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.

Nanny

Hilda Gauthier, my mother’s mother. My Nanny was a career woman. She had always worked. She didn’t do housework, not really, she puttered on occasion, and straightened papers, but she didn’t have time for such things, so she hired live-in maids when my mother was young, and then housekeepers and cooks later on, the last of which was Mrs. D., who worked for her for years, the only one I’d ever known.

As you might expect, Hilda had not been a hands-on mother. Not that she was distant. She wasn’t. She just didn’t know how to express her love. I think that may be why she was never a tactile grandmother with Karen and I. We knew she loved us, adored us, but she was more comfortable in the company of adults. And yet she was always happy to see us, was always generous and lavished us with gifts, and visited us with regularity in Timmins, usually for a week at a time.

Back in the ‘20s, Hilda had begun working at Bell, the telephone company, when her mother, Susan, took in Mec, my grandfather-to-be, as a boarder, and saw an opportunity for her daughter in him. Mec would be a pharmacist, not a working man living from paycheck to paycheck, but a proper professional. I’m not sure what Hilda thought of Mec in those first years, he was 11 years her senior, but she eventually did marry Mec, despite their age difference. And moved north with him to Matheson. Which must have been a shock. Matheson was not Toronto. Matheson must have seemed the savage frontier, the very edge of habitation and barely civilization. And Matheson was French. There were very few people for her to talk to, I imagine. So, moving to Cochrane was probably a wish come true to her. English. A railroad town. And their own business. Their money. Her own money. While in Toronto, Susan used to meet her at Bell, palm out for her paycheck.

In time, they flourished, prospered, bought and drove a car back up north when the road from the south to the north was completed, and later still, they adopted my mother, raised her, or reared her, in any event. The housekeepers and later Mrs. D. may have had more than a hand in raising my mother.

Hilda may not have been an overtly tactile and lavishly emotionally loving mother, but she was always there for my mother. She and Mec helped my parents when they married; financed a house for them; used their social and political connections to make arrangements for my parents when their first, developmentally challenged child was born. She was a live-in babysitter for my sister and I when needed, no matter how harrowing the experience of dealing with me may have been for her, at times. She was there to listen whenever my mother needed to talk, never judged. She bought my parents a Caribbean vacation for their 30th anniversary.

She may not have lavished us with hugs, she may not have said “I love you” often, but she found her own ways to express it.

Christmas, Part 3, Sweater Hell!

Skipping forward a bit, and it’s more a snapshot than a tale. After toys, in the era I refer to as sweater hell; you know, that zone where you are too old for childish things like toys, yet not old enough to require those practical gifts that are more for a house than for you. You remember those years in spent in limbo, don’t you? It’s a memory set after the completion of the extension onto the back of the Hart Street house, and many years before Alzheimer’s began to creep into my Nanny’s life. I’m a teen, not a child.

It was Christmas morning. We were opening gifts. Mom wanted Dad and me to open specific gifts together, gifts wrapped in boxes of identical size and shape. I was a little nervous about that, but I opened mine the same time my father opened his. And there it is, the terrycloth robe I’d asked for. I can’t remember if I asked for a specific colour, although I imagine I was thinking white, simple basic white, like in hotels. It was not plain white, it was striped, red and blue on white; the same as the one my Dad was holding up.

We were prompted to put them on and stand together to have our picture taken. Remember, I was a teen. I’d rather die. But of course, I had my picture taken with my Dad.

He was so happy that we had matching robes.

I got over my embarrassment. I got to like my robe, over time. It broke in. It was soft. It was warm. And I got over the fact that my dad had the same robe as I did.

Christmas

Every Christmas morning after we left Cochrane for Timmins, we’d wake up to my father rushing about the house, hammering on doors, declaring that Santa had been here! We’d leap or drag ourselves out of bed, depending on the year, leap at young ages, drag later. We’d eat a hasty breakfast, despite our ogling the feast of presents about the tree, open our gifts and be left to play with the toys for a time; not too long though. There was preparations to be made: every year for 10ish years after leaving Cochrane, we were to return to the homeland for celebrations with the family, eat an early lunch, pack up the car with the gifts to be given, and pile in, Cookie at my mothers’ feet in the front. I can’t recall if Piper, our next dog, ever made the pilgrimage with us, if she had, she'd have been in the space at the back window (that’s where she loved to lounge for the hour-long trip).

I recall many such long commutes back to Cochrane, getting car sick, puking into the ditch despite tripping on Gravol. I was not a good traveller then.

We’d arrive at Nanny’s (my mother’s mother’s) house, where we’d open gifts, then be herded back into the car for the short drive to Gramma’s (my father’s mother’s) with Nanny in tow (my mother’s parents were always invited if I recall properly, certainly my Nanny after Poppa passed away), where we opened gifts again. Those gifts were packed away in the trunk of the car before my uncles, aunts, and cousins arrived.

Gramma’s house already smelled like dinner when we arrived. There was a great deal of cooking to be done in such a small galley kitchen. Food was piled high on the dinner table, arranged in depth, buffet style. Only Grandpa sat at the table, holding court on how much anyone might take, even though there was enough food for three times our number (about 30ish people in what I would describe as a wartime house). Turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, pickles and beets and Lord knows what else, my memory fails me. There were six types of pie: apple, cherry, raisin, mince, pecan (?) and sugar (?), one for each son’s preference. They each had to have their favourite. And they’d have been disappointed had their personal favourite not been there. Family politics. Enough said.

Grandpa would always call me over, draw me in and hug me, and slip a two-dollar bill into my pocket.

There wasn’t enough room at the table for everyone. Obviously. And with thirty people in attendance, seating was an issue. Families sort things out, and by the time I came along, a system had long since been adopted. The adults ate in the living room, with paper plates in wicker baskets on their laps. We cousins were arranged on the stairs, each to his own riser, Keith and I sharing a small bi-fold table at the base.

Gramma never ate until everyone else had. And by then the Great Clean-up was in full swing, the food and dishes tackled by the women, teens and adults alike; but not by Gramma, though, she was eating.

The men congregated in the living room, the chairs and stools arranged, years of Daily Press Carol booklets laid out, one to a seat. Once the Great Clean-up was complete, we sang, we soloed. I most certainly soloed. I was expected to sing “Rudolph, The Red-nosed Reindeer” every year. Tradition, you know how it goes. There was no accompaniment though: I don’t know if anyone could play anything portable. Karen could play piano, but there was none present. Gramma played fiddle, but I don’t remember it ever being brought out. I recall French songs being sung after the carols were complete. Beer flowed. There were chips and snacks and such, because that’s what we all needed, more food.

We kids took that as our queue to retreat downstairs where there was tabletop hockey and an absence of adults and alcohol and demands by our elders to bring them more. I think the elder cousins may have played street hockey out front or may have just slipped away to party with friends.
If they did, Keith and I were oblivious to it all, having lost interest in all things adult, even all things teen. Later still, Karen and I were packed up by our parents to go back to Nanny's for the night. Over the next few days, we visited...everyone. It was exhausting, fun, but exhausting. Christmas would never be as exciting as it was then.

Driving Lessons

Not mine, obviously. My grandmother’s. She learned to drive late in life, sometime in her 50s. Probably not the best time to learn, but her husband’s health had begun to fail, so she decided that she had best learn. She asked my mother to teach her.

She did. And Gramma became a driver. She was probably not a very good one. But she was good enough to negotiate the streets of Cochrane.

I remember Gramma driving Keith and me. I believe she was driving us to school. It was in the winter, anyway. Regardless where and why, she was driving us somewhere. Keith was in the front with her. I was in the back, hanging off the back of the front seat. None of us were wearing seatbelts. Car seats and rules about how tall you had to be to sit in the front weren’t a consideration then. Not really. Kids sat in people’s laps then. I don’t think seatbelts were installed in cars then.

If she was driving us to school, it would have been in the winter of 69-70. I’d have been about four years old then, and in kindergarten.

We were driving up 7th Ave hill, approaching Transfiguration Church, and halfway up when the tires began to spin.

Gramma stopped and backed down the hill. That must have been frightening for her. Terrifying, in fact. Had the car begun to slide, she probably wouldn’t have had the skill to correct. So, she must have had a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel as we inched back down the hill. She tried again to the same affect. On her third attempt, as we were nearing the top, the tires burning on the ice, Keith and I began to yell, “Don’t stop, Gramma!” She persisted, she hammered the fuel pedal to the floor, tires spinning like mad the whole way. We made it that time. Much to Gramma’s relief.