remind themselves of just how lucky they were whenever possible.
“If we’d waited even a few more years, we would never have been able to afford to move out here,” my mother often said, as she looked out her kitchen window.
I know it was a huge leap of faith for them, moving us all out to Springbank. I know they wanted us to have fresh air and a chance to go to a smaller school. (That is an understatement—there were only forty-two kids in my high school graduating class.) I think they just wanted to invest in something that would make their lives easier forty years down the road. They knew the house and the land would someday be their nest egg, and it has turned out to be just that.
My mom and dad were very excited to be building a brand new house and at the same time scared to death. I hadn’t discovered that my parents were real people yet, so I didn’t know they had a worry in the world. I thought that my parents were there to look after me: drive me around, feed me, give me pocket money, listen to my problems and solve them. I thought they were there to save me from a hostile world and mean people and diseases of every imaginable kind. I thought they were there to make sure I never got sick or died, period. I didn’t know they were actual people with feelings and troubles of their own. Someone should have clued me in. Parents are people. Who knew?
I am sure they lay in bed at night and wondered how in heaven’s name they were going to build a house with what little they had. In many ways it was like
Little House on the Prairie
. They bought a giant,grassy field with nothing on it but trees and brush and dirt and they had to make something out of it. We had a lot of work ahead of us.
When we moved, our house wasn’t yet built and we had sold our other one. My dad, God love him, bought a small white holiday trailer for a pittance and parked it a few hundred feet away from the building site. He hooked it up to water and power and we were off on our very lengthy camping adventure. (I think we ended up living in the trailer for about a year, which was about ten months longer than my mother would have liked.) And it was camping, there’s no doubt about that. It seemed like a lot of fun for the first six months, and then it kind of wore off as the Canadian winter sank its teeth into us. You can freeze your nose off in about three minutes if you’re not careful. I know a lot of people without a nose—they just have the nostril holes. (Okay, no I don’t.)
We hadn’t lived in the trailer long before the weather turned terribly cold. The water line running into the trailer froze almost immediately. My dad tried everything to keep it from blocking up, but we were more or less at the mercy of Mother Nature. My dad said it was a goddamn pain in the ass not having water. We all agreed. It was next to impossible to shower or bathe or wash dishes without it. We drove to my gram’s place a lot to take baths and do laundry, but other than that, we were just out there fighting the elements.
My gram was my mom’s mom. She lived in Calgary with her second husband, Charlie. It was about a thirty-five- or forty-minute drive for us to get to their house. She was always glad to see us tumble in through her back door with all our plastic bags full of dirty laundry. She and my mom always had a good visit. The coffee pot would go on and some kind of cake would appear on the kitchen table. My mom and my gram could talk the leg off the lamb of God if they had half the chance. They were extremely close (and I could write an entire book about the two of them and the struggles they faced andthe hardships they overcame). My gram would prove to be our lifeline on many occasions.
My mom and dad slept in the only bedroom in the back of the trailer. Duray and I were in bunk beds off to one side, and my little brother, Patrick, was small enough to sleep on the fold-out kitchen table, which conveniently converted into a little bed. I
“If we’d waited even a few more years, we would never have been able to afford to move out here,” my mother often said, as she looked out her kitchen window.
I know it was a huge leap of faith for them, moving us all out to Springbank. I know they wanted us to have fresh air and a chance to go to a smaller school. (That is an understatement—there were only forty-two kids in my high school graduating class.) I think they just wanted to invest in something that would make their lives easier forty years down the road. They knew the house and the land would someday be their nest egg, and it has turned out to be just that.
My mom and dad were very excited to be building a brand new house and at the same time scared to death. I hadn’t discovered that my parents were real people yet, so I didn’t know they had a worry in the world. I thought that my parents were there to look after me: drive me around, feed me, give me pocket money, listen to my problems and solve them. I thought they were there to save me from a hostile world and mean people and diseases of every imaginable kind. I thought they were there to make sure I never got sick or died, period. I didn’t know they were actual people with feelings and troubles of their own. Someone should have clued me in. Parents are people. Who knew?
I am sure they lay in bed at night and wondered how in heaven’s name they were going to build a house with what little they had. In many ways it was like
Little House on the Prairie
. They bought a giant,grassy field with nothing on it but trees and brush and dirt and they had to make something out of it. We had a lot of work ahead of us.
When we moved, our house wasn’t yet built and we had sold our other one. My dad, God love him, bought a small white holiday trailer for a pittance and parked it a few hundred feet away from the building site. He hooked it up to water and power and we were off on our very lengthy camping adventure. (I think we ended up living in the trailer for about a year, which was about ten months longer than my mother would have liked.) And it was camping, there’s no doubt about that. It seemed like a lot of fun for the first six months, and then it kind of wore off as the Canadian winter sank its teeth into us. You can freeze your nose off in about three minutes if you’re not careful. I know a lot of people without a nose—they just have the nostril holes. (Okay, no I don’t.)
We hadn’t lived in the trailer long before the weather turned terribly cold. The water line running into the trailer froze almost immediately. My dad tried everything to keep it from blocking up, but we were more or less at the mercy of Mother Nature. My dad said it was a goddamn pain in the ass not having water. We all agreed. It was next to impossible to shower or bathe or wash dishes without it. We drove to my gram’s place a lot to take baths and do laundry, but other than that, we were just out there fighting the elements.
My gram was my mom’s mom. She lived in Calgary with her second husband, Charlie. It was about a thirty-five- or forty-minute drive for us to get to their house. She was always glad to see us tumble in through her back door with all our plastic bags full of dirty laundry. She and my mom always had a good visit. The coffee pot would go on and some kind of cake would appear on the kitchen table. My mom and my gram could talk the leg off the lamb of God if they had half the chance. They were extremely close (and I could write an entire book about the two of them and the struggles they faced andthe hardships they overcame). My gram would prove to be our lifeline on many occasions.
My mom and dad slept in the only bedroom in the back of the trailer. Duray and I were in bunk beds off to one side, and my little brother, Patrick, was small enough to sleep on the fold-out kitchen table, which conveniently converted into a little bed. I
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