Sunday Drives

There are people who see their childhoods either as one long agony, who don’t remember anything at all and those who have rose-coloured glasses.  I am often accused of being the latter, especially by my siblings but the truth is, that is how I remember it.  I had a happy childhood, I had the normal “angst-y” teenage years and when I turned 18 I simply went into adulthood equipped for whatever came my way.  I call that a great childhood and a great beginning for life.

Mom stayed home and was a good housewife and a great mother; Dad went to work, frequently came home late but spent his weekends with his wife and children.  He did not go out with the boys, he didn’t golf or do other things without his family.  He once said to me “how could I bring my wife to a strange country with no family and friends and leave her alone?”  But the truth was he loved us all and got a kick out of his children. 

We had our weekend mornings congregated around his bed, listening to his stories and enjoying his laugh.  But once we were up it was Saturday groceries, a super special smorgasbord lunch and then it would be either playing on our own or sometimes Dad would roughhouse with us.  We went on Sunday drives often because the “country” was not too far away from our neighbourhood.  We loved nothing better than to go out for a drive and look at horses and cows.  Sometimes we would beg Dad to let us “rent a horse” when we saw a sign that riding was available but that never happened.  We were all horse-mad (how could we not be when we were raised on Westerns?) but we never got a chance to go on a horse.  I suppose this is one of those times where I negate my own oft told tale of not asking for anything because when we saw a horse, we asked, and asked, and asked.  The answer was the inevitable no.

But one day Dad spun a great tale that John bought hook, line and sinker.  He told John that he had got a good deal on a horse and had bought one for him, however there was a catch.  The owner had made some deal with the Toronto Mounted Police so the horse still had to live in Toronto and work for the police.  When Dad took John to work with him on the occasional Saturday John would look around for his horse and Dad had to be quick to make sure he always picked the horse that looked the same as the last time “it was John’s horse”.

Some of the fun places we went on Sunday was Lowville Park in Burlington.  There was a small creek winding through the park and we were allowed to wade in it.  It could get scary because there were crayfish in the creek and we would shriek if we saw one, but I never got bitten.  Another place we went, slightly further away, was Sunset Villa (which we called Sunsetsavilla for years and years).  This was a Danish park and my parents enjoyed meeting other Danes there.  And Dad was frequently the magnet not just for the kids who knew him but for all kids because he was such a kid at heart.  I clearly remember this huge tubular slide that Dad would climb with us and then he would literally shove kids down, yelling at the top of his voice so that Mom could hear him at the other end of the park (as could everyone else, all knowing who it was, SO EMBARRASSING FOR HER).  We loved it.

Dad could also make driving up to Rattlesnake Point super exciting, using his big voice to make scary noises as he let the car drive itself down the “mountain” (as we believed).  Dad actually did not like driving since he was very near-sighted but without glasses (can you imagine him surviving all those years without having proper glasses?  I cannot imagine how he got away with it) but daylight wasn’t so terrible.  John and I both remember some horrible nights when, for whatever reason, we were on the road at night.  I am surprised that we live to tell the tale.  Dad could absolutely not see a thing, he would be off the road, on sidewalks, and muttering under his breath and driving slow as molasses in January.  Somehow we got home, frazzled.  But lived another for another drive!