A Half Century

I turned fifty. It had almost no effect on me at first, but it did after a time. It was sobering. I was half a century old. I guess I’m middle-aged now, I thought. In truth, I’d been middle-aged for a number of years already, but the realization had never quite dawned on me until then. The truth of it was written all over me, though. Grey had been creeping in for years. Aches and pains too, if truth be told. Injury took longer to heal. And I was getting up and going to bed earlier. I’d yet to scream at anyone to get off my lawn, as yet, though. I still haven’t and hope I never will.

The occasion had been marked quietly. Just dinner with Bev. My mother baked me a cake. My mother has baked me a cake for each and every birthday I’ve ever had. But I have never had an actual birthday party since I was a child. And being a December baby, I’d never had a birthday barbeque, or a lawn party thrown in my honour.

I wanted one. If only once.

So, I set about throwing myself a party. I made a Facebook event page, calling it MY 50.5 BIRTHDAY BASH, and set it exactly six months after my actual half century.

I invited most people I knew and liked, those people who’d been my friends for years or in years past, some of those I worked with. Then I sat back and crossed my fingers to see who would accept the invitation. My ego got a bit of a boost when Barb Strum, Bev’s closest friend accepted the invitation seconds after I posted the event. Other acceptances leaked in from time to time. I will not say that the event filled up. I’ve never had a wide circle of friends. Secretly, I hoped that the party I was throwing myself would not be a social shunning. My self-esteem was not at its highest at the time. I even went so far as to invite the toxic friend, offering an olive branch, hoping that it would be accepted, still not sure if our flagging friendship was my fault. Like I said, low point in self-esteem.

I got about thirty acceptances, altogether. Not bad, I thought, chalking it up to my having such a small circle. I was jealous of those people who can gather in over a hundred guests for such an event, but my family was not large, either. But I was pleased, if not thrilled.

The day grew near. I checked the forecast repeatedly. More so as the day grew nearer still. Twice a day or so. Rain was in the forecast. Of course there was. But there was a hint of hope. The day before was to be clear and sunny, hot. The day after was as beautiful. The rain might pass us by, I thought. The forecast will improve as we drew closer. It did not.

“Maybe you can move the event,” people told me. But one or two of the people who I really wanted to be there could not make it the next weekend. Moving it further conflicted with even more people’s schedule. It was summer, after all; people had plans; people had holidays; people were travelling.
The day arrived, and it did indeed rain. Buckets fell. Cats and dogs. A river of overflow raced down my street.

Should I cancel? Would anyone come? I considered renaming the event DAVID’S HURRICANE BARBEQUE BASH. “Oh well,” I thought, “rushing out into the biblical deluge to get what I discovered I was missing.

People did come. Most came. And some brought gifts, even though I’d specifically requested that no one do so. “It’s not my birthday,” I told them. I’d even said so on the Event page.
I cooked the burgers and sausages and dogs in the rain.
Once that was done, I settled in to not be the host. Make your own drinks, I thought. Entertain yourselves. I wanted to be a guest at my own party.
If you were there, thank you. You helped make my day.
If you were not, not to worry. Bev’s 50th BIRTHDAY BARBEQUE/HURRICANE PARTY was much the same the next summer.

Some further good came from it. I rekindled my friendship with Henri and Sylvie for a time. They invited us to their anniversary party a few months later. And then they invited us to join them on a Mediterranean cruise a few months after. Ports of Call: Venice, Mykonos, Athens, Istanbul, Nice (Capri and Sorrento), Rome (Orvieto for us), Florence and Pisa, and Barcelona. It was fun, but we weren’t attached to Henri and Sylvie throughout the cruise; we were used to going it alone while on vacation, me even more so than Bev. They may have expected us to be by their side throughout, but that didn’t happen; but, at least it always gave us something to talk about during dinner.

A return to Killarny Lodge followed the next year. I brought Bev to New Orleans and New York the next (a return for me, new ground for Bev, but I wanted her to experience what she’d missed in 2010), where on our first day in New York, the couple eating supper next to us at the Italian Restaurant next door offered us free tickets to the smash hit Bandstand. New Orleans brought the same excursions, but better music on Frenchman’s Street and Beignets here and there and Hurricanes at Pat O’Brian’s, while New York brought jazz at Dizzy’s Club Cocoa-Cola and at Smalls and Mezzrow’s. Central Park and Broadway and Little Italy.

Life’s been good. Life’s been a struggle. Life’s been an adventure. Life has been as life has been.

A long time ago, shortly after we’d moved away from Cochrane, but back when we were still returning for weekends at the cottage, returning for holidays and carnivals, Keith and I were playing on 16^th Avenue. It was a slow day. A weekend. Cold. Winter. Mostly bathed in sun. Clouds flowed past as we stormed the snowbank seawall of Omaha beach, or some such, hockey sticks cut to our height serving as rifles. We stormed that beachhead again and again, pretending to almost scale its height before the imaginary enemy took careful aim and shot us, killing us in turn. We posed melodramatically, our arms splayed out, and collapsed, rolling back down what seemed a precipice at the time but must have only been a few short feet, coming to rest at its foot, looking up at the sky until we rose to storm the hill again, to the same result. After unnumbered repetitions, we lay flat out on the street, looking up at the sky and the clouds. Dead. Quiet. Awestruck with imaginings. Imagining what we saw in their shapes, pointing them out after a time and finding what the other saw there, declaring, “Yeah, I see it,” once we did. Frogs and chickens and ships and horses. There was giggling. There was laughter. There were comfortable silences.

For all that imagining, for all those flights of fancy, we, neither of us, had any clue what was to come. Or what might become of us. We were just children, after all, just starting out, an eternity before us.
It has been a symphony of happenstance, of cause and effect, and despite the stumbles and setbacks, despite the pitfalls, it has been an adventure. It has been a truly awe-inspiring and epic discovery of what it means to be me.

Gramma

Blanche Valarie Blondeau was born in 1908 in Fillhilla, Saskatchewan. Years later she met and married Jules Leonard. They moved to Ontario, settling in Timmins, where Jules worked at the Macintyre Mine. Years later, having already giving birth to Lorraine and Laverne and Ronnie and Jerry, she gave birth to Edgar, my father. Blanche gave birth to my uncle Derek nine years later, and the family was complete until her children married and had children of their own. All this happened long years before I came along, the second last of my generation of Leonards.

Blanche had some rocky years before then. Times were tight. There was a Depression to weather. There was another World War to weather, too. They were blessed to have been spared the later, if not the former. Too young for the Great War, too old for the second. Her children were spared too. I think she thanked her lucky stars for that.

They moved to Cochrane and Jules began to work for the railroad, much as he had in times before, when he met Blanche and took her hand in Holy Matrimony. She got involved with the Church, spending many years in service of the Catholic Woman’s League.

Blanche and Jules

You’d think that would have been enough drama for one life, but life is rarely smooth. Blanche became ill shortly before my mother met my father. Deathly ill. She almost died. My mother tells tales of how Blanche received the last rights in her mid-forties, and how her father made it possible for Jules and Blanche to move out of the home that sat alongside an open sewer into something better. And how her father gave Jules preferential billing for all the medications Blanche needed.

Blanche recovered, but she was plagued with migraines, thereafter. They plagued her still when I was a child. I remember her shut up in a darkened bedroom on a few occasions when we came to visit. She always rose to greet us, though, despite her pain. She would. Family had come to call, don’t you know, and Blanche was all about family. Family was everything to her.

And she had a large family to dote over. It’s probably all she ever wanted. She insisted her entire family be in attendance at holidays, cooking for fifty people at a time. And they came because Blanche ruled her family as only a strong-willed matriarch can.

Blanche and Jules

I learned all these things afterwards. What I remembered was the much-loved and loving woman who enveloped me in hugs and smothered me in kisses. The woman who sang Christmas carols and watched Lawrence Welk and always had cookies and date squares and jelly rolls (once she learned of my allergies to dates and oats) at hand when we arrived.

She weathered tragedies, too. Her son Ronnie’s passing, decades before what ought to have been his appointed time. The passing of her children’s spouses: Hazel at far too young an age and Pauline many years later. My Uncle Derek’s partner, Larry, too. She buried her husband too, outliving him by more than thirty years.

When Blanche was eighty, she became too infirm to take care of herself. Not that she didn’t try. She was a proud woman, not inclined to complain, not wanting to be a burden. She couldn’t possibly take care of herself anymore though. She suffered a severe stroke, even if she rebounded from it without any noticeable effects. She suffered micro-strokes too, after that, if not before, and was just as apt to collapse to the floor as not when she had them. Those micro-strokes never left her after that, always lurking, always striking unexpectedly. My Uncle Derek would have none of her pride. He collected her and brought her home to London with him, an act that very likely made it possible for her to live for almost twenty more years.

Blanche at 80

When Blanche was about to celebrate her 99^th birthday, my uncle decided that the milestone needed marking. Not everyone makes it to 99, after all. We called it a dress rehearsal for her centennial. There was a party planned for that, too.

We came from all points of the compass. From Cochrane, from Timmins, from Thorold and St. Catherines. Fredrickhouse and Innisfill and Toronto. The Tishlers flew in from Detroit and points further south, from Ohio and Indiana and California.

I drove my father down, arriving well in advance of the festivities, having made a pit stop in Barrie to visit my friend Neil the day before. We made the last dash to London and checked into a hotel inundated with Leonards.

Blanche and family at 80

There was a wine and cheese meet and greet, lengthy conversations in the hall as we came upon one another, an evening at the Keg, and drinks in Uncle Jerry’s room, well into the night.

Tables at the reunion were by clan. Aunt Lorraine’s Tishlers here, Uncle Laverne’s brood there. Dearly departed Uncle Ronnie’s family tables here, Uncle Jerry’s there. My sister’s husband and I sat with Keith and his children. Where was my sister? At the head table with my grandmother and her surviving children. The eldest child of each family branch joined them, mostly women, all of them matriarchs now in their own right.

Sadly, that was the final happy gathering of my greater family. Blanche was ailing. We all saw it, none of us wanting to say so.

Blanche at 99

My Uncle Don, Lorraine’s husband, did, though. He made his presence known when he entered the hall, calling out “Hello, Gramma,” when he did. Big man, bigger personality. He retreated shortly afterwards, telling me, “She didn’t know me,” and “I don’t think she’s going to maker it to her 100th.”
She did not. Two months after arriving to celebrate the commencement of her 100^th year, we were called back to mark her passing.

I could not watch as they lowered her into the ground. Tears welled up. My composure faltered. I turned away and walked a short distance up the hill from the black hole she was ever so gently being slipped into. Bev followed me but kept her distance as I waved her off and broke into tears. I choked them back a few moments later and rejoined her and my family. Bev slipped her arm around me as I once again faced the grave.

Uncle Don followed soon after. Then Uncle Jerry.

My father suffered a heart attack and a couple strokes. He suffered a near fatal rectal hemorrhage due to diverticulitis. He never came home after being admitted to the hospital. He was admitted to a care facility, instead, and has been there ever since.

I’m watching the passing of the generation that raised me. It was only a matter of time. As they say, it comes to us all.

I’m no different.

My time will come, too.

The Uncle

Do I have many stories about my nephews? Some, a lot, and not many. There’s the usual: their birth, Christmases, birthdays, sleepovers while my parents babysat.

I was young when they entered my life, just twenty when Jeff was born, twenty-two when Brad was, in ‘86 and ‘88 if I recall properly. I was at school much of that time, only around on holidays and during the summer, and I worked shiftwork then, and far more interested in spending time with my friends than hanging out with my sister and her babies. So, I saw them Sunday dinners, more often than not, and not much more than that. That said, they had a profound, if not direct impact on my life. I am Godfather to the elder, but not the younger. That’s pretty light work. That sounds horrible, but it’s true. I loved them, love them still, but they’re not my children. I was not the babysitter; they had my mother for that. I’m peripheral.

I suppose I was the cool uncle. I bought video games and taught them how to play them. I bought them more gifts than was ever required of me, instructional at first while still preschoolers, whole Lego sets where I could get my hands on them later. We’d sit together for hours putting them together. I bought them bats and balls and baseball mitts, footballs, basketballs, whatever my mind could imagine was fun. I bought every Disney animated feature, and those others I thought as good, An American Tail, and All Dogs Go To Heaven, and the like. And I was there for them, were they ever to need me. I don’t suppose they ever did.

There were moments when I was of some use, I suppose. One Sunday, unbeknownst to us, Jeff had been playing with a three-ring binder in the living room while we had tea in the dining room, and it clamped shut on his belly. He screamed. I was the first to respond, releasing him from its jaws, but Mom and Grandma were there less than a moment later, and we all want Mom to make it better; that’s her job, after all. No need to break that belief too early. Mothers have power. Mothers are protectors. Uncles are peripheral.

Another weekend, years later, my sister had need to go get diapers on some summer day. For some reason my mother went with her. No sooner had they left, Brad had a mistake. I didn’t believe that someone could small that bad, but there you have it. There was a bit of a breeze flowing through the house, so I placed him as close to the exhaust as possible. That helped a little, not a lot. I looked high and low for a diaper, not knowing that there were none to be had. Had I some parental skills I should have stripped him down, cleaned him up and rinsed out his soiled clothes, but as I said, I was lacking in parental skills. Luckily for Brad, he didn’t have to wait too long for proper parental care to return, because I was at a loss. I can’t say I wasn’t relieved when my mother and sister were back within a half hour. I’m sure Brad felt the same.

So, yeah, I wasn’t much of a caregiver. I hadn’t had much practice. I’d never been a babysitter. That wasn’t a guy thing then. And I’d been away during the baby years, too. Karen had married during my college years and divorced soon after I’d returned. Andy, my future brother-in-law had entered the picture, and I found that if I wasn’t actually required before, I wasn’t needed afterwards, either. I was peripheral.

Probably a good thing. I was suffering arrested development, failure to launch, a number of other clichés. I’ve covered this before, so here are the Coles Notes: More than a few people had filled my head with imminent disaster, that the market had crashed, that inflation was rampant, that interest rates were so high that I’d never be able to buy a house, that just then was the very worst time to graduate from school. There were layoffs hinted at. Indeed, six months after I’d been hired, there was a hiring freeze, not just at Kidd, but just about everywhere in the mining industry. That freeze only lasted for seventeen years; not worthy of mentioning, really. Then the axe fell on 250 employees two years after I’d been hired. We were informed as much beforehand, invited to take an early severance if we’d a mind to. As I’d only been working for about two years, that severance would have been a pittance, so I elected to take my chances. The only thing that saved me was my payroll number. Someone in Human Resources had not taken note of start dates, only payroll numbers, never imagining that an employee kept the same payroll they might have had during an earlier employment. Long story short, there were people with more seniority than me who lost their jobs. Rumours of further layoffs were never far off. Copper slipped to 67 cents, zinc to 34. We expected to close. I grew no roots.

The kids grew up, becoming pre-teens and then teens. Jeff and Brad stayed over more often as Karen and Andy worked night shifts. They were thrilled. More time to play Uncle D’s games.

I suggested what I thought were better movies, doing my best to steer them away from Happy Gilmore and Dude, Where’s My Car, and the like. Jeff liked them, then. I didn’t, and tried to convince him otherwise. Jeff wasn’t convinced, not then, anyways. I didn’t argue with him, sure his tastes would develop with time. I probably watched a ton of crap when I was his age, too.

When my parents moved from Hart Street to Victoria, I thought it was high time for me to move out. After years of uninterrupted and unrealized predictions of doom, I’d become to desensitized to it, and had begun to think that it was just talk and that I ought to get my own place. My parents convinced me otherwise. Dad had been out of work for a while, only recently finding new employment, and my mother convinced me that having me around, paying room and board was the difference between making ends meet and not. So, I stayed. Big mistake. I ought to have spread my wings. But I didn’t.
Once we’d moved to Victoria, I began visiting my sister, just once a week, for a chat and a coffee; she only lived a few blocks away, so I thought this was a good opportunity to bond with her after my being away for so many years. Sometimes it was just her and I; sometimes I’d help Jeff and Brad put together their Legos. On occasion, Andy joined us. So, until then, I think I was a constant presence in my nephew’s lives, more or less, certainly more of a presence than my uncles had been in my life.
Then one day I was not.

Maybe something was lost in translation, maybe the message was somehow misunderstood, but one day my mother told me that my sister had called and had told her to tell me not to come over anymore. Just that. Don’t come over anymore.

It was like getting hit in the gut, like being slapped across the face. I was floored. I was confused. I was hurt more by that than by anything before.

I was never offered a reason or explanation; in fact, it was never brought up again. Ever. Not by me, not by my mother, not by my sister. I doubt they even remember it.

I’ve never actually been close with my sister since. We meet on holidays, on special events; I’ve always been there when asked. And I suppose, so has she.

But I’ve always kept my distance, from that moment on. Emotionally.

 

Stepping Out, Part 2

Toronto was a veritable haven of order and cleanliness compared to Detroit.

And the accommodations were far better, as well. We pulled into the Royal York, my first time there. My head was filled with the tales I’d heard of Kings and Queens and Presidents, of Grey Cups and horses that ran up and down its long vaulting lobby, and of Prospector Conventions where swindlers were shot down upon leaving the elevator for having done their partners wrong. It was beautiful. It was opulent. It was home for the next few days and Henri and I were staying on for the weekend after the games.

Our arriving in Toronto had split that now newly tight group of ball fans. The Torontonians went home. The others had split into disparate groups. The girls wanted to shop. Their guys were in tow.
So, Henri and I were on our own. I was disappointed at first, but we were eager to explore the city. I’d been there with Matt a few times, so I knew my way around a bit, but that was years ago and Matt had navigated the whole time, with me along for the ride, so its geography was a little hazy. My mind had been preoccupied by the city’s overwhelming immensity at the time. The booze didn’t help much, either.

Thankfully, there wasn’t much need to navigate. The Skydome being within walking distance of the hotel, so that sense of group was lost. We all made our own way to the games individually and found ourselves funnelled up a concrete ramp up into it furthest heights, exiting behind home plate in the high 500s, only to discover our climb incomplete. Stairs steeper than ladders led to our seats, two rows down from the gulls. I looked them up while there: $4. I could see why. We were of an altitude that the workers under the dome were eye level with us. They at least were wrapped in parkas. We were not. We felt the full force of the wind blowing off the lake. It was cold. It was brisk. It had the bite of winter despite its early September’s howling.

Stories below us, those lucky patrons in the 300s were sweltering in the high sun. We spied shorts, tank tops and sandals. I was envious.

We shooed venders away when they hawked ice cream bars. One tapped an offending bar against a railing, its ring carried brightly on the icy air. He changed up his bright happy hawking calls thereafter to, “Something hard; something frozen!”

“Bring coffee!” I yelled back to him. We all did. He did, much to our surprise and delight.

Those seats were crap! We couldn’t tell where the ball was headed unless it was coming straight at us. We saw a few people below us reach out a little in preparation of its arrival, but there was never a hope of its ever reaching us. Not even Hercules could have batted a ball that high up.

I’d had enough after my first ineffectual coffee, caving in to my first impulse buy of the trip, a black Skydome knit sweater. Henri bought a Jay’s sweatshirt, team blue. Both were quite fetching. Both lasted us for years.

The second game was no warmer. By the 4^th inning we retreated to the bar two stories below us where we found two of our group’s number, the two eldest who’d had the sense not to freeze their tender bits off for the sake of $4 tickets. Where we’d thought to duck out of the cold for a cold one before braving the winds again amongst the gulls, we changed our minds when we saw them there and they invited us to join them, rekindling our earlier Detroit comradery. A half beer later, a third of the others joined us. By the 7^th inning stretch we were all there, watching the game on the surrounding TVs, comfortably basking in the heat streaming through the long wall of reclined windows that surrounded us.

The game over, we scattered to the four winds, and Henri and I were wondering what to do. Henri was all for cruising Yonge Street, but I wanted to head back to the Skydome Hard Rock Café; there was a stunning woman behind the bar the night before and I’d taken to her. I ought to have gone with Henri, but the call of a pretty face had overwhelmed my disdain for overpriced beer; besides, I’d done Yonge Street before, I said to myself. There were a few good bars there, but most of the better entertainment had moved on to Queen and Bathurst and Ossington years before. Henri went without me, probably pissed at me for my obvious foolishness.

Stupid of me, really. Girls in Timmins didn’t have much to do with me, so why did I think a sexy bartender in Toronto would take an interest and show me her world. But hope abounds.

Two beer later, seated in a much depleted Hard Rock café, owing to their not being a game played that night, I saw the error of my ways, but Yonge was a ways walk away, and I had no doubt that I’d ever find Henri in all those bars, so I headed up to John Street to Queen Street W and the Horseshoe, making a pit stop at a couple pubs along the way.

Later, back at the hotel, Henri told me that he’d had much the same night as I did, hopping from bar to bar. He told me about the ones he’d been in, and the ones he’d almost gone in but hadn’t. They looked too seedy, too rough, too scary. Had I been with him he’d had gone in, he said, though how having me in tow accounted for strength in numbers was beyond my ken. My rough and tumble side had never scared anyone, let alone the seasoned toughs that would have hung out in dives like those Henri had seen, but I’d always had a reckless streak. I’d probably have gone in without a second thought. I was always oblivious to the possible dangers around me when in the big city. It may have been all those dives Matt and I crawled through while in university. I must have made Henri nervous more than once when I decided to take a short cut through some alleyway.

Keith knew we were in town, so we made plans. He and Laura met us in the lobby.

“Where do you want to go,” they asked.

We’re in your hands, we said. Where’s good, we asked.

He suggested The Big Bop.

I’d never seen anything like it. Three bars in one, and black as pitch. Red pin lights and glow strips marked the walls and stairs, just bright enough to say, “Whoa, there!” STOP WALKING! WATCH YOUR STEP!

I loved the ambiance. I couldn’t see shit, only silhouettes, cigarettes glowing, the undulating sea of hats and heads, and those hellishly insignificant lights and strips. Waitresses carried little flashlights to match faces to drinks.

The band played Petty and Mellencamp covers on the first floor. The second-floor blared electronic dance, the third beat urban rap. Little alcoves lined the stairs, the sweet reek of cannabis rising from one level to the next. A ratty old wingback chair and a table lamp might fill one, where couple necked and groped, where couples congregated to smoke their weed. One music or another was piped into those narrow spaces from one bar or another. I was hopelessly lost in no time. Okay, I wasn’t that lost, but it’s fun to think so.

Keith and Laura left early by our reckoning. They were dependent on the TTC to get them home and had a ways to get there and no desire to pay a cab the fare for the distance they had to go.

Henri and I watched them go and discovered that we were exhausted. We decided to retreat to the Library Bar at the Royal York for one last drink on our last night away from home.

I promptly took a short cut and was already deep into another alley without him.

“What are you doing?” he said, whispering loudly and harshly, unable to keep the exasperation from his voice.

I shrugged his concern off. “Taking a short cut,” I said. “Look, you can see the end of it. Who could possibly be hiding in here?”

I didn’t bother to mention the puke at my feet. Like I said, reckless, oblivious.

What’s In a Name?

What's your name? Simple question. For some, there’s no simple answer. I just happen to be one of those people.

I was adopted. I’ve always known I was adopted. My parents never made a secret of it; they’d told me so, and declared how lucky I’d been to have been loved enough to have been chosen. After Dean was born, they wanted more children, but didn’t want a repeat of what had happened, so they looked to adoption for an answer.

Karen came first. I followed 23 months later. Not exactly; my parents collected me at 3 months, after all the paperwork had been finalized. My Great Aunt went along for the ride. Once she heard what my parents were about, when passing through North Bay, she dropped everything, told Frank where she was going, and tagged along. She was one of the first in my family to hold me, and always doted on me, evermore, always a wonderful sensation, that sort of embracing love. Everyone in my greater family knew, knows, and it had never been an issue for anyone, so far as I knew. I’m David: son, brother, grandchild, nephew, cousin, and now uncle and husband.

So, I’ve always known, and never thought twice about it. I had a home, parents, family. I never once felt the need to go in search of my birth parents

One day my parents, my mother specifically, came to the conclusion that the house on Hart Street was too big for them. It had served them well for years, and had even been added to, constructing a sizable living room out back, replete with an almost wall width stone fireplace. I loved that fireplace.

Especially at Christmastime, logs crackling, before cable TV had made real fires irrelevant.

But Karen had long since moved on, and although I was still in residence, waiting year by year for the axe of the economic downturn that never seemed to fall, my father had not been so lucky. Dad had been laid off from Caterpillar Equipment while I was still at school and it had taken him some time to find further suitable employment, before finding it with Cambrian Welding Supplies. The years of economic disparity had taken its toll, and Mom said that they were getting older, the house was too big for three people, too big for her to clean, and it was costing them too much. It was time to move somewhere smaller and more affordable.

House hunting began. Packing began, as well, not terrible quickly, at first. There were yard sales, open houses.

I mentioned that it was probably time for me to move out and get my own place now that they too were making a change, but they convinced me that it would be good for me to move with them, to continue to save my money, that I might lose everything were I to be laid off, that they still had need of my rent, and a host of other reasons. Inertia took hold and I didn’t leave. I ought to have, but I didn’t. I’d grown too comfortable, and too complacent since moving back in with my parents. Food prepared for me, laundry done for me; a few chores here and there. Aside from arrested development, it seemed a sweet deal at the time.

There wasn’t any rush at first. But once the new house was found, and an offer tendered, packing began in earnest. I found my parents in quiet, but intense discussion over a large brown business envelope on the dining room table.

“They’re his,” my father was saying. “He should have them.”

My mother was not as convinced as he was of that fact.

My father called me over. He pointed to the envelope on the table. “These are yours,” he said.
My adoption papers. I gazed at the old envelope for what seemed ages but was actually only mere seconds.

My father opened the envelope for me and began to spread the papers out on the table.
I sat and leafed through them, noting specific points, names, and dates, here and there.
Birth records: born Grace Hospital in Ottawa, December 19, 1964 to a young woman, age 21, single, a girl, actually. No father given.

I was stunned. I really didn’t know what to say. 

The rest was important and inconsequential. Baptismal records, medical history, church records. I leafed through them again, and carefully set them back in the envelope when I was done.
I saw trepidation in my parent’s faces.

“Well,” was all I could think of to say at first.

They told me what I’d heard hundreds of times before, that I was loved, that I was lucky, and that I’d been chosen, that I had parents. All true.

I told them not to worry, that I knew all that.

But it was the first time I’d actually seen the birth records, and adoption records. It was the first time I’d ever seen my birth name, and my birth mother’s name. Those new old names had somehow unsettled my identity. Who was I? Where did I come from? How did I come to be? Was I missed? Did anyone wonder about me? Had anyone tried to find me? Was it worth my trying to find them? Would they want me to? Those unvoiced questioned rose up and were immediately pushed aside by the next in sequence. I was trying to process; not successfully, I might add.

I was still in a bit of a funk when I entered Casey’s that Friday night. I must have looked distracted and vacant, because Janice Kauffman and Cathy Walli asked me what was wrong, so I told them.

“I just saw my ‘real’ name,” I said. “My mother’s name was Gloria.”

I paused for a moment. They didn’t interrupt me.

“Apparently, I’m David Gary Kilmartin.”

I had no idea what that meant. Was it supposed to mean anything at all?

Days of Empire

When I was about 15, my father took me on his booster rounds one summer day. I’d never been in a bar and I was fascinated by the Empire’s empty space. I’d only seen a disco in movies and I wondered how a night out in one would compare with our school dances. It seems inevitable now that I’d I spend my weekends at the Empire Hotel in those early years. It was the place to be. It was two bars in one. Adjoined, Charlie’s was the disco, Bogie’s was the music hall; both were loud, both were teeming with people, both were filled with women. And if you weren’t in either by 8:30 or 9:00, you were in for a long wait outside, because every weekend there was a long line to get in. But which one to choose? Word of mouth usually carried the day. If there was a good band, we went to Bogie’s; if not, we went to Charlie’s.

Early on, Charlie’s usually won out. Back then, dancing with girls and spending eight minutes in the arms of one at the end of the night would always beat out sitting still and having ones’ ears rung, any day.

They were an enormous step up from my watering holes in Haileybury, an enormous step down from my haunts in Sudbury. But I was always comfortable there, especially in those days. They were home. Everyone I knew went there. Okay, maybe not everybody. There were those who didn’t waste their time and money in bars, there were those who watered themselves in South End at Jakes and the Zoo (the Central House Hotel), and then there was the Mattog, across the river (otherwise known as the Mattagami, the May-Tag, to some). We never went to the Mattog; it was too far to go, too expensive a cab ride back, and rumour had it, too French, and that we Anglaise were not welcome, that there would be fights. There were others, but it was the Empire my crowd happened to settle into. Lucky for me, because it was also the bar I could walk home from in my sleep (see much earlier memory).

I can’t say that I had a favourite side. I loved to dance, and had ever since I’d begun to feel comfortable putting myself out there at those monthly high school events, and Charlie’s was a place where that could happen every weekend. And I loved live music, the way the bass would hammer my chest cavity, watching and hearing how each musician knit their sound in with their mates, magically recreating all those songs we loved, and Bogie’s was a place where that could happen every weekend!

Charlie’s was a place of wonder. Aged oak, gleaming brass. Marbled glass wall, a disco ball. A bottom-lit, coloured Plexiglas dance floor. Strobe lights. New wave and rock and roll. Everything that could make a night exciting. Mostly the crush of bodies and the uncertainty of whether she’d accept. The dance floor was huge for a small bar, but tiny in comparison to all those who wanted to press onto it. We’d be jostled, thrust into on another, and once, Danny Loreto inadvertently punched a girl in the face who strayed too close to his moves. She was laid flat, the dance floor parted, allowing her to crumble smoothly. It was the one time I’d ever seen such a strip of unoccupied space so close to the centre of the dance floor.

When we first began to go to Bogie’s, we wondered why no one sat in the disused raised stage. We were told that was Carriere country. I thought on how far Carriere country was from the stage, the bar, and the washrooms and said, let the Carrieres have it. I wanted to be closer to the stage, I wanted to see and meet the musicians. I did sometimes. It cost a few rounds to get them to sit with us, but we thought it was worth it, seeing the envy on the faces surrounding us. But we also learned how poverty-stricken most musicians actually were upon getting to know some of them. The vision of glamour I held departed with familiarity and scrutiny. Up close I saw the sometimes-tattered clothes, I heard about the crappy food, the crappy accommodations, the life crammed into a VW van for hours and weeks on end.

Summers passed and I gained some perks when Henri Guenette became a bouncer at Bogie’s. I got to know the staff, and I could skip between both halves of the bar without getting bounced. But I also saw some guys take sucker shots at Henri, I also saw Henri take down a guy who was going after another bouncer from behind with an ashtray. I wondered why Henri did it. Perks were fine. But I didn’t want to see him laid out on the floor, bleeding, either.

In time, my high school friends were elsewhere. Maybe they found other distractions. Maybe they were more in tune with budgeting for the upcoming year. Maybe the polished brass and aged oak had tarnished and cracked in their eyes. Maybe it was as simple as they had girlfriends and weren’t up to catting around any longer. Aubrey Bergin filled the gap they left. Aubrey and I became wingmen. One needed a wingman in a rough joint.

One Christmas holiday, Aubrey and I were coming up on the Empire. I’d dutifully gone to Saturday Mass with my mother, and promptly proceeded to stain my cleansed soul at the Downtown, a strip club round the corner from the Empire, waiting for Aubrey. Well met, we headed out before the Empire was filled and we were shut out. It was a windswept night, a little cold. As we came on to the doors, an old man (late 30s, early 40s, but he seemed ancient to me then) and his friend exited. He hailed Aubrey. Aubrey waved hello to the man, but we were chilled and were set on the heat. The man gripped Aubrey and spun him around. Aubrey laughed it off, but was still held firm.

I turned around and asked, “Is there a problem here?”

The man’s attention snapped to me, but he still held Aubrey firm.

“No problem,” he said.

“Great,” I said. “Let him go.” Those were the only words I said. I just stared at him. At first I was just waiting, then I must have looked angry, because the man pulled Aubrey closer and held him like a shield. He looked nervous. So did Aubrey. But Aubrey wasn’t my concern just then. I’d locked eyes with the man, expecting trouble from him and his friend. I needn’t have worried. He kept insisting that I shake his hand.

“No,” I said. “Why would I shake the hand of someone who’s holding my friend against his will?”

A couple minutes had passed. He finally released Aubrey, and Aubrey began stammering apologies to the man.

“Don’t apologize to him,” I said. Then to the man, “Are we done here?”

Apparently, we were because he walked off. I don’t really know where that FUCK YOU attitude came from. Had we got into a fight, Aubrey and I probably would have had the shit kicked out of us.

Uncertainty, and My Father

I returned from Haileybury to a terrifying uncertainty. Kidd Creek phoned to rescind their offer of employment. No student starting after a certain date was to be retained. I, and all other college students, were now unemployed. I had no idea what I was going to do. How could I go back to school without summer employment? Where was I to make money? All summer positions had been filled in March. I was in a panic.

That’s when my father stepped in. What could he do in the wake of my summer employment disaster? Maybe nothing. Maybe a lot. You'd have to know my father and the shadow he cast across Timmins, much as my Poppa had, in his town, in his day. Now, my father's shadow was not nearly as long as my Poppa's, but he cast one. Yes he did, indeed.

You don't believe me? What do you know of my father, Ed Leonard? 

Nothing, obviously. Maybe I should fill you in a little.

Hockey is the first thing that comes to mind for most people when they think of him. He was good at it too. He lived it day and night, growing up. He’d rise, pack a lunch, and be down at the rink, regardless the temperature, until he could no longer see the puck. It was all he thought about. He might have made something of it too, had he not taken a stick to the face when he was 18 years old, detaching his retina.

There was no miracle eye surgery back then, in the ‘50s. He was sequestered to a bed in hospital for months, his head held immobile by sandbags. A mask covered his eyes. He had strict instructions to not move his head, to not, if possible, even shift his eyes. He remained that way for three months, blind and immobile, with only a radio to pass the time, until the retina settled to the bottom and knit itself in place. Were this procedure unsuccessful, he’d have had vision problems for the rest of his life. Either way, he had ample time to develop an uncanny ability to remember song lyrics. Luckily, his retina did as instructed, his only concern healing bed sores. But no scout would touch him after that, not after an eye injury.

Anger does not begin to describe how he felt about that, I imagine. His love had been stolen from him, his chosen goal, forever out of reach. He continued to play hockey, despite the risk, and did so until his late 30s without any further injuries, without the retina ever causing him further problems, as was suggested could happen. He had no choice but to get on with his life.

He’d worked as a parts boy as a kid, so he'd taken a job as such after leaving school after grade 10, a common thing in the North in those days. Without hockey, time passed as it was destined to, and in time my parents married and moved to Don Mills, and in time had Dean.

And it was because of Dean they could no longer afford to live in the South. Dean was what we would call Developmentally Challenged, these days. Severely so; in fact, he'd have been the postcard for developmentally challenged. Dean’s needs were costly. And those medical bills made it impossible for my parents to remain in Toronto. The stress was unbearable. My mother required the support of family, so they moved back to Cochrane.

My Poppa stepped in, pulled lofty strings and Dean was placed in a long-term care facility. Had he not, my mother would surely have suffered a breakdown, and my parents might have split, Catholic or not. Or so I believe.

My Poppa helped out a lot, allowing my father set up his own business in Cochrane, again, in parts. He was grateful, but he was not satisfied with mere parts, anymore. So, Dad sold the business after Karen and I entered the picture, and began working for Husky Ltd (my parents opting for guaranteed security), and then shifted employment again to Molson’s.

We moved to Timmins. More money. Not the best move, for more reasons than I wish to dwell on. Maybe it was for me and Karen, we would discover, but not my parents. Not really.

Dad was always on the road, gone from Monday morning to Friday evening. Time passed. Karen and I grew up. He brought me on his rounds on rare occasions during the summer when I was older (about 15, maybe), I recall wandering between tables and peeking behind bars, inhaling the aura of cigarettes and alcohol imbedded in the gaudy carpets, each a riot of pattern and colour to mask the stains and burns. I recall the Empire Hotel most vividly, my being fascinated by the coloured Plexiglas squares of Charlie’s dancefloor, the tangle of electronics crowding the disk jockey’s booth, taking in the dark oak pillars and bannisters, the finger-smudged brass. The room seemed an empty void without patrons. Both Charlie’s and Bogie’s were poorly lit in light of day, hazy with dust, the motes caught drifting on slow currents by the surprisingly alien sunlight that invaded them. I climbed up on the stage and surveyed the terrain before it while my father wrapped up his business with the owner.

My father had been a salesman for most of his adult life, first as a self-employed parts man, then fuel products for Husky Ltd., then as a booster rep for Molson’s Brewery, and then he sold heavy equipment for Crothers (after my mother had had her fill of Molson’s); that would be Caterpillar Equip., by the way. He was a member of social and business clubs; not the Shriners, or the Masons, or the Kinsman, or any of the sort, but ethnic clubs and social clubs and the sort. He knew a lot of people. I mean he knew a lot of people. So, when I lost my job at Kidd, he made some phone calls. He asked around, he pulled some strings. And a few days later I got a call from the manager of the Dome Mine. A personal phone call from the manager of the Dome.

He’d decided to hire all of the mining students, and only the mining students, laid off by Kidd. All of us. He was under no obligation; he’d already hired all the students he needed for the summer. But he made an exception that summer. I find it hard to believe that my father had little to do with that. I was saved. I’d lost a week’s wages, but I was saved. I wouldn’t have to apply for a loan. I wouldn’t have to scrape by that summer on a pauper’s allowance. But I did have to wait out a strike vote.

The Dome was in negotiation with its Union that summer, with little progress made as the weeks dragged on. I was informed that I ought to bring all my gear home the weekend leading up to the deadline. My stomach tied itself in knots. I still had a month to go before school, and not enough money to make it through the year. I packed my gear, tossed it in the boot, and waited out the news reports.

The Union voted to accept the hastily prepared counteroffer in the eleventh hour. And I was saved, yet again.

A Wedding

That time between high school and college was my last carefree summer.

What happened? Not much. A lot. I should have worked, but I was a little pissed at not been given my choice lifeguard placement at the beach near my house. Most others on staff were, Garry at the Schumacher Pool for instance, so too Jodie at the Mattagami River, etc. I just couldn't abide spending the summer working at the Archie Dillon Sportsplex, where one never knew what the weather might be while in its humid and claustrophobic expanse. Unless there was a torrential downpour, that is.

ButI digress. This post is about a wedding. My sister's, specifically.

Karen was getting married and I’d been allowed to invite friends to her wedding. Not to the meal, but to the ceremony and the dance. So, I invited the lot. Why not? Suits, ties, and the Dante Club. And I was an usher. One of two times. Never a best man. I’m still baffled by that. I’d had a lot of friends then, and I  was always left wondering why I wasn't asked to tuxedo up. As to being best man? There were a few times whan I wondered why I hadn’t been chosen. There can only be one, I suppose. I can only guess that I was passed over as a kindness; I was somewhat shy, not much of a public speaker then, either. Also, a great many of us had begun to drift apart and had also relocated when those nuptials were finally embarked upon. No matter.

That summer, I was chosen to be one of my future ex-brother-in-law’s ushers. It was an obligation, I imagine.

Powder blue tux. Sylvie Aube, Marc's cousin, on my arm. She was pretty, and I may have fallen in love with her a bit at the time. Pretty girl, friends, cousins, a few drinks and a lot of dancing. What more could one ask for?

Subtext

I learned early on to hold my cards close to my chest. Children, especially teens, are cruel, and I’ve found that there are more than a few people out there who’d use aspects of someone’s life to hurt, to ridicule. You might say that I’m imagining that, but I don’t think so; I’ve fielded my fair share of cruelty over the years. Maybe it’s our not wanting others to know our personal and family secrets, unsure how those others will react to them, fearful that we will be rejected. We all have secrets. We all hold our cards close to our chests, all those secrets bottled up and suppressed, setting the subtext to our lives.

Is that cynical? Maybe, but I’ve noticed how my own family’s history, its subtext, has painted how we view the world. I have said on many occasions that we should be kind to all the people we meet, for we are all fighting a hard battle for the full measure of our lives. That’s an old piece of wisdom. There’s debate on who actually said it first.

I’ve never learned much about my father’s family. My dad was not particularly curious about his extended family, not even that curious about his parent’s history before he was born, so what I did learn came from snippets told by my mother and my grandmother. There was Blanche’s brother, whom she had sent quite a bit of money to over the years my father was growing up, supposedly to keep him out of jail for embezzlement (see earlier memories). There was a history between her and her sisters, I gather; I always had a sense of it when they visited. As to Jules’ family, I have few details except that there was a brother, Leo-Paul, in Quebec. I’d met Leo-Paul Jr, once, but have no memory of him except that he wore a jet-black handlebar moustache. I’ve learn aspects of the narrative that flowed beneath my father and his siblings, a somewhat rocky narrative at times, replete with grudges that have festered for decades. But compared to my mother’s family, they appeared an oasis of fun, and hugs and kisses.

My mother’s parents were born eleven years apart, and I don’t know if Hilda ever loved Mec, or if she hooked up with him because her mother pushed her on him, the good catch, the pharmacist. I don’t know if she married him just to get away from her mother. I’ve heard this potential meme suggested. I also recall it inferred that they spent their marriage inflicting harm on one another, and only adopted my mother to save their marriage. That would make for a cold, unemotional household. There may have been infidelity on Hilda’s part, certainly the onset of alcoholism on Mec’s. During the ‘40s, Hilda left Mec, taking my mother with her to Toronto, to live with her sister; and Mec let her go, but he would not support her or my mother so long as they did not live in his house; he was firm on that. But he did tell Hilda that the door was always open for her return; and when she did return, he was true to his word. Nothing was ever said about her leaving again. Not that it was forgotten, either, I imagine. Not that its memory didn’t linger; not that their marriage was ever salvaged by Hilda’s return. My mother has memories of Hilda finding bootleggers serving beer to my grandfather in their house, and Hilda throwing the bootlegger out. Hilda was no angel, either, from what I gather. My mother once told me that she’d had to wait in the car while Hilda “visited” a friend for an hour or so. I suspect that was why Mec retired to his bed, as a punishment to his wife who had never cared for him, but would have to now that he’d retired. She didn’t, of course; she continued to work into her late 70s, long after Mec had passed away. Was there love in the house? Poppa loved my mother. He was devastated when we moved to Timmins. Nanny didn’t like that we moved, either, but she visited often, even more so after Poppa died. And she was always a sympathetic ear for my mother’s troubles, never judging. Don’t judge my grandparents. People are complex, at the best of times. I do know, though, that my Poppa and Nanny doted on my sister and me. I choose to see the good in them.

Long prior to these events, my mother’s grandparents were of similar mind. Susan may have stepped out across the street to dally with Alf Cheeseman, Robert’s friend and neighbor. There must have been such a row following the discovery that both Alf (41 at the time) and Robert (37) thought it preferable to brave the trenches and join the CEF in 1916. Alf was in the artillery and returned after being gassed. He eventually took up with Susan, and they married after their divorces were finalized. Bob fought the rest of the war, at Vimy, at Passchendaele, and throughout the final 100 days when casualties were at their fiercest, and presumably never suffered more than a scratch. When he returned from the Great War, he never remarried, content to spend the rest of his life with his new “landlady.”

I see the subtext of my grandparents’ relationship, running through my mother, those memories close to the surface, remembered vividly 80 years on like they were yesterday. She wanted more for her own family. Where she was an only child, she wanted her children to have siblings, so she set about having her own.

Joseph-Arthur Bradette

She had only one. Karen and I were adopted. Her son Dean was born with extreme deformities and developmental issues. My parents unable to cope, Mec stepped in and made arrangements with his friend, Joseph-Arthur Bradette, the Ontario Senator for Cochrane District, who pulled some strings to have Dean placed in a care institute. This sort of thing isn’t done anymore, but it was then, and I doubt that my parent’s marriage would have survived caring for Dean. Despite his having been sent away, Dean had left a mark, a subtext that lurked beneath the surface of my family for decades, the living ghost of the boy who no one talked about. I discovered my first evidence of Dean when I was routing through the cupboards, looking for hidden chocolate, and I found some toys, dinky cars. Being a kid, I thought they were for me, so I took them down and played with them. My mother was livid when she saw me with them. I was terrified by her reaction. She spanked me for taking what wasn’t mine. It wasn’t until much later that I pieced together the truth, that I had taken what was a gift for Dean, and that I had peeked behind the curtain of her subtext. When she did tell Karen and me about Dean, we were told to never talk about him.

I learned to never talk about other things, too. I won’t mention what those things are. They’re not my story to tell. Let me be clear, though. There was no abuse. My parents were loving, affectionate, but I also don’t remember my family being overly tactile, either. But for all their warmth and love, there has always been the chill of subtext. I’d learned that there were things that were private, family things that the world had no right to know. I was learning my lessons. Keep it to myself. Don’t talk about it. More cards to hold close to my chest. Subtext.

That subtext leaves a mark. In 1982, we saw two artists in the Timmins Square. One penned caricatures with a Sharpie black marker; the other, a large, redheaded woman named Skye, who sketched colour portraits. I was fascinated. I loved to draw and these two were producing actual portraits of people. My mother asked us if we’d like to have our portraits done. We did, so we approached Skye to see about getting them done. She was busy, it took some time to produce each portrait, and she had a backlog of potential clients, so we had to make appointments for the next day. Her male counterpart, on the other hand, was much quicker, rendering far more simplistic profiles (probably from a stencil laid underneath), and was able to take Karen and I right away. When our sittings with Skye did happen, Karen had her portrait sketched first, and me afterwards. Each took about an hour.

While I sat for mine, I noticed and covertly watched the crowd observing Skye’s work resolve. A woman commented on how good it was, how she had captured me. She also noticed how I kept her within my view while keeping still, as instructed. She said. “She’s especially got the eyes right. He has very serious eyes.”

What she saw in them was subtext.

Lessons Learned: The Perils of Gambling

After Grampa died and his service was complete, his casket stacked in storage, the family convened at Gramma’s house for supper, and the wake. There was loads of food, of course; where it all came from is beyond me. Both my grandmothers were active in the Catholic Woman’s League, so I suppose the CWL pitched in to feed 50ish people. Beer and wine were served, liberally. It was 1980, and my relatives drank more than now, I believe. Not me, I was 15. Had I drank by then? What do you think? I’m from Northern Ontario. Most teens I knew had drank a beer, by then. But publicly, under the gaze of my relatives, not a chance. Not at first, anyway.

Someone suggested for us to play cards, poker, if I remember correctly. I ask you, who plays poker at a wake? A group collected around the kitchen table, and Uncle Frank asked Keith and I if we wanted to play. I begged off, telling Uncle Frank that I didn’t have a clue how to play poker, but Uncle Frank insisted, telling us that he'd “help.” That he'd explain the game to us. So, we agreed. We wanted to hang out with the adults, to finally graduate from the kids’ table. We sat at the foot of the table, at Gramma’s end by the kitchen, Uncle Frank between us. Keith held the cards. I leaned in to see them. I took care of the money.

Uncle Frank was the one actually playing. Obviously. He’d ask us what we thought, how many cards we should discard, and so on. But when it came time to actually discard, it was Uncle Frank who pointed out which cards to keep, and more importantly, what to bet, and when to fold.

The game was small stakes, nickels, dimes, the pot rarely rising above two bucks. Keith and I were up; I doubt we were the big winners, hand by hand, or even throughout. But we were definitely up, the small stack of coins before us steadily growing. We were thrilled.

Someone suggested that Keith and I were old enough to have a beer with the family. I looked up at my Dad, up at the head of the table. He nodded, so I had one. Not used to drinking, I sipped at it. It rose to my head fairly quickly, so I didn’t drink much, or that quickly. Not so others around the table. It was a funeral, after all. For some, their father had just been “buried.” Emotional states were fragile at best.

“Keith and I” won yet another hand. We whooped it up, I gathered in the next haul, and we laughed.

And then it happened. We were accused of cheating. Cheating?! How could we be cheating? We didn’t have a fucking clue what we were doing. Uncle Frank was running the show. But Keith held the cards, and dealt them when our turn came. And I collected the money.

Keith and I were dumbfounded. Uncle Frank told everyone to calm down. But they didn’t. Tension rose. Voices rose. And our accuser advanced on us. Uncle Frank rose up and stood before Keith and I, but come on, Uncle Frank was about 80, and not a big man by anyone’s imagination. A slight breeze might have floored him. My father shouldered his way between us and our accuser. They were nose to nose. Shoving began. Bodies entered the fray.

But before fists flew, the women were rushing into the room, and my grandmother was between the combatants, holding them apart at arm’s length. Giving them hell, telling them to grow up and behave themselves. And they regressed into little boys, staring at their feet. Eventually separated.

There were muted conversations, much milling about, more than a few tears welled up and the sobbing was renewed, here and there, then everywhere. The gathering began to break apart after that.

My mother rushed us into our coats. I didn’t want to go. I’d been given my first family beer and had been having a good time up till then, and I didn’t want to be separated from Keith, whom I’d begun to see less and less of. I was also drunk. And I think my mother knew that.

Herded into the car, she drove us back to Nanny’s. She set me aside, consoled me. I wanted to push her away. I was an adult, now, for Christ’s sake!

In the quiet of Nanny’s house, I began to cry, then to sob uncontrollably for the first time that day.