bathroom?"

"No, you will not get those things. You will have a bucket in one corner and the bible will be your only reading material. And no, you can't have your dissecting tools, or your carpentry tools, or any wood. And furthermore we are not negotiating new living quarters for you. No more tunnels. Is that?

Understood?"

Well, it was, but I wish I'd remembered to mention that pigeon lofts on the garage rafters, right above the car, were a definite no-no.

Chapter 21.

GIVE ME A SICK CHILD

Nothing warmed my heart more than to have a child on the sick list. I draw the line at yellow fever or double pneumonia, but give me a simple head cold or a sprained ankle and I'm overjoyed. This was a rare opportunity to have that child all to myself. The patient spent the day in our big bed, while I lovingly sneaked eggs into the milkshakes and listened to him talk about life.

I'd get out the "sick box," from the back of the linen closet. This was a carton of odds and ends intended for the sole use of the current invalid. There were flat-notched sticks for making tiny cabins and fat railroad spikes now doubling as toy soldiers. There were always storybooks and lots of crayons and drawing paper.

I learned a lot about my children during those times. My heart still races when I remember Peter's turn; he lay back on the fluffed up pillows toying with his strawberry shake made with real berries, and said confidentially, "You know you get time to think when you're sick, and I've made an important decision; I'm going to quit smoking."

I made a sound like a gored matador. He was only eight years old at the time and I was still discarding candy cigarettes from the Halloween bags.

Then there was the time Michael cracked some bones in his foot and was on crutches for weeks. He sighed so pitifully trying to keep up with the others and on Easter Sunday, he crawled his way through the house for the egg hunt, calling, "Hey wait for me."

We had hidden a lot of eggs at ground level, so he made out very well, but he sounded so pathetic he made Tiny Tim seem like a crybaby.

He was relieved of most of his chores, because even his heart-hearted brothers conceded that it's hard to take out the garbage when two arms are coping with human crutches and human teeth can only carry so much weight.

His good times came to an end the day I watched from the window while he hobbled home from school. He paused at the crossing, looked both ways, then tucked the crutches under his arms and ran the three-minute mile in ten seconds.

I greeted him at the door with the news that he was cured and I would be pleased to return the crutches to the rental store. For a long time after he saved the life-size robot on crutches that Steven made for him.

Soon after that, Scott was showing off to a clutch of girls and rode his bike around in circles while wearing a paper bag on his head, with results that surprised only him. For two weeks he had a face that was hard for even a mother to love.

Peter felt left out because his big brother was treading on his territory and Pete was distinctly territorial. That was when he did his Steve McQueen imitation and flew over his handlebars into the brick wall of the school.

Michael coming down with chicken pox for the second time quickly followed this incident, which I consider unconstitutional.

He had barely recovered from that when he swallowed a straight pin and sure enough the X-rays showed it resting more or less comfortably in his recesses. The doctor, ever cheerful, advised letting nature takes its course, meaning that one of us had to carefully scrutinize anything that came from those recesses, and that someone was the bravest member of the family. Hal arrived home from work each night and stopped asking what's new. Five days later the scrutiny paid off and the patient was released to scratch his pox scabs.

Mark was a quiet patient who read a lot and liked to lie quietly, planning new adventures for his scraggly troops the minute he recovered from his illness of the moment. He was also the family burial specialist, no job too small. We knew a passing squirrel hadn't moved fast enough in front of a car if Mark came in and collected his captain's hat; that meant a funeral service was underway.

I'd watch the event from the window to ensure that our best and only shovel would be returned to the garage afterward. The group clustered around their leader, his hat held over his heart (he got that from watching American TV) and his oration lasted for as long as he could keep his group interested. I was never close enough to hear what was said, but they always broke with satisfied looks and I'm confident the rodent got a good send-off.

Every six months or so, when they were all well at the same time, I'd gather enough confidence to call the pediatrician's office and alert the nurse we should be coming in for check-ups. I hated her enormous sigh, and I bet she got a few days off immediately after.

Check-up time meant collecting little bottles of neatly labeled specimens carried in an old metal bank with a hinged lid, left over from my childhood.

It was tricky getting organized once we arrived because we needed two examining rooms, and there was only one guard, me. I'd leave Mark with Steven and the baby, Michael stayed with me and I kept Scott and Peter where I could see them every second. Mike was obliging when I explained to him that he had to take off his mask and cape, and yes, it was okay to keep on his underpants. I kept a notebook with a running account of any physicals problems that might require attention.

The doctor walked in briskly, always with a glimmer of amusement on his face and we'd get to work.

Once each child has a turn with the stethoscope he could get through the line nicely and I could dress them one at a time as he finished.

They endured their shots because no one wanted to crack with siblings looking on.

Mike was the one who had the very best line of all time, when he was five and the doctor pulled his pants down while he was on the table.

"Hah! Sneaking a peek, eh?"

One illness stands out so clearly. It was around October and the nights were cold.

It started with Scott, who turned one hundred and three and quiet. I was so impressed with his silence that while I was caring for him I hadn't noticed that Peter had been glued to me like a shadow for the past hour.

I stopped suddenly and he crashed into me, quietly asking, "Pardon me ma'am, does this train stop at North Bay?"

And then there were two patients.

While I eased him out of his clothes, sponged him, fed him aspirin and tucked him into bed, I sorted through some ideas for dealing with Scott's morning paper route. Mark already had his own route and didn't seem the ideal one to approach, judging by the groans and mumbles we heard each morning when he grimly set out on the road to self-support.

Instead I sweetly called Steven, ignoring the fact that he was working his way through a stack of peanut butter sandwiches minutes before dinner. It was sort of cute, the way his robot stood at attention with one hand out, holding the sandwiches ready. Now this child in his nine years had swallowed the contents of his piggy bank to the tune of fourteen nickels, no doubt with an eye to keeping them in a safe place, and if ever he enters politics he's a natural for Minister of finance. Steve stood over his sick sibling like a vulture surveying the day's pickings and barked out, "how much will you pay me? You gotta be kidding. I wouldn't do two houses for hat crummy amount. Double it and take over my TV guides for one week when Mom catches on that you're faking and you've got a deal."

I finally got them to agree on a price by shouting at them until they banded together against, "Oh her," and I got back to my temperature-taking and serving diner to the survivors

And speaking of taking temperatures, I knew in my heart that when they all finally left home the house would be chock full of those little glass tubes, and they still do pop up, in shoe boxes full of old photographs, and once in the bottom of a jar of home-made pickles. For my most immediate crisis, I searched around and found two and hid them in my apron pocket, then phoned Hal to bring home another one and two bottles of ginger ale. My mother believed that tomato juice would cure anything but I have great faith in the restorative powers of ginger ale, especially when it's been sitting around for a while with the cap off.

Melissa was next on the sick list and when I popped the thermometer in her mouth she promptly bit it n two, swallowing the mercury. Even as I poked it in I realized I really should have taken the little stinker's temp the other way and wondered whether she would now be suffering from mercury poisoning. I finally reasoned that any child that can chew her crib rails down to slivers could cope with a little bit of metal. I'd also forgotten for a moment that she was going through a phase of fastening her teeth around anything that came her way; it reminded me of our move east when Mark used to take bites out of all available bottoms. We had to sidle into his room with our backs flat against the wall.

The next day, her temperature was 105.3 and I did the most sensible thing I could think of—I phoned my mother three thousand miles away. Before six o'clock my husband later pointed out. My mother is a walking fountain of unsolicited advice and is absolutely never stuck for an answer. Just ask her some time how to deal with jungle rot and she'll snap back a reply that won't cure the ailment but you won't feel so alone either.

When she came on the line I sobbed out the news and she said, "Don't worry dear. Just get an onion, slice it into her socks, put them on her feet and she'll be much better by morning. And you'd better do that for Scott and Peter as well. This way, the others will stay away from them and the germs won't spread." Since three minutes weren't up, she gave me the cure for mononucleosis and what had I done with the five yards of red chiffon she sent? I was short of onions and courage so I gamely fell back on alcohol rubs and aspirin and by this time mark and Michael had caught the virus and Steven was gloating about all the money he was making from their two proper routes at usury prices.

The invalids began sneezing and sure enough the heartless doctor ordered nose drops three times a day. Frankly I'd rather perform a kidney transplant (using my own kidney) by candlelight with instructions in Sanskrit before I'd willingly administer nose drops. My children hated those drops and had perfected the art of taking a deep breath and pulling in their nostrils so the stuff sprayed out instead of in.

They also know that an adult instantly freezes if they let out a sudden karate yell. The only practical way to get the job done is to fill the dropper, then pin the child to the floor with a firm knee grip, then squirt while preparing your defense for the inevitable visit from a well-meaning neighbour investigating the screaming.

You'd think that with high temperatures they'd just lie there and be good patients, wouldn't you, but they develop a tearing violent hunger for anything that can be swallowed. When they're well, they're stubbornly opposed to anything that doesn't reek of peanut butter, but let a virus invade and they'll eat anything they can get their hot, trembling hands on. Petie had a temperature of 103 one morning, but that didn't stop him from polishing off two bowls of cereal, emptying all the juice glasses and eating all the leftover toast crusts.

It seemed like minutes since I crawled into bed when at 5:30, Steven, who stood pale, poked me awake and weaving by my side of the bed, which wasn't even the side closest to the door.

"Hey mom," he croaked, "I've been throwing up; can you do the papers? 326 likes hers in the mailbox and 832 has to have his by seven o'clock or he yells."

I wrestled my husband into a semblance of wakefulness, told him the story and handed him the route list. Generally speaking, we night have had a debate on the wisdom of gong out at dawn to do this and what would happen if our neighbors had to do without a paper for one day, but all thirty-two of them would phone here and that wouldn't do, and if I went he's be left alone with a demanding bunch of sick people, so off he went to search for 326's milk box. We were both afraid of 832 so he got him out of the way first, though it meant a lot of extra walking. By Saturday morning, he had the route down to two hours and was flushed with the knowledge that, if he wanted, he could charge Steven extortion rates for his services.

On Sunday morning we woke to hear a child crying and like fools we investigated. In rosier days was had built toy boxes on casters to fit under each child's bed. When this particular child became violently ill during the night he made a direct hit on the toy box, inconveniently rolled out from under the bed.

Now my husband can turn grey with horror if the marmalade comes to the table in its original jar with snap-off lid and his absent-mindedness became legend the day he walked out of the restaurant into the visitors' gallery of the House of Parliament with his blue linen table napkin still firmly tucked into his waist band. He also didn't see the boys wrestle into the until-that-moment-the-only-unbroken-lamp-in-the-house, even though he was reading under it at the time.

On the other hand he has no peer when it comes to dealing with an upchucking child. I admit it, I'll hide in the closet first, but this man is a rock in such a crisis. Soon he had the toy box clean and the floor washed, then he decided to take the entire toy box collection and repaint them and while he was at it he noticed the toy helicopter needed repairs.

Meanwhile back in the house I was sponging the patients and getting them in fresh pajamas when another one retched violently. I leaned back against the wall for a moment and one child commented, "Mommy you've got green sweat."

They were finally beginning to recover (they were fighting again) and we had just one setback. Mark got up to go to the bathroom, so naturally the others had to go too, and Scott slipped into Mark's bed, who slipped into Steve's bed, who got into Peter's bed, who cried and refused to climb into Melissa's crib, so she cried and we took both of them into bed with us, and I forget how it happened but Steve got all the medicine intended for each of them, but he was the sickest and willing to swallow anything at the time. I know I went from bed to bed with the medicine and I was so tired I didn't notice they kept moving. Anyway, he slept soundly for twenty-four hours and woke clear-eyed and full of energy.

They had reached the whining, "there's nothing on TV and no, I don't want a story," stage when the doctor called to say he was in the neighborhood and would drop by to give them a final check. The house looked exactly like a place that harboured six snarling little convalescents and a mother who had taken to brittle comments like, 'Well your temperature is 99 so you can change your own sheets."

I raced around throwing loose toys and pajamas under the furniture and they did their part by lying still while I whisked a damp washcloth over them. Out the window went the rule about separate washcloths for each child and washing hands thoroughly. No time.

He came, inspected the patients, and pronounced them well enough to go outside for a few minutes the next day and back to school next week.

Then he got ahead of me and opened the hall closet door to retrieve his coat, which was lying on top of a three-day supply of sweaty pajamas and wads of used Kleenex. He had the grace to smile although he decided it was too warm to wear a coat out in all that frost and he carried it at arm's length to his car, where he tossed it into the trunk and slammed down the lid with great force.

I was so relieved that soon they would be returned to the educational system and I could be alone that I hear myself recklessly promise, "you've all been so brave and good that mommy and daddy are going to take you on a train trip during the Easter holidays." Yes, I really said it, and can only blame it on lack of sleep. Suddenly those flushed little heads that could barely struggle with long division turned into human memory banks and the remainder of their healing was peppered with, "Can we go to Niagara Falls? When can we go? I'm not sitting next to the baby, she always throws up. Remember when she threw up over daddy's new suit?"

Finally the older ones returned to school and paper routes, Mike went back to nursery school and Melissa returned to talking to her unicorn, that no one else could see.

Life was more or less back to normal until the day Scott sat in the kitchen eating peanut butter and homemade strawberry jam sandwiches and told me about his day.

"Hey, you know that wimpy Susie James, who keeps trying to kiss us guys? She's home with scarlet fever."
Chapter 22

Music lessons

1964-5

Stars: The Who, Beattles, Rolling Stones.

Music: "Help," "Woolly Bully", "Downtown" (Petula Clark). "I Want To Hold Your Hand"

Best musical, The Sound of Music.

Best movie: Mary Poppins

Academy award song of 1964—"Chim Chim Cherie."

********************

Sometimes for a change of scene we would have breakfast in the dining room and at exactly eight-fifteen, June Stone strolled past on her way to high school, wearing a leather skirt about three inches long and black leather boots doing their best to take up the slack. I could still remember when she was a pudgy little thing in overalls.

You could count on it that at exactly eight-fifteen, my husband's paper slowly lowered and two keen eyes focused on a distant spot past my right shoulder.

Finally, my patience came to an end and I snapped down my teacup.

"When I was sixteen I wore a neat plaid skirt and a twin sweater set and saddle shoes, and none of us wore makeup either."

"I bet her memories of sixteen are going to be a lot more interesting than yours, and let me remind you these kids don't wear makeup and their hair is long and not dyed," responded my unwise soul mate. He returned to his observations.

I hated to interrupt his reverie, but I did.

"It just goes to show--people start wearing topless bathing suits and eventually sweet little girls turn into tarts overnight. It's no wonder we're hearing about hippies and communes and free sex."

"What beats me," he replied, "Is that it says here the birth rate has been falling rapidly. I guess the pill really does the job. Think what it would have meant if it had been around when you and were first married. Too bad we're not getting started now, in '64."

Several pairs of sharp little eyes pulled away from their pancakes to consider this and I quickly created a diversion.

"The music has certainly branched out."

We had recently bought our first stereo, which was even better than a hi fi. Luckily we bought this equipment before it was essential to scoop out of the tidy artificial fruitwood cabinet and plunk all the metal pieces out on shelves with big box-like speakers carefully arranged to distribute the sound with a perfect balance. Immediately the seating arrangements in living rooms went all to hell so that the damned speakers were just so, but aside from the hodge-podge, conversation disappeared while the sound was turned up higher than any human ear should stand.

Marriages began to totter in the face of woofers and tweeters and I place the blame squarely on the first person who got the idea to move the insides out of the cabinet. I can recall agonizing evenings visiting friends. The room was full of people and speakers and the sound was beyond loud—it was horrifying. No one could speak and the sound was so overwhelming you couldn't identify the music.

Our salesman threw in some children's' albums and that act taught us a quick lesson that the best things in life are not necessarily without strings attached. The records were played constantly all day, beginning very early in the morning. "Peter and the Wolf" was a delight but the one that curled our teeth was "Rocket ship To the Moon." The thirtieth time in one day the syrupy voice shouted,"Yoooo don't need your wallet here, a million miles from the atmosphere, ah- oooooow," was twenty-nine times too often.

When we had just two kids, we recognized our cue to get up on Saturday mornings when "Horace the Horse" played for the seventh time; that was our absolute limit.

The kids adored, "West Side Story," learning every word to every song, complete with gestures. Mark and Scott slouched in their denim jackets in front of the hall mirror miming their favorite part about Officer Krupke; delighted for the opportunity to look tough and legitimately use a forbidden word straight from the lyrics.

"So, the Beatles got a ticker tape parade in New York City. Imagine that". They were still young enough to prefer discussing Beatles before sex, at least in front of us and we returned to safer conversational territory.

Peter led the way into musical territory.

"Hey," he announced, "I'm gonna learn to play the drums." Then we can start a band and we can sell tickets and I can get a black leather jacket and a dirt bike and...."

Peter had found a hero, a skinny little drummer with a mop of unruly black hair and fingers choked with rings. We began with a child size set of drums and he quickly beat his way through the skins. Then we scouted second- hand stores and bought him an adult-size snare drum one Christmas and signed him up for lessons. We were encouraged to learn that lessons came complete with a practice pad, a mound of soft rubber, and every morning he'd get up early and settle down on the bathroom floor, where the radiator seemed to give off the best heat and begin to tap. This was the start to marimbas, cymbals, and on.

Up to now, we had quite a few tone-deaf children but Beatle mania changed that. Actually the tone-deaf ones remained tone-deaf but they all became musically motivated.

Every day at lunch hour Scott planted himself in front of the hall mirror, playing an imaginary instrument, and Mark stood alongside strumming his imaginary guitar and crooning into an upturned mop with a tin can perched over the handle.

It was time to start music lessons. The house didn't have a spare corner for a piano and if we did try to squeeze one in there wouldn't be room to lift the lid. Violins were considered and quickly rejected; so were flugelhorns, cornets, and trumpets. The neighbors were adamant on that.

We settled for guitars that could be packed away in cases and stored under beds. We were innocents then and hadn't learned that a simple guitar sprouts into an electronic guitar which has to have two speakers for company, to say nothing of strobe lights and amplifiers and heavy duty wiring for the house and microphones and that's before we get into music stands and sheet music, which are absolute basic items.

We bought two simple straightforward un- wired instruments at the local music store and signed up the boys for weekly lessons at Munsingers Music shop every Saturday from ten to eleven o'clock.

Nothing changed really. They still stood at the mirror and crooned into the upturned mop, but now they had real instruments that they were slowly torturing to death.

On the third Saturday after lessons began, we picked them up at the studio as usual and they casually announced their news.

"You're performing in a concert in three weeks? Don't you think you should master the scales first?" their father asked mildly.

A cautious call to the teacher verified our fears. The school's semi-annual concert would be held at the Moose Hall and the boys would perform together, playing, "The Yellow Rose of Texas." We were aware that our children craved the limelight but we had hoped they'd master their so- far hidden talents before taking centre stage.

Three weeks went by incredibly fast and there wasn't any appreciable change in quality coming from those instruments although the tune was now recognizable.

Inescapably, the big night arrived. The siblings were scrubbed and dressed within an inch of their lives and the star performers gave as much time to their wardrobes as to practice time. They wore skin tight pants of unknown origin, turtle neck sweaters that their father was going to recognize any minute and size twelve side zip leather ankle- high boots of fine kid skin that some other father might claim right in the middle of the performance.

"Remember," I warned the little ones," This is an important occasion for your brothers and you must sit very still and clap loudly when they're through."

"Don't worry Mom," said Steven, always a pillar of strength, "We won't laugh and we won't sneak out either."

We crowded into the station wagon and were nervously on our way to the moose hall, a five-minute drive to the other end of town, and it didn't take longer no matter which direction you headed.

Our cool performers headed back stage while we filed into the hall clutching programs printed on mustard colored paper. We found their names, third from the end. The lights dimmed and the first performer came on stage, a pretty ten year old that played a flawless Minute Waltz and flawlessly at that. My husband and I eyed one another and the message was clear---these kids have been practicing and they didn't begin their lessons a month- and- a-half ago.

Michael said, "Daddy, if you sit down in your chair like that, you can't see anybody on stage."

It was obvious that the school had decided to bring out the big guns first and if there were a god in heaven, the hall would thin out to a faint few before it was time for our boys.

We worked our way through some talent and a lot of tinhorns, flat bugles, hard hit pianos and finally came to the group directly before our boys.

Three little girls came out, two carrying flutes, and one with a violin. The flute carriers were pale, skinny little things walking as though their instruments were too heavy a burden. The violinist, on the other hand, was built like a baby robin, pudgy body and stick legs and she had the smug, confident look of a person who had been training for years for this moment.

She stood behind her companions who were seated on two kitchen chairs at centre stage. The pianist tested the keys for flaws and away they went. The flutes came first and they didn't have the strength between them to pull out anything but thin, painful notes. Miss Violinist waited, buffing her nails and studying limp balloons on the ceiling, wincing occasionally at her partners' sour notes and giving us all encouraging looks.

Another few bars and our visit in this hall would be rewarded with a performance that would bring us to our feet. At last, she snapped her instrument up and under her chin and whipped her arm out straight, then slowly curved it back into position and let forth with sounds much worse than a thousand inch- long fingernails pulling along a blackboard, and the relief was so intense that we crouched down in our chairs.

Steve said curtly, "If anybody notices you guys laughing, I'm walking."

We tried to pull ourselves together, confident now that "The Yellow Rose of Texas" couldn't help but sound better. The trio departed with Miss Violin having to be dragged off while she savoured every final smattering of applause. The pianist whisked back to retrieve the kitchen chairs and it was our turn.

Their teacher announced the boys and out they shuffled, feet scraping across the floor like Quasimodo to avoid walking out of the oversize boots. My husband sat up straight.

"Hey, aren't those my sweaters? No one asked to borrow my sweaters."

"Ssssh," I cautioned as the performance began.

Like magic, the two heavy- handed strummers we had endured for hours on end had disappeared, replaced by two incredibly agile musical cats that jutted their pelvic bones forward and dipped their shoulders way back, all the while strumming furiously. They took turns snapping their necks, flicking their hair straight out and back, a clear demonstration of the cause of whiplash.

The grand finale wound down and we were exhausted. The entire ensemble came out for final bows and we all applauded with intense relief that we were off the hook for at least six months. We celebrated with a trip to the ice cream store and our stars volunteered to go in and get the order so they could swagger in and show off their outfits.

The next morning they were up early and had an agenda we hadn't heard but our antenna told us we would soon.

While we thought they were sleeping, they had morphed into a small band called "The Gladiators." They spent all day Saturday practicing and arranging their equipment and they played their first two concerts Sunday afternoon and evening.

They set up a stage in the basement and the first thing I saw on that stage was Peter perched on top of a piano stool on top of a file cabinet and his head was hidden in the rafters. It seems the drummer has to be elevated above the other players.

Mark and Scott played guitars and Steve handled the lights and the announcing. He planned to play his mouth organ but apparently it seems it wasn't big enough and he can only play half the notes of the only tune he knows, "Silent Night."

There was no looking back--their friends roundly applauded them and the thirst to entertain became firmly entrenched.

CHAPTER 23

Hospitals We Have Known and Loved

The previous winter topped off a year of colds, flu, sniffles, hacking coughs, mysterious rashes that disappeared on their own- the usual kid stuff. Then, early in November baby Michael's cold and bronchitis suddenly got worse and his was breathing was ragged and forced. We quickly rounded up a sitter, fed the kids and drove him to the waiting Pediatrician, who sent us on to the Children's' Hospital at eight o'clock that night.

"Doctor ordered an oxygen tent," sighed the nurse. "Trouble is we don't have one handy." That seemed to be sufficient in her eyes. We were fully aware of the expectations of the medical profession at that time. Parent should be seen and heard as little as possible. ("We know what we're doing and you don't.")

We waited and waited on the hard chairs, taking turns trying to find a more comfortable position for the baby. The nurses didn't seem busy at the time and they chatted amongst themselves.

Finally more assertive nurses noticed us, read our information and settled the delay by paging the Pediatrician and within minutes an oxygen tent was miraculously produced.

We walked beside the plastic- tented iron crib as the nurse pushed the precious contents to his room. We knew the rules—give us the pertinent data and go home - we'll be in touch.

We had overstayed our allotted sitter time and the sound of Michael's crying followed us down the hallway to the elevator. We might have been living on another planet at that time but honestly, in those days parents of hospitalized children were considered a nuisance.

There wasn't a way for me to leave the kids and get downtown to see my baby, and Hal during his lunch hour and after work, rushed down the three blocks from his office for a visit.

I phoned the desk for a daily report.

"Well, he didn't cry as much last night and he can't tolerate the medication by mouth so we are injecting him."

On the third afternoon Hal entered the hospital room and had to steady himself on the doorframe as he stared at the empty crib; it was stripped bare and there was no baby in that crib. Our baby was gone.

The nurse at the desk brought him a glass of water and explained Michael had been moved into another room with other babies that were no longer considered seriously ill.

After five days, Michael was declared fit to leave. Hal picked him up after work and he was joyfully welcomed home in time to settle into the pre-Christmas activities and then another round of mishaps.

Two days after Christmas Michael topped off his medical record by coming down with German measles and on New Year's Eve Mark cracked and dislocated his wrist, which required two hours under an anesthetic.

Half a dozen children in one family pretty well dictates that we would run into medical problems that couldn't be solved at the local doctor's office. That means I had to get used to driving into the city when we had a medical emergency.

I hated that drive because the traffic terrified me. Most of the streets seemed to be one-way so that's impossible to reach your destination and you're in danger of driving too far until you reach signs reading, "arret" and "nord". And you still have to turn around and drive six or seven hours to see if the one-way signs will now lead you to the Toronto hospital you were searching for in the first place.

Mark had been getting a lot of ear infections over the past winter and spring and the doctor ordered tests for possible hearing loss, at the Children's Hospital. We talked about the Saturday trip to the city with Mommy and Daddy and, no, Scottie couldn't go because this was special just for Mark and after the doctor had checked his ears we would stop at the ice cream store on the way home. This would be a breeze for us; after all we were with the calmest, quietest one of our children. No need to fear delay; we were confident he wouldn't whine or nag and would sit quietly with the coloring book and crayons we brought.

He was composed as we entered the building and appeared to feel secure in a place teeming with children his size, many on crutches and in wheel chairs, and some on stretchers. He didn't want to chat while we searched for the examining room, and while our attention was diverted a small boy on crutches sped along the hall and crashed into him, almost knocking both of them over. Mark gently righted his companion and said in his soft voice,

"Oh, I'm sorry, poor little crippled boy."

Children's Hospital had its own parking garage but unfortunately drivers were obliged to back into the parking space. That was okay when we had the Austin but we had worked our way through station wagons and finally The Iron Elephant, which closely resembled a World War One tank and there was no way you could judge just where that back end was.

Mark was the first for a hospital procedure; actually he was the first to do everything. When he was almost five the doctor declared his tonsils unfit and they had to be removed. The hospital sent us a pamphlet to ensure he knew what to expect; we were to bring him first thing in the morning and pick him up in the afternoon.

You had the choice of entering through Emergency or you could use the front entrance. I avoided the entrance because it felt to me like a sealed tomb with stained glass windows on display, donated by grateful people, but the chamber itself is dead. There isn't any air. And it's as silent as the tomb it closely resembles. Until I learned about the emergency entrance I used to hold my breath and try to race through, which wasn't easy with those pneumatic doors that took their sweet time to open.

We waited in a room filled with other parents. The more experienced ones ("this is my third.") sat and read or sipped coffee and chatted with other experienced parents. The rest of us sat and stared hard at our hands knotted in our laps.

Our attention was fixed on the receptionist seated outside the entrance to the room. The Operating Room nurses called messages to her and she relayed the news to one set of waiting parents. Finally it was our turn and she told us our little boy was fine and would be brought downstairs soon.

We were allowed to tip- toe into the room he shared with other little children with grey faces. He was asleep and there was a kidney basin beside his pillow. He looked so exquisitely tiny and so precious. We had bought him a small red fire truck, just the right size for running atop the sheets and we put it on the table by his bed while he slept.

We were slightly more controlled when Scott had his tonsils removed a few months later and he remembered to pre-order Popsicles, which went over better than the ice cream.

Was I too controlled when my children got hurt? A child staggers into the house dripping blood and obviously in need of stitches. I can feel my insides turning from jelly to steel just long enough to handle the situation. I knew the rules; if a mother starts to cry the child will figure death is next. While I tended the child I'd be thinking back to where I was and what I was doing when the child had the accident. I mean, was that trip to the bathroom absolutely necessary?

I stoutly deny this, but my father insists that he watched me assess one child with a gashed forehead and remark coolly,

"This will come in at around four stitches."

And it did.

There was the New Year's Eve when Mark fell to the ice on his wrist and I thought it was a sprain and didn't take him to the doctor until it swelled. His wrist was fractured and dislocated and he had to have it set in the hospital, under an anesthetic.

I had been dressing for a party, wearing my satin sheath and the rhinestone earrings and I seriously considered a life of flour sack dresses and a television camera installed at each corner of the house.

Probably in self-defense, the Region built a hospital half a mile away from our house. There was a flurry one summer we came in three Saturdays in a row (it was road hockey season) and we were all on a first-name basis.

There was the time Peter hobbled around the house clutching his stomach and groaning that his appendix was about to burst. He was an extremely dramatic child and we didn't pay much attention until he almost fainted and his face turned the color of putty. We rushed him to the doctor and he had an emergency appendectomy just before midnight.

Mind you, by morning he had rallied and never have we seen a child enjoy a hospital stay so much. We rented a television to hook onto his bed and every day friends and neighbours came to visit. The staff was so pressed for beds that they threw him out on the fourth day and he was enraged. Luckily he was too young to talk a lawyer into filing an injunction to give him at least two more days of spoiling.

It's fortunate that children never grasp the enormous hold they have over their parents. They're so busy believing they invented guilt feelings they don't realize their parents think THEY invented them.

The parents' first stirrings occur when the fresh-out-of-the-hospital baby rejects cuddling in favour of a full evening of crying. And if you haven't been breast-feeding you'll be into guilt overload long before the stitches heal.

I've never shaken the memory of the day I parked Mark in his pram outside the grocery store, finished the shopping and walked a full block before I remembered I hadn't made the trip alone.

Hephzibah is another example. The children should have been feeling the guilt that time but instead we felt we had failed totally as parents, because of Hephzibah.

She entered our lives when Scott took an extra job going from door to door, selling newspaper subscriptions and he made a deal with one customer that she would take a one- year subscription if he would agree to take her kitten, because the children in her house were allergic. He named her Hephzibah and brought her home.

It's hard to resist a kitten that fits into the small of the hand; she was almost completely black except for a trace of white at the throat, and was a combination of Angora and Persian. Frankly, I had mixed feelings because I love cats but we also had a houseful of allergic children.

The doctor made it clear our household should try to be content with Peter's pet alligator that resided in the downstairs bathroom and it was not a cuddly, furry little creature. It had mean, beady little eyes and seemed to be counting the days until it got older and could make a meal of us, one by one.

We also had fish, tanks and tanks of fish: guppies that only procreated at night when we were all asleep, depriving the children of an opportunity to witness birth, and Angel fish that ate every other fish in sight. We managed to give away the Budgie passed on to us from another family when we found it swore so savagely and we might have kept it longer if it wasn't for the feathers and its nasty habit of landing on a bare neck with the intention of pecking through to the other side.

We instructed Scott to get rid of Hephzibah before she got any older and any cuter, but things were pretty active around the house and I didn't really stop to think about it until Hephzibah had been with us for almost a year and had a bowl with her name painted on the side.

Then Hal came home one day with the news that he had joined the rest of them, allergic to most things that had fur or grew leaves and Hephzibah was on his list of forbidden items.

He waited to break the news until dinner was almost over, when the banana pie was all gone.

"Kids, I saw a specialist today about a rash I've got and he says either the cat goes or I go."

I personally wondered why a man who made his living writing complete sentences would leave himself so wide open but even writers have lapses. The children all looked properly sympathetic but didn't actually respond and quickly excused themselves to go down to the dormitory.

They returned in ten minutes when we were chatting in the family room. Mark was the spokesman.

"Dad, we've talked about it. We're sorry, we voted and Hephzibah stays."

Cat-six Father-zero.
CHAPTER 24

MEALS AND HARRY DENTON

1965

People of all colors and nationalities join together to march on Selma, protesting discrimination

**********************************************

We had lots of birthday parties around our big oak table and every birthday called for either a sponge cake or a four- layer cake heaped with seven-minute frosting.

The children's' birthdays ran from April to August and for a long time I was always in the middle of giving birth or had just finished and we had to juggle the party dates back and forth, but we managed the party. There weren't fast food chains or Chuck E. Cheese at the corner everywhere, so we handled our own parties, the food and the entertainment.

Mark and Scott had relatively easy parties. They'd have six or eight little boys who thought it was wildly funny to chew with their mouths open and tell disgusting stories that centered around animal excrement and anything else that might "gross out" parents or teachers. I believe teachers were feared more than parents, so we bore the brunt of it.

Fortunately they preferred to eat out on the back brick patio and then retired to the playhouse for privacy and better jokes.

Steven and Peter still required more structured parties, though not for long if they were listening to their big brothers as intently as I thought they were. The menu was the same hot dogs and hamburgers, ice cream and special cake, but they settled down then to games which had to be organized by the parent, and since most of their parties were on a week day, that person was me. The party was officially over when I handed them their balloons and their bag of candy. They were then free to continue playing in the back yard or could head off for home in the neighborhood.

Michael would have two or three friends from nursery school. They had lunch, played a few games and at the appropriate time I handed them their goodies and whisked them into the car to drive them home.

Melissa was still obliging about letting me choose her clothes and she was dressed like a princess for her parties. Little girls arrive at parties looking sweet and shy but the thing is they giggle at anything and they exchange messages with their eyes that cause instant group hilarity, which in some ways is worse than the boys' antics. They're all the same in one respect-- they leave sticky traces of ice cream and frosting everywhere; behind pictures, under the buffet, even on the toothpaste tube. I kept the last party dress Melissa ever wore before she began her changeling period to live in jeans and denim jackets. I thought she might have a daughter of her own someday, and maybe times will be different and they'll wear the dress.

Our house was shrinking again, now that Hal worked at home. We were clearly in need of office space and as long as we were dreaming, a mudroom would be a godsend. That would give us an entry space where all the jackets, boots, sneakers, mitts, and hockey equipment could go. At present they all ended up on the floor of the narrow hall leading in from the back door. The kids shrugged out of their snow jackets, boots, and mitts, whatever. Dumped it all in the pile and then walked up and over it. They all did it.

While we were at it we might as well tack on a family room, which might then liberate the living room as an oasis for parents.

And if we're going that far, then let's build Hal a private workspace.

The bank manager was unusually okay with our plans and before he changed his mind we found ourselves a builder, a quiet, studious man named Harry, who was a carpenter/draftsman. A local architect who deemed our job too small to tackle had recommended him.

We showed Harry our sketches and ideas and he drew up some plans. He was about to branch out into working for himself so he could begin right away. And his price was by far the cheapest.

It didn't take any time at all before we empathized with Harry's past employer, whoever he was. Harry never showed up until around eleven in the morning and worked until it was pitch dark.

We asked him to arrive around 7:30 and depart by six thirty and he compromised. He still arrived around eleven but departed around six and there was little to show for his labors except for a few two by fours standing self-consciously at attention.

"Harry, do you have an explanation for your shabby work habits;" I'd whine, and he's just stand there with his eyes downcast.

Most of the time he stood around as though his feet were encased in cement, and before we were done, I had some pretty violent thoughts about doing just that before I rolled him out of the rowboat into the pond.

"Harry you're fired," I'd thunder and then Hal would re-hire him on sympathetic grounds. At the time Hal was working down town so he wasn't there to witness this slow-motion drama.

It was a long and frustrating summer and I devoted it to shadowing the man so he had no choice but Hari Kari or get the job done.

Painfully, Harry constructed the study, one step down from our bedroom and Hal built in the desk and file cabinets. The mudroom had a quarry tile floor and enough hooks and bins to hold any possible outdoor wear and there was room for the antique grain bin containing hundred- pound sacks of whole wheat and white flour.

By the time Harry constructed the walls and a flat roof on the family room, we elected to hire sub trades to finish, since by this time we were all too exhausted to fight anymore and summer was long gone.

We paid him off but then he made frequent phone calls asking for more money.

"Send me an itemized bill Harry," was Hal's reply. He never did.

The family room became the core of our home and we loved it. It was built in front of the kitchen and the former kitchen window became the pass-through. We left the exterior brick wall for the effect and we added a tongue and groove wood ceiling to give the look of a well-used English pub.

I found a mason to build us a tall brick hearth for the acorn fireplace. The man was dismayed at my request to give the mortar a sloppy, gingerbread house effect but he complied.

The best place to sit on a snowy evening was close to the fireplace with your feet resting on the raised hearth. We bought sacks of coal from the fuel outlet by the railroad station and all winter we had cozy fires and watched the snow falling outside. Coal tends to leave a filmy haze of grease everywhere, but you can't beat the fires for a romantic look.

We planned to put a brick patio outside the family room and we ended up one Saturday switching to a more ambitious deck reached from the family room side door, which up to that time didn't have a function but it was one of Harry's whims.

We bordered the deck with grapevines that provided perfect shade from the heat of the summer. I made grape jam once and that was such a horror squeezing out all the little pits that from then on we left the fruit for the raccoons and they never seemed to leave so much as a seed behind.

While we waited for the grape vines to grow, we needed a fiberglass roof to shade the deck. The fiberglass roof panels were purchased with some of the proceeds of an article detailing the neater aspects of an impromptu party that began one summer night when we were relaxing on the deck and some neighbors dropped by. Before we were through there were a dozen of us skinny-dipping in the pool across the street.

That wasn't too bad but the next day, the pool owner cruelly dropped my clothing into my lap, one item at a time and described how I strolled back home after midnight with a hand towel for covering. My loving children clustered around, apparently without a single thing to do and one child unwisely exclaimed, "Gee, and they do that without dope."

We furnished the room with odds and ends bought at auctions, including another old oak dining table and we placed it near the kitchen entrance. The window near the table was built at an adult's eye level so that the children couldn't look outside to see who was waiting for them during mealtime.

The instant I called everyone to the table for dinner a secret signal flashed through the town for the phone to ring and for people to bang on the front and back doors. I think we have too many laws as it is but if I had to institute one, I would like to legislate that every family with children must sit down to dinner at a single agreed-upon time each day.

Each one of our children seemed to be inseparable from at least three friends, leaving us open to eighteen interruptions because all those eighteen children either never ate dinner at all or else they ate at four in the afternoon or after midnight.

We tacked a sign on the front and back doors placing the house out of bounds from six to seven. That helped some but things improved more when we took the phone off the hook at the same time.

Then we had to deal with four year olds who can't read, so we cut out pictures from magazines of families sitting at a meal and finally we reached the point when we could concentrate on the meal.

The conversations weren't always any easier than the interruptions.

"Geoff is having a party Saturday night and Scott and me would like to go."

I skipped the English lesson. "Fine; does his mother want you to bring any food?"

"Aw, Mom, it isn't a kid's party."

"Really? Does that mean his parents won't be home?"

" Great! Just great! Make us look like babies. You think we can't be responsible if a parent isn't around?"

"Does that mean Geoff's parents won't be around?"

"Aw Mom."

About this time, Peter switched mental gears has decided to be a HELPER; a paragon. He began getting up at six this morning and I heard him emptying the dishwasher, but when it occasionally had dirty dishes in it, I had to jump out of bed to discourage this.

He could hardly wait to get his brothers out of bed so he could make their beds.

As soon as anyone laid down a fork it was whisked off to the kitchen and once, Melissa whimpered after him begging to finish that last spoonful of cereal.

He was so eager and well-behaved at school he has been made Row Captain and he was anxious for more snow so he could shovel it.

I told Hal I finally figured it out. When he was a toddler, he was very intense and like a little old man.

Then when most kids are beginning to act human, he turned into a little boy and was the silliest one I'd ever met.

Now he had just about finished with the little boy phase and he was trying out for sainthood.

We had to discuss family rules with some of the kids.

"Lize, you must promise you won't use Daddy's stapler to fasten the cat in the shopping bags again. We still can't get her out from under the bed."

"Steven, you must get your lab equipment out of the bathroom for the weekend; whatever you're working on smells throughout the house. Don't tell us what it is while we're eating, but finish it fast."

Steven was branching out from his lab and had developed a magic act to perform at parties and we all promised secrecy for life so that no one would know the explanation for the milk jug that never emptied and the scarves that started out as singles and ended us knotted together and the toy rabbit that came out of the hat. Live rabbits were not coming into the house and that was that.

When we had perfected his magic he turned to practical jokes.

His father was sitting at the table in the family room, reading the paper. Steve looked through at him from the kitchen pass through and said,

"Bring you some coffee Dad?"

"No thanks, Steve. I still have plenty."

Steve took an empty cup and saucer and stood at the entrance to the family room, poised to come down the two steps.

He gauged his father for the moment when he looked up from his paper.

"Oops!"

He staggered down the two stairs, the cup flew from his hand and he caught it in mid air.

The action caused a chain reaction with his father.

"Ohhhh!"

His hand jerked his coffee all over his shirtfront.

Luckily for him, Steve tried this on a man who admires timing but he also had the good sense to declare practical jokes off-limits for twenty years.

Our mornings now began with the mournful sound of an OHMMMMM chant drifting up from the dormitory. Mark had perfected a sad, pitying look and sighed a lot when we asked him what the chant meant.

One night for dinner I served spaghetti with meat sauce as well as an enormous Caesar salad and Mark heaved another sigh and spoke to me in his be-patient-to-the-unwashed voice.

"Now you know I can't eat meat, Mom. And I keep telling you I hate spaghetti. I'll just eat the salad, and who wants my anchovies and cheese?"

He used to request spaghetti and meat sauce for his special birthday dinner. Adolescence seems to erase all good memories of the past from formerly loveable little minds and life is concentrated on anything that can be criticized.

I still believed I could keep up with their changes and be a good sport as well and I searched through magazines and library cookbooks for alternatives to meat dishes to get me through what might be a prolonged phase. Even if Mark turned human again, Scott was coming along, and then there would be Steven, and heaven knows Peter had never thought himself to be a child.

One night I made lentil burgers for dinner. The details are selectively erased from my memory but I seem to remember that lentils have to be cooked for a long time until they turn an unpalatable grey. Or maybe it was this particular recipe. I shaped the stuff into patties, cooked them like hamburgers and toasted the buns.

Then I called the children to the table. They sat expectantly.

"Hey. Great-burgers and it isn't even Saturday."

They admired the circle of buns on the ironstone platter and prepared to use the condiments.

"What's this stuff in the middle? It's grey."

"This is in honor of Mark's new interest in vegetarianism; these are lentil burgers; let's learn from Mark and be willing to try new things."

The silence was protracted and I was a bit surprised that Mark didn't thank me for my thoughtful gesture.

They flashed their signal.

On cue, each pretended to take one bite, dropped the bun and fell backwards off their chairs onto the floor.

"Are you trying to tell me you don't care for lentil burgers?"

"Well, Mom, I guess I forgot to tell you-"

"Tell me what, Mark?"

"I've decided to forget the vegetarianism and stick to meditation and fasting every three days."

We had to keep a cautious eye on everything Mark did because we were acutely aware that there were five others waiting for their turn. Scott, as I mentioned earlier, was born going through his adolescence so although he got louder it was generally speaking, more of the same.

Steven showed signs of being temperamentally suited to donating his live body to medical science if the cause was right.

Peter was coming along more quickly than was necessary in my opinion. At eight years of age, we thought we had at least three years more of relatively friendly relations. I read somewhere that a child peaks at age ten and it's true. After that, it's downhill until they're grown and find one or two redeeming features in their parents. He came home this day and went straight to his room to put on a record and play his drums to the music. He left his door open, but no one dropped by to applaud or ask for an encore. On the other hand, his room was almost in the centre of the main floor, and no one asked him to cut down on the noise either.

During dinner, he pretended to choke violently on his broccoli and no one paid the slightest attention.

After dinner he came into the kitchen and showed me his essay about a monster in a museum, and aside from the hundred percent spelling errors it was full of suspense and mystery, with liberal doses of gore. I admired the writing skills and left the spelling errors to his teacher.

He must have still felt unfulfilled, with creative energy to burn. He can be wildly impatient unless he has a plan, and then he can slow down to turtle speed to produce the greatest impact.

Michael was to be his victim. While Mike was in the bathroom, Peter slipped under his bed. Michael said his good nights and got into bed, leaving his light on so he could read for a few minutes. He couldn't settle down and kept glancing uncomfortably around the dormitory, which cast large shadows. Suddenly his light went off. He gasped and sat upright. He had to convince himself that he was safely in his own bed and there wasn't any reason why he couldn't get out of bed and turn on the main light and then change his bulb.

He swung his feet over to the floor and a hand grabbed his ankle.

It took a lot of talking but Peter convinced him it was a great joke and too good to be used just once.

They teamed up to make Melissa the next victim.

The following night, she sat in her bed reading. She had an uncomfortable feeling and the night noises were bothering her. Even the shadows around her bed canopy were unfriendly.

She heard a small rustling sound and her light went out. She waited to muster courage, then swung her legs over to the floor and walked over to turn on her overhead light and returned to sit on the edge of her bed. An unseen hand grabbed her ankle. She screamed and jumped to her feet. In front of her, her closet door then burst open and Peter shouted, "Gotcha!"

We were out that evening and when we returned home we found a note on my pillow:

"Dear Mom, when you get home please kill Peter and Michael. Love, Melissa."

Peter was out of sorts. The family room still wasn't paneled and meantime the walls were stuffed with batts of insulation. Peter insisted he should be allowed to move into the attic space, which wasn't high enough to stand up straight, and was full of fiberglass insulation. I told him he would have to make do with his own room on the main floor, and he got it because of his asthma. On a rare moment when the family room was unoccupied, he pulled out one of the insulation bats in the family room and stepped behind it, wedging it back in place. I came into the room to darn socks and Steve came in to work on his display of cow eyes for the science fair.

"Hey, where's Pete? He was going to help me get the eyes into the jars".

"I haven't seen him since he threatened to leave home," I replied.

Melissa looked around the corner.

"Pete gonna read me a story?"

"We don't know where he is. He said he was leaving home."

Mark and Scott crashed down the two stairs into the room.

"Hey, we hear Pete left home. Can I have his drums?"

"Okay, if you get his drums I want his snakeskin and his room."

"Hey, I should get his room because I'm older and I want the trunk with his toys in it."

The battle waged for quite some time before the batting exploded out of the wall and an enraged Peter burst out of hiding.

"Nobody, I mean nobody, gets my room, or my toys, or my clothes. Ever."

He stalked off to take a quick but thorough inventory of his possessions.

That seemed to release his pent up dramatic needs for a while.

When Melissa first learned to talk, she used to point to a sign over a store showing a white haired man with a white mustache and wearing a white suit and she'd murmur, "Look, Frucky Fried."

When she got older and knew how to print, I asked her one day to write me out a week's dinner menus to get an idea of what wasn't a disaster in her eyes. I still have her menu.

Meals would have consisted of French toast, hamburgers and "normal chicken." That meant roasted simply without any sauce.

Grocery shopping day began early Thursday morning, as soon as everyone was off to school. I can't help it, I'm a list maker and once the menus were prepared for the week, the recipes stored in the basket on top of the refrigerator and the shopping list was sorted into the various aisles in the supermarket, I was ready to head out. I never got by with less than two carts and it took forever to get the stuff loaded into the Iron Elephant and then from the car to the house, and unloaded and unpacked.

Bananas were a big item in the house, and we couldn't afford to buy bunches of them all the time and the climate was too cold to grow our own tree. I bought sixteen bananas and as soon as they were unpacked, I got out the marking pen and wrote each person's name on two. They could eat the two at once or space them out, whichever they wished. Once my brother came to visit for a few days and he got his two bananas. He liked the idea so much we wrote a letter on the peel to his wife, called a banana gram, but when she opened the envelope, she pulled out a very brown skin and couldn't make out the message.

I made it a point to be in the kitchen when school was out, on grocery shopping day, just to observe. It was the only day that I wouldn't see a child opens the fridge, go into a coma in front of it for five minutes, and then gently shut the door and grumble, "Never anything to eat in this house." The fresh baked bread and bus-loads of still-warm cookies didn't count, apparently.

We never had leftovers in our refrigerator. It was full of bacon and lettuce and fresh vegetables and margarine but never one chicken leg or a lamb chop. Actually, I kept a soup pot simmering and anything that wasn't too badly used would go into it.

When the children all finally left home, I began finding little furry things in the refrigerator that I couldn't remember putting there. It's like the ghost of Christmas past. All the single chops and chicken legs we never had before. Now I generally make dinners for three and put the remains into a freezer container for another time so the fridge won't be too overpowering.
CHAPTER 25

COTTAGE LIFE AND DOGS

Our first dog was a tiny dachshund with floppy ears and we thought it would be amusing to name her 'Fang'. She was long and low and plump and melted our hearts. She in turn, lived for the day when she could tear out our loving hearts with her sharp little teeth. She was a mean- tempered, over-bred animal that detested children, adults, passing cars and other dogs.

We finally managed to give her away to a childless couple with several acres of land and endless patience and we remained dog-less for a full month. Then we got Taffy, who was part Basset and part dachshund. She was amiable, loved everyone and didn't object to being dressed in baby clothes and wheeled in the doll carriage, although she adored racing around the house after the kids during a good game of kick- the-can.

She was minding her own business in the back yard one day, on a leash, mind you, when she was compromised by a passing English setter, and then she lost her girlish shape and eyed all male dogs with disgust and suspicion.

She went into labor right after lunch as the boys were preparing to return to school. Steven had read up on birthing at the library and offered to stay home but I told him virtuously that nothing was more important than education and Taffy would have to manage without his help. After they left, she produced one pup and then her labor ground to a halt so I called the school and asked to have Steven sent home on a family emergency.

"You're sure you don't want the rest of your children?" quipped the secretary.

Steve knew what to do and soon there were six puppies, one for each child, as he needlessly pointed out.

The puppies provided enough distraction during the first signs of summer that we didn't notice right away we were the victims of a carefully planned campaign.

Mark got things underway, shuffling sadly into the living room and throwing himself on top of the newspaper I was planning to read.

We heard a large sigh.

"All my friends go away to cottages every summer, and we have to spend weekends at a nudist camp where I'd be a laughing stock if anyone knew. Why can't we rent a cottage?"

"Because your mother believes that staying at a cottage is as much fun as sinking in quicksand," replied his father, momentarily diverted from making the toaster stop shorting out. Mark hobbled away to brood about the injustice of parents who shunned eccentrics with cottages and lawns that required frequent mowing.

Scott launched the next offensive.

"Why is it that you guys have it in for me. I can't get my own car, I can't take driving lessons, I can't go overnight camping alone, and all summer you expect me to stay in a stinking hot house and rot."

I fielded this one.

"Scott, you won't be old enough for a driver's license for another four years; you go camping with your Scout troop often and your summers have always been busy with fishing at the creek

And swimming at the town pool and all the picnics we have and..."

"There, I knew you didn't understand. You guys want me to be miserable the rest of my life." He stormed out of the room.

We began to sense a plot and settled back to wait for the next move.

Unseen hands pushed Melissa into the room and she toddled over to her father's lap, separating him from the toaster.

"Can I sleep on the porch at the cottage?"

He was busy describing the dangers of country tarantulas and mice when Steven ambled in.

"You know, if any repairs needed doing at the cottage, why I could handle them, and I'll bring my tools along."

"For the last time, you can tell your co- conspirators that we are definitely not getting a cottage. Do you understand?"

The next day the phone rang while I was finishing the breakfast dishes. It was Mrs. Chambers on the next street over.

"I heard you folks were looking for a cottage. We've been renting one on Stony Lake for years but we've bought our own now. I'm sure you'd like it and I can give you the name of the owner."

I said that we hadn't made any plans for the summer yet but a cottage wasn't for me; staying in the same place and cooking on a wood stove wasn't my idea of fun. After dinner that night Hal answered the phone and it was Mr. Jackson the cottage owner, to say he still had some time available.

"Well, we had been talking of renting but we wouldn't want to stay any longer than ten days."

Mr. Jackson said that ten days was fine and what date should he reserve. Peter walked by the phone and his father said,

"Peter, what date did you all think we should stay at the cottage?"

"Tell him July first to the tenth will be fine, Dad. You can book your vacation for then."

We knew we'd lost.

"Fine, Mr. Jackson, July first to the tenth will be good and how do we get there?"

The car was loaded with all the essentials, which at the last moment did not include a three- foot plush panda wearing scuba equipment, or a toy stove and dishwasher, or forty pound press bars and especially a carton of records accompanied by a portable electric record player since there wasn't any electricity.

"What are we going to do for a whole week without records?" they demanded of the very mother who was dreading the ordeal to start with. We had exhaustive discussions about the absence of electricity, running water, and our nature lovers that they would be in their element assured indoor plumbing and us. I had misgivings about teen-agers who were beginning to consider showers a necessity every twenty minutes.

We stuffed the station wagon with the children, puppies, groceries, bedding, clothing and everything else necessary for living away from home and Taffy rode in front with the grown-ups until the yelping got rowdy; then we'd stop while she provided lunch. The radiator boiled over near a gas station, and we were only delayed half an hour.

We parked at the top of a hill and transported everything down the slope and across a rocky beach to the cottage. There was a screened porch for sleeping, a bedroom with a door and a second floor loft big enough to sleep a dozen, if any masochist wanted to try.

On our way up the hill for more supplies, one of the puppies had scrambled out of his basket and rolled down the hill, landing at our feet and looking very proud, and we scrambled hurriedly back up the hill to retrieve the others before they got lost.

Cooking on the wood- burning stove turned out to be fun; we had pancakes and French toast and I even tried a cake in the oven. The children swam practically from the front porch and they caught small sunfish and ate them for breakfast. Melissa brought in tiny fish that floated in, belly-up and she couldn't understand why we wouldn't cook those. Finally, we had an edible substitute cleaned and ready in the icebox, to become a surreptitious substitution into the frying pan when necessary.

The only one who didn't seem to enjoy the setting was Taffy. Each passing day she was losing what little interest she ever had in motherhood. We penned the puppies outside in the daytime and at night we locked mother and children in the kitchen. Every morning, you could set your clock by the yipping and wailing that began at the strike of four, although the children swore they never heard a sound. One of us opened the kitchen door and both of us slipped through before they could charge past us.

They pretended to be paper-trained but when we turned our backs long enough to get some sleep, they scattered the paper all over the room and found the linoleum quite satisfactory. We pumped buckets full of soapy water and got busy mopping up with a puppy hanging on to each ankle by sharp little teeth, the others waiting their turn. We had begun weaning them to bowls of milk and they demanded milk and pabulum before we could return to bed.

There was only one rowboat and I made a deal with Hal. One of us stood guard duty while the other took off in the boat, rowing to a tiny rocky island just big enough to hold one person with a book.

Mark and Scott gave guitar concerts for their siblings and any other restless children nearby, but we made them give back the ten cents admission charge. One parent offered to pay twenty-five cents per child and throw in free popcorn if we guaranteed the concert would last one hour and that we wouldn't let anyone leave early.

The children couldn't believe it when the ten days were up but the adults were ready to head back to running water and light switches. Besides, we had to find homes immediately for the puppies and that should keep everyone occupied until school started.

September sometimes breaks my heart. School began again and I'd have part of the day to myself but the house was so silent. During the summer I'd dream of being alone with my thoughts but when school began I missed the uproar.

Already the children were thinking about what they'd wear back to school. Scott wore his new jeans in the bathtub to shrink them to fit and Mark made new head bands out of fabric scraps from my sewing box.

It hadn't been a bad summer, really. Steven had his thumb stitched after using the heavy-duty stapler for the first time. Scott had stitches over his eye when he fell on a gravel driveway, Melissa and Michael developed allergies to mosquito bites and their faces swelled to the size of pumpkins before they started their shots. Steven developed an allergy to shellfish and his face joined company with theirs.

Michael remained accident- free while he carried around a Windex bottle filled with water and a cloth and squirted and wiped the bricks on the house or anything else that looked interesting.

When the alarm rang I got up while my finger was still on the shut- off button. It was the first day of school. I was going to miss them and yet I was glad to see them go. I would shower later when the house was quiet and did a fast splash and into slacks and shirt. Out with the special poacher with the eight cups, sliced eight slices of bread, and moved back and forth to the family room, setting the table, two quart jug of milk at each end. Juice poured, apple for the allergic ones, orange for the non-allergic.

The usual calling back and forth had started.

"It's my turn to have the first shower-who's running the water? Cut it out or I'll get you."

My husband shuffled in; it was hard to imagine that within the hour he would be showered, shaved and dressed, ready for a working day. He looked this minute like a person who had been institutionalized too long and had forgotten why he was there or who he was.

"Socks," he said. He looked devastated.

"Yes, socks. Could you give me a clue about that word so that I'll know how to respond; and before you do, would you please stand beside the stove so that I can get the eggs out of the refrigerator?"

"Can't decide what color socks to wear today. Is it going to be a summer day or a fall day?"

"Well, the weather report on the radio said seasonally warm, whatever that means, but it was hot yesterday. What difference does that make with your socks? Were you planning to get out your thermals?"

"Blue. I wear blue socks for business meetings if the weather is warm, but grey socks if it's cold. I need to know."

And I trusted this man to keep us financially afloat. I reminded myself that he was fine, just fine, after two cups of coffee preceded by a bracing shower.

"I can guarantee that blue socks are what you should wear today."

He shuffled toward the bathroom, vacated seconds before by a child who could be heard scrambling back to the bedroom. He pulled himself together to rush in before the next one approached.

Melissa toddled in wearing her best eyelet trimmed panties.

"Well, good morning. This is a special day. What's happening to you today?"

She eyed me suspiciously. We both knew perfectly well that she would begin nursery school today and for the first time I would be alone in the house all morning. I couldn't quite swallow the lump in my throat.

"I laid out your clothes for school; you wait near the door so the minute Daddy comes out you can get in to wash, and I'll braid your hair when you're dressed."

This is the end of an era for me. I'll be on my own. I'll go to school, take some courses that interest me, and then decide whether I want to work outside again.

But first, I want to try being completely alone for part of the day. I need that.

Peter made his entrance, and it was colorful.

"Good morning one and all."

"Good morning, Peter. One and all are only me, and that's an interesting outfit for your first day of school. White pants and an orange shirt; I hope you'll keep off your knees in honor of the occasion."

"My knees? What do you think I am, a kid? I don't play on my knees."

Timing is critical in the preparation of any meal. It isn't just a question of getting everything cooked at the same time, but there's a need to be tuned in for activities going on out of view. A phone call to a special friend who hasn't been heard from for at least eight hours means a two- minute delay, and if the electric razor hasn't sounded an adjustment had to be made. One child will walk in and rage because we're having poached eggs and I should know perfectly well he doesn't like poached eggs. The fact is that I rotate the menu and we hadn't had poached eggs since last Monday when he still liked them, but this wasn't the time to be rational.

"I'm sure you'll have a splendid first day of school, and we'll have a back to school dinner tonight. I'm really looking forward to hearing about your day. Would you like your juice in a wine glass for this special time?"

When the background sounds melded, out came the eggs on the toast and the plates went to the table. They all answered the call and gathered at the table, each child looking clean, hair brushed and clothes spotless. Their father looked alert, freshly shaven and like someone who had a firm grasp on life for another day.

"Hey, Mom," said Peter," I've been meaning to speak to you. Now that you've got all that spare time, you'd better find yourself a job or your brain is gonna rot."
CHAPTER 26

CUBS, SCOUTS AND BROWNIES

At six o'clock each Wednesday evening, Hal drove the boys to the church hall; they were a dazzling sight; their un-rumpled shorts, their jerseys in excellent order, merit badges in place, caps settled neatly over their spiky hair cuts and they voluntarily polished their oxfords.

While they were off learning to read compasses and identify animal tracks, I'd make a dash for their rooms to see how many pieces of socks and underwear could be located and rushed to the laundry.

If I'd had time for a hobby this would have been it, searching for underwear and socks. I had tried everything to instill a sense of neatness—reasoning, bribes. Threats, threw their clothes out into the front yard but nothing moved them.

There was a dramatic change when girls came into their lives, followed by the Beatles who wore shirts, ties and shoes.

I made a costly error just when Mark and Scott were moving up to Scouts and Steven and Peter were going into Cubs.

I dropped into a cub pack meeting one night believing that parents must show a hands-on interest and before the evening ended I had become a cub leader.

That wasn't an entirely bad move, although that took care of any leisure time I might have envisioned. While I struggled with bowlines and reef knots to keep ahead of those smart little kids, I had less time to worry about those ever-changing teen-age strangers who were my older children.

I kept a cord tied to the kitchen drawer handle so I could practice the knots; and eventually I became proficient enough that I could hold a stick just so to tell where north was, as long as there was a bit of sunshine to cast a shadow and I made excellent plaster casts of animal paw prints. I just couldn't always identify the type of animal.

I rapidly talked my friend Dorothy Turner into the mix and since she had only three children, well-spaced apart, she was up for it.

We threw ourselves into it and at one time we organized a hockey game with another local cub pack with free time at the local rink and borrowed uniforms, yellow jerseys that hung down to their knees

Our team had one or two league players but the others seldom skated or played hockey.

One little tike roared out onto the ice but had forgotten to take of his guards and his dad had to rush out and get them off. Michael laboriously slid around on his ankles to his position but he did manage to keep moving.

The hockey was pretty awful but it was one of the funniest sights of all time.

Our team lost but we made $60 for our new tent fund.

Another night I demonstrated how to make a little bake oven out of a large tin can and a candle and then we mixed up and cooked tea biscuits, which were declared delicious. Solemnly, they whipped out their pencils and notebooks and they asked me for the recipe.

Melissa came to camp-outs with me and that spoiled her for Brownies. She lasted two months and she stubbornly refused to go again.

"Honey, what's the problem? It looks like a lot of fun."

"They don't go to camp and they want us to bake cookies. I don't bake cookies."

She was getting the hang of rebelling and she was barely out of training pants.

On Wednesday afternoon, before the kids were due back from school, I'd sink into a lovely hot bath and study my plans for the evening's cub meeting, literally planning it out minute by minute.

It must have been later than I thought because the bathroom door opened and one of my cubs walked in. It was Richie, a pal of my kids and he was about to use the loo.

"Hi there Mrs. Tennant, how are you? It was a great day at school today. Peter will be home soon—he had to stay and talk to the teacher about his homework. Well, nice talking to you—I'll see you tonight."

Mission accomplished.

Before I became involved as a leader and it was Steven's turn to go to cub camp, I spent an afternoon with the recommended packing list in hand, searching for the items required. A sensible mother would have left the search to him pack for himself. I take that back; sensible mothers would not have a Steven in their houses.

His hobbies and his dissecting equipment and dozens of books were jumbled together with his merit badges and a million batteries, some of which were still active. I wonder how he knew which was which? We heard that on his very first morning at cub camp he showed up for dress inspection missing one sock and shoe and the riddle wasn't solved until the last day of camp when the tent came down and the missing items showed up under the floor.

In 1967, Cubs and Scouts from York summit held their annual hobby show at a local high school. I'd taught my cub pack how to make hand puppets and most were entered.

Pete's had a "good effort" and would have done better if he hadn't made the costume too tight to move the fingers.

Steve got a third for his lace cookies but his brownies didn't do well. We expected to see a molar fastened too one of those.

He got a third for open entry: it was an outgrown shoe, removed the heel, put in a "secret code" and tiny smoke bomb (that worked) and replaced the heel.

All through those stomach-churning teen-age times Mark and Scott remained faithful to their Scout Troop and took pride in their ability to handle winter camp-outs, managing to stay dry and reasonably warm.

They took a scout-sponsored hike along the Bruce trail for a weekend, traveling 25 miles all told and packing freeze-dried food. Their gear couldn't weight more than 25 lbs. They did their own cooking and setting up tents. They both had brand new hiking boots and Mark broke his in, while jogging around the block in the morning

I found some notes I had made about that hike, when Mark, Scott and Steve went together with their group.

They had a great time although the weather was cold but the rain stopped while they were still early into the hike on the Bruce Trail.

They had to stringently follow the rules in order to win the merit badges, and when obliging motorists offered to transport their packs the final ten miles, they were determined to follow the letter of the law and persevered. Mark was in a better position to manage but no one is as stubborn as Steve and he was justly proud of himself when the trek was completed, along with the camp setting-up, cooking and leaving the site in pristine condition.

I clung to those moments; although the teen years were, okay let's be a sport and describe those times as simply difficult, but they were learning good habits that stayed with them into adulthood.
Chapter 27

GIVE US THAT NEW- TIME RELIGION

1965

Constant rebelling and re-examination of principles on a minute-by-minute basis can become infectious and after a long personal struggle, I defected to the Unitarian Church, dragging my bemused family with me.

It happened when it was time for Mark to begin studies leading to his first communion and it was time for me to face that rebellion in me: I wasn't in the right place and had to find where I belonged.

I'd dragged the kids along with me this far and it didn't occur to me to go it alone.

While I had been squirming on the unyielding Anglican pew, I couldn't see that the man in the pulpit had any better grasp of current affairs than I did and he wasn't permitting any opportunity for his congregation to offer opinions or experiences. I yearned to hear from people who had marched into Selma demanding a change for blacks and from kids who were rioting on college campuses and the people who were turning their backs on their jobs and their life styles.

Personally, I had problems with all God's rules when I never had a clue what this entity might be and where did all those rules come from? Each church seemed to have its own sets of regulations and that didn't seem right somehow.

Our new congregation offered us free-wheeling debates and the chance to exchange views and eventually work out a compromise we could live with. This was a time of upheaval for everyone, not just our group. World leaders were assassinated, our teenagers treated us like wardens, magazine articles gloomily prophesied the end of the family unit and there were times I wasn't fighting the idea.

The church we joined didn't have its own building so the adults met in the gym of a school and the kids had theirs in and old house that would eventually be torn down to make way for a YMCA

Mark and Scott enjoyed meeting with kids and teachers who listened respectfully to their ideas and brought them face to face with people who championed causes.

The kids were divided into groups such as science, new neighbors, North American Indian culture, and they go out on field trips almost every Sunday. The principle of it all was that you can't fear it if you know what it is, be it new ideas or practices foreign to our particular culture.

Peter was only eight but he didn't fit into his age group and we knew he wouldn't because he never in his life felt like a kid. The teachers finally put him in with Mark and Scott's group. His teacher asked to be called by his first name and Peter got to drink coffee. The child had found earthly heaven.

During their time there the kids had the opportunity to visit a hospital operating room, visit a weather station to learn how weather is forecast with balloons and hygrometers, and so on. There were visits to a construction site with the builder and archaeological digs. They visited a Dutch restaurant for a Dutch meal, attended an Italian wedding, and spent a weekend with an Amish family and another weekend with kids at Cape Croker Indian reservation. They also visited a picketing line outside a newspaper, and attended a synagogue and a Catholic church.

They were learning that fear is based on ignorance and the more they explored the less there was to fear.

On one Sunday, I recall that Scott had his Indian pottery shard examined by a visiting anthropologist (who said it was about 1,000 years old). , Mike went to an artist's studio to paint pictures, Steven and Peter visited book publishers and were gifted with books and Mark visited the Liberal and NDP headquarters for North York.

Because of her Sunday experiences where there were no hymns or sermons, Melissa was puzzled when her kindergarten teacher told the class bible stories and taught them hymns. She gravely announced at the dinner table that she now realizes that every country has its own god and she was beginning to get the hang of the Canadian one.

After a couple of months the children agreed to participate in a day-long Saturday pageant with kids from other centers. They would all be Buddhists, wearing dhotis made from old sheets dyed saffron and they had to be shoeless. On the way there they sprouted a rare case of stage fright. The day was frigid and sleet frosted the car windows. I heard Scott mutter to Mark, "As soon as they're out of sight we'll split."

They reluctantly entered the building and we waited for the first distraction to sneak off with their sneakers and snow boots and stayed out of sight until the pageant was over. We were fully aware that the absence of six children can make a huge vacuum onstage. By the time we returned they rediscovered their need to be in the spotlight and they forgot to be mad at us.

When it was our turn to teach, we asked the kids in the class what a Unitarian was and Mike replied, "I think it's a card game."

It was also our sorry lot to be assigned to teach a class on procreation to a class of little ones, including Melissa.

Fortunately we were given an animated film, done tastefully that pretty well spelled it all out.

We were so pleased with the film and the resulting discussion with the kids that we agreed to show the film to the adults in their building one Sunday.

At a critical moment, Melissa piped up, "What's that chicken doing on the other chicken's back?"

We remained with that group of free-thinkers and solid love and support until the older boys drifted off as adults. The turbulent world and child times were calming down and we took a rest.
Chapter 28

AH, THE TEEN YEARS

1967: best movies: Bonnie and Clyde, Cool Hand Luke, The Graduate.

1970's described as most narcissistic in history.

Open marriage discussions are popular.

Homemakers not admired.

Common expressions- "crashing" at people's houses, "getting it together."

Canada had 5 federal elections from 1957 to 19672, two changes of government and 4 minority governments.

*******************

It all began quietly with the town installing its first traffic lights and before we knew it, we were embroiled in the biggest war of our lives, the take-no-prisoners war of them against us.

Adolescence had struck.

The traffic lights were installed on Yonge Street, the highway that cut through the centre of town, and our children didn't know how to use them. We made the discovery the day Hal took the children to the plaza and returned looking pained.

"Do you realize our children have all the polish and savvy of a-a boulder?"

"No, I hadn't realized they were lacking so terribly. What is it that they need to have polished?"

"Traffic lights; they don't know how to use them. They haven't a clue. Their method is to dart between moving cars because they thought the lights were for the sole use of the motorists. We've got to do something. And the only head start in our favor is that they know how to distinguish between red and green."

Now the very reasons we loved raising children in a small town were beginning to turn on us. Chances are that one day they would want to move away and they would have to know what traffic lights are and what buses are for, and how would they begin to understand the function of a subway system. They were living in a town that tucked its one-room library in a corner of the town hall and had a weekly newspaper that prided itself on not printing anything controversial or even slightly liberal in tone, despite its name, The Liberal.

"Isn't it a shame we can't keep them as innocent as they are now? This is such a wonderfully wholesome place to raise children."

"Sure it is, but when you and I are tottering around on canes, we're going to look foolish leading our grown children across the street crocodile chain style."

We had to hit on a compromise plan, one that would prepare them for the world outside while enjoying the safety and innocence of their present world. We'd start by teaching the two older children to master the lights, and then we'd get them used to buses.

Now that I am older and a touch wiser, I am positive that children are born with built-in compasses that lead them directly into the tenderloin of any large city and worse still, they are all born knowing how to drive a car. If we had it to do over, we would have worried less about what they didn't know and would have concentrated full time on catching up with just what they did know.

One thing they couldn't get straight was the difference between "uptown" and "downtown". Right up to manhood, the boys considered the city south of us to be uptown and there's no budging them on that point.

Mark and Scott mastered the traffic lights quickly and we turned to teaching them how to use the transit system. We didn't have a local bus system, just the greyhound bus that made trips to and from Toronto every day.

We decided to send the boys downtown Saturday morning on the greyhound bus and give them money to buy a record, have lunch and return home on the bus.

We worked so hard to prepare. We called the bus line often enough to thoroughly commit to memory their entire schedule.

Then we called the record store to find out exactly how far it was from the bus depot and also what kind of records they sold.

On Saturday, the day of the big test we all got into the van to drive them to Yonge Street to the bus loop.

"You know what to do? You give the money to the driver and-".

"Mom, for gosh sakes, we know what to do. We've been over it a million times."

The bus came and they boys rushed into it and didn't look back at all our waving arms. I turned to Hal.

"Do they have to look so pleased? Couldn't they be just a little sorry to go off without us?"

"Surely you weren't counting on them living with us forever? Because I've got plans to turn the dormitory into a workshop with built-in cupboards and--"

It had never occurred to me that would leave and I was so horrified I stopped worrying about all the things that might go wrong while they were out of our sight.

We had the whole trip timed: how long it took for the bus to arrive in the city, how long to walk to the store, length of time to buy a record and catch the 4:15 bus back to town.

It was a long afternoon and I didn't even try to locate missing laundry in their rooms.

We were in plenty of time to meet the bus and finally it approached the circle where we all stood, expectantly. They were the first off.

"We got neat records, and with the change we bought liquorice whips, and next week we're gonna go uptown again because there's a slot machine place two doors away and we know the route."

That was the first indication they wouldn't need us for much longer.

There is no introduction to adolescence; it's like an Ontario spring; one minute you're battling snow and the next minute you're battling a heat wave. We love them, we're prepared, we can't fail, we told one another.

We should have taken a moment to consider Adam and Eve; they loved their little tykes but no one ever awarded them parents of the year trophy, despite precious little competition.

There's no transition. By the time you've pinpointed one problem the kids have moved on to the next disaster.

When Mark launched into it, I still believed that grumpy behaviour was caused by an irregular colon, until the morning I ladled out the stewed prunes to a fine-functioning cold-eyed stranger; just yesterday that stranger had been friendly eldest child and today I was the enemy.

You can't just wait out adolescence either, because the kids know the ritual through osmosis and they refuse to take short cuts. Before we were done with the process, we'd come close to mortal combat with the high school principal, learned to look pleasant when the boys brought home girls whose only evident talent was for chewing an entire pack of gum at once, we could calmly discuss the pros and cons of casual sex while seated directly beneath a speaker playing at full volume, and when we were dumb enough to request the removal of dirty socks from the kitchen counter, we mastered a stoic demeanour while listening to a profound sigh and a lecture on our fossilized standards from the sock owner.

The boys wore headbands and tattered jeans, winter and summer. And sneakers—always sneakers, and mercifully for us, this era preceded the desire for those hundred -dollar glow-in-the-dark ones. Apparently their sneakers were the perfect porous footwear to plod through puddles and snow banks. Their inconsistency was an encouraging sign, because we knew they would eventually pull together the best of all they were learning, if pneumonia didn't take them first.

One minute they were railing at" the system" and two-faced adults and the next minute they were doing what they'd always done after school—taking slap shots into the hockey net. The net was regularly hauled out and placed in front of the metal garage door. The child then stood in front of the driveway with a pile of hockey pucks by his feet and slapped them, one at a time into the net that was close enough to the door that the puck twanged against the metal. Hour after hour, twang, twang, and twang. The door had a dimpled look from all that abuse.

When that child had enough, the next one took over. Sure I tried to move the net away from the door, but the driveway was too short and this, believe me, was the only available spot. Perhaps another bank loan and we could have bought a wooden garage door. That would sound more like thunk, thunk, and thunk.

This is a perfect example of the adolescent stage; Al Capone at the dinner table could switch with lightning speed to St. Francis, taking endless patience to teach a brother or sister to hold a hockey stick. I clung to these moments; I knew, deep in my heart that this stage could not last forever; it just seemed like a whole lifetime.

First up in the Parent vs. Adolescents manual should be to maintain a unified front. This is critical. Don't ever allow yourself to be left alone with anyone over thirteen because you'll end up having a blistering fight with your mate.

What happens is that the over-thirteen person will saunter into the room smiling sweetly and even remembers to remove his wet sneakers before tossing his leg over the arm of the newly slip- covered chair.

Don't for a minute be taken in by this cheerful changeling because five minutes after he has departed from the room your mate will enter and ask, "Have you lost your mind telling him he could have fifty dollars to buy a second-hand leather jacket to wear to an overnight party?"

I wait for him to run down to ask why he thought it was a good idea to allow LEGALIZE MARIJUANA STICKERS on the car bumper.

The best protection is to pretend you're Siamese twins and don't part for a second even to use the bathroom. Not until the youngest is eighteen.

How on earth did Mark's early warning signs elude me? Well. I saw them but they didn't seem dangerous at the time.

There was the day I thought I saw a twig of hair on his face and I tucked away a new straight razor to present to him as a rite of passage when two hairs sprouted. I noticed he had abandoned his striped cotton tennis shirts with tidy collars in favour of his father's discarded paint-spotted sweat shirts, he never volunteered any news about his day at high school and his vocabulary was reduced to two vowels and one consonant.

I have a snapshot taken the very day we finally recognized the change in our family. We had planned a picnic at a nearby conservation park and the children helped get the food ready and assembled the things necessary for the day; bathing suits and towels, suntan lotion, guitars, mouth organs and comic books.

In the first snapshot we see Melissa, sweet in her pink pinafore, her golden bangs slipping over her eyes. Next there is fourteen-year old Mark, enigmatic behind his mirrored sunglasses, dressed in skin-tight chinos, shirt, tie and jacket. Scott using his it's-a-sin-to-smile look he was perfecting, Steve searching for his screwdriver, Michael in his mask and cape, Peter making a face.

I looked through the viewfinder to take another picture and I realized they weren't all together; Mark was sitting apart at a nearby table reading "catcher in the rye".

"Hurry up Mom, it's time to eat," urged the children. My finger froze on the shutter. How long had this been going on? It had crept up on us. Mark had been inching his way apart from us for some time and I hadn't realized until this moment just far he had paced himself.

I had expected distance. I knew that his job was to mature and become a separate person. There were superficial signs; he came home from school and headed straight for his room and shut the door. No more dropping by the kitchen to report on his day, in fact no more communication.

His friends also went underground at the same time, I realized. The cheery little boys who used to come to the door and exchange hello's had turned into blank-faced semi-adults.

This is what it's really like. One day, we're a tight family unit and then poof—the splintering action begins and before you know it they're gone forever to start their own family unit or do god knows what instead.

I took the picture and helped them assemble the food and motioned Hal to follow me away from them for a private talk. My eyes stung with tears.

"It's Mark. We've lost him."

"Nope, he's right there."

"You just think he's there because you've been just like me—you haven't been noticing what's been going on. We're losing him. Take another look and tell me what you see."

"Well, I see our eldest son sitting by himself at a picnic table and I know he's reading, "Catcher in the Rye." Oh, I see what you mean. He's always sitting by himself, or appears to be, even at the dinner table."

We began putting together all those seemingly insignificant tell-tale signs we had chosen to ignore.

Our big band jazz records were curtly dismissed into the same category as, say, Lawrence Welk.

The hair, ah the hair; we thought it was such a big deal. Certainly there was a challenge to our authority and we handled it so badly. We weren't alone, although that wasn't much comfort at the time.

Whatever Mark did, Scott did and we fussed because their hair now reached almost to their ear lobes with long, sharp sideburns and it looked so untidy. A year later we would have been grateful for a glimpse of ear lobes or shoulders or eyes.

The entire world seemed to be coming unglued and attitudes were changing almost as rapidly as clothing styles. For a while, most kids followed the dress style of the Beatles, who were neatly dressed British kids with longish clean soup- bowl haircuts. The Brits had a rather polished Edwardian look about them and in North America, it evolved into boys looking as though they just emerged from a hard scrabble corn farm. The girls were beautiful and sad. They wore simple long cotton dresses, no makeup and hair long and straight.

No one smiled, I think they banned smiles, and they spoke as though they wanted to return to hand- pumping water and using wood stoves, and many did, probably until they found out what that involved with babies in diapers.

Slowly, the solemn coffee house troubadours and poetry readers gave way to another style of kid, one who was noisier, had no idea what the word chastity meant, let alone shoes and hot showers. We all got to know what Planters Wart was but they persisted in going shoeless, anyway.

These kids announced that drugs brought out compassion and sensitivity in people and only nerds worked in offices. School was a waste of time because THE BOMB was going to blow us to bits anyway, and there wasn't any use making the bed because it wasn't there to impress anyone. I didn't dare to think about the unfortunate souls ("Browners") who actually did their homework and dreamed of going to university. We didn't appear to have any Browners in our house.

I complained one day to Hal that I felt more like a warden than a mother because I have to say no so often to Mark and Scott. Then before I could finish the sentence, the doorbell rang and the florist delivered a dozen red roses with a card, "from two secret admirers." They thought it up themselves and decided to send them for no particular reason. That act of sweetness gave me the heart to carry on the entire mothering business.

We weren't any clearer than anyone else about what was happening to values we'd grown up with but we tried to solidly back our struggling children for any remotely reasonable cause. No matter what we did, we had as much chance of success as a salmon spawning upriver in syrup.

We spent a lot of time in the high school principal's office trying to find common ground. We recognized he would be as confused as the rest of us, but surely as an educator, he had access to good solid back-up.

We persisted in trying to understand and returned to the principal's office many times, trying to find a common meeting of the minds, until we finally accepted the fact that he saw us as his personal failure to get us turned around. I did achieve a sliver of parental status when Scott was suspended for one day because the Principal couldn't find another way to punish me for daring to stand up to him when he behaved as an outright bully. After that we knew we had to find our answers without the dubious help of the school system.

Mark and Scott put their energy into erasing all signs of animation from their faces and we worked hard for a kind word or smile.

One day they asked to give a party. We were thrilled. Was it possible the worst was over and our older sons had returned to us? We threw ourselves into being agreeable. We would provide pizzas and soft drinks and lots of dance records.

On Monday they agreed to all these things with a minimum of elbow nudging and amused looks. On Tuesday my friends Jean called to ask if the girls were all going to wear party dresses, because she wasn't too anxious to buy one this month, when the hydro bill was due. I said I hadn't heard what the girls would be wearing but I thought the boys would wear their grey flannels and blazers and oxfords, since that seemed to approximate what the Beatles wore.

On Wednesday, Mark broke his silence long enough to ask,

"Are you and Dad going to be out on Saturday?"

Fat chance.

The next day, Scott said,

"Hey Mom, can you patch my best jeans by Saturday?"

"What do you mean your best jeans? I bought you brand new jeans last month and they haven't any threadbare spots yet. What do you need these for?"

"For the party."

"You're wearing jeans to your party?"

I received a wintry smile.

"What did you think I'd wear? Grey flannels and a blazer?"

I hurried to the phone to call Jean although I suspected she already knew.

By Saturday we were resigned to never again in our lifetimes seeing a girl wear a dress and we'd probably never know what our sons would look like as adults in a shirt and tie and shoes. After an intense period of argument and compromise, mostly ours, the hosts were ready to receive guests wearing threadbare jeans and tee shirts without nasty slogans and sneakers but no socks. I could serve pizza if I insisted and pop was okay but they would be bringing in strobe lights and sound equipment and they would turn the dormitory into a sleazy dive but would concede to make all beds unfit for sitting or lying down. We would not get excited if there were party crashers (apparently invitations were passé) but we reserved the right to throw out anyone who showed up with alcohol. There wasn't much we could do about marijuana because at that time we didn't even know what it looked like and we didn't know it had a distinctive smell. We took a crash course after the party.

There weren't any uninvited guest, or at least none we didn't recognize but the children we'd known all our lives showed up dressed like members of a chain gang. The girls wore skin-tight jeans and their tiny breasts poked out under ragged tee shirts and the boys looked the same except for the breasts.

We insisted on dropping in every thirty minutes and we'd find an escort waiting at the foot of the stairs. Obviously they had worked out a signal that the enemy was approaching for inspection but we grudgingly admired their ability to communicate over the deafening speakers and the flickering lights. They all used the word, "cool" a lot and their faces resembled death masks under the darting rays of the strobe lights and dancing seemed to be an independent maneuver without any actual physical contact. We agreed, without a word spoken, that this would be the last party at our house until sanity was restored, or until we learned the new rules. We were such innocents.

Mark became more remote and mildly eccentric by the day, wearing a favorite multi-colored nine- foot wool muffler wrapped around his neck and trailing to the ground behind him, winter and summer.

He began sleeping in a tent in the back yard and did an hour of yoga daily. His switch to vegetarianism was a healthy sign because he informed us he had also given up beer and cigarettes.

Since everything untoward had to be our fault, we sent him to a child psychologist, a portly, extremely correct German fellow recommended by a friend. After a preliminary meeting; he reported back to us that Mark was a normal well- adjusted boy. His desire to live on a communal farm was backed up by logical thoughts and he coped very well with the amusement he caused when he wears the muffler. But he would continue on with a few sessions.

Mark had a total of three talks with the psych. They agreed he was to do three extra hours of school work daily and if he didn't complete this he was to phone the doctor and tell him. We didn't interfere. Once I heard him phone the Doctor because he missed an hour one day and was told to return for another session or make up the time. He made up the time and called him the next day to tell him. He thought the talks were fine.

Apparently that wasn't enough. He chose to leave home on the night I was out of the house running the cub pack. One of the children called to tell me and I had no choice but to continue what I was doing. We wryly referred to our place as the Drop out Centre.

He moved into a nearby rooming house with a friend and the furniture consisted of garbage day cast-offs. The two boys came to dinner on occasion and I sent over food parcels. They were still going to school and supported themselves with after- school jobs. Mark worked shoveling out stalls at a riding stable for two hours after school and four hours on weekends. He had some guitar students and turned down more for lack of time

The hallucinatory drug days were terrifying to us parents; no one knew a thing about them, and more of them appeared almost dally.

The boys seemed to know all about marijuana and took to growing some, along with their friends, in the nearby hospital wooded property. Seems that if you had a group of close friends, one would be designated to grow and cure the stuff and provider it to his friends, presumably for a price.

I teamed up with a small group of frightened parents and we organized ourselves in to a group that received a regular provincial" grant and we rented a seedy house in town for a nominal rent, hired a staff. Our staff consisted of ex druggies (or we hoped they were) and we set up the house to take in kids who had either run away from home or were thrown out with drugs as the underlying problem.

We were very much hands-on and I recall often cooking meals for them as well as the twenty-four daily meals I prepared for my own family; we did repairs, scrounged more money and pretty well left it to the staff to keep the visiting kids in line.

On our board we had a doctor and a child psychologist, and they were there to learn like the rest of us.

This book is not intended to snitch on anyone—some of the boys have never pretended they weren't involved but they can tell their own story.

It was hard on us as parents because absolutely no one knew the long term effects of drug usage. I saw enough to draw my own permanent conclusions.

Today parents know more and there are treatment centres but the problem is worse, and the users are getting younger, along with trying sex before they know how to spell it.

It's probably the wrong time to end this chronicle but the rest of it is yours to tell. You are all kind adults who have chosen your paths and walk them proudly.

I am left with some wonderful memories and live near some of my kids, who are exceptional adults.

And those twelve grandkids—superb human beings leaving their parents with a few memories we might eventually exchange some time.

We had some amazing experiences, Hal and I. I never realized until after his death just how insecure and damaged he became as a result of a difficult childhood and his father's suicide.

He adored his children but he wanted no part of the disciplining and while I dragged him into those sessions, he was mentally out of the room.

I wanted to be the perfect earth mother—doing everything but raising a cow and churning butter. I wanted each of my children to feel like a blessed only child but that is hard to achieve in a tiny house occupied by a hive of swarming kids.

I wrote this book because I thought and still do think that my kids were exceptionally creative and decent. And funny. My lord, you are funny.

Bless you all

~ 248  ~

