was beautifully buxom and vivacious—casual, irreverent, and full of common sense. After we finally acquired what Dad called “the idiot box,” Mum’s foxhole was the TV room, a cozy little room off the kitchen. This is where she listened to the nightly news from Walter Cronkite, read Time magazine, and drank gin out of her coffee mug. Mum was creative and artistic and lived in the world of ideas. She was gregarious, enthusiastic, spontaneous, and vitally curious about everything. But mess and clutter followed her like wake from a pleasure cruiser.
Her jackets, sweaters, bathing suits, tennis rackets, and running shoes were jettisoned behind her as she gushed through the house. Letters, books, and newspaper clippings spilled out onto every surface, and when she needed more space, she simply moved to a different room and began her piles anew.
Dad built dykes to stem the flood of Mum’s untidiness, but she invaded his neat space anyway. He posted signs: ANNE! PUT BACK! … ANNE! DO NOT OPEN! … ANNE! KEEP OUT! But she just laughed and ignored his pleas.
Like Dad, Mum had been the youngest in a large wellto-do family, but where Dad had been orphaned and penniless in childhood and learned that life was harsh, Mum had been given everything and learned that life was fun. Her family adored her engaging personality; she was the baby who made everyone laugh. Her father owned a bank andher family owned multiple country homes to which all were invited during the long summer months. Securely surrounded by family and friends, she learned to be generous and inclusive: the world was her oyster.
Mum wanted us to think the impossible, question authority, have open minds, and stretch our imaginations— to “go for it.” But Dad demanded that we stop daydreaming, obey authority, pay attention to duty, and create order out of chaos. His favourite expression was “You can’t make strong steel without a hot fire!” He believed that if we learned how to weather hurricanes in childhood, we’d be able to survive any small storm as adults; if we learned to do without, we’d never be in need. He thought he was doing us a favour—he wanted us to be as strong as steel.
Mum and Dad were magnetized—we just weren’t sure at which end. From the time they first met during the war, they fought for supremacy over each other, using wit and words as ammunition, sometimes funny, often scathing, until they’d produced a little army of their own. In many ways, we children were the glue that held them together: we strained their resources to the point where divorce was no longer an economic option. Instead they hunkered down to a lifetime of battle, full of tumult and the occasional truce, together a boiling cauldron that threatened to overflow but never did. The result for us was a rich, exotic stew of opposites—intense, confusing, and sometimes dangerous.
Like most fathers, Dad took the family car to work in the mornings and Mum did her shopping on foot—in her tennisdress. The Oakville Club was perched over the harbour, offering tennis courts, sailing berths, and the annual cabaret, but the main social hub, it seemed, was our house. Mum reached out to everybody.
I remember as a child thinking it perfectly normal that complete strangers joined us for meals. Sometimes, we were surprised to see they were even wearing our clothes. Mum would invite passersby in for tea. Dad would pick up hitchhikers and bring them home for dinner; if they’d been standing out in the rain, he’d give them a dry shirt. When the minister at church announced that a runaway teenager needed an adoptive home, Mum was the first to put up her hand. Suddenly, some sullen sixteen-year-old girl would be occupying our spare bedroom, stealing our things. Mum once tried to adopt a thirteen-year-old bike thief after she read in the paper that he’d been arrested for operating a gang. “Why would they put a child like this in jail?” she said. “If he can organize a
Her jackets, sweaters, bathing suits, tennis rackets, and running shoes were jettisoned behind her as she gushed through the house. Letters, books, and newspaper clippings spilled out onto every surface, and when she needed more space, she simply moved to a different room and began her piles anew.
Dad built dykes to stem the flood of Mum’s untidiness, but she invaded his neat space anyway. He posted signs: ANNE! PUT BACK! … ANNE! DO NOT OPEN! … ANNE! KEEP OUT! But she just laughed and ignored his pleas.
Like Dad, Mum had been the youngest in a large wellto-do family, but where Dad had been orphaned and penniless in childhood and learned that life was harsh, Mum had been given everything and learned that life was fun. Her family adored her engaging personality; she was the baby who made everyone laugh. Her father owned a bank andher family owned multiple country homes to which all were invited during the long summer months. Securely surrounded by family and friends, she learned to be generous and inclusive: the world was her oyster.
Mum wanted us to think the impossible, question authority, have open minds, and stretch our imaginations— to “go for it.” But Dad demanded that we stop daydreaming, obey authority, pay attention to duty, and create order out of chaos. His favourite expression was “You can’t make strong steel without a hot fire!” He believed that if we learned how to weather hurricanes in childhood, we’d be able to survive any small storm as adults; if we learned to do without, we’d never be in need. He thought he was doing us a favour—he wanted us to be as strong as steel.
Mum and Dad were magnetized—we just weren’t sure at which end. From the time they first met during the war, they fought for supremacy over each other, using wit and words as ammunition, sometimes funny, often scathing, until they’d produced a little army of their own. In many ways, we children were the glue that held them together: we strained their resources to the point where divorce was no longer an economic option. Instead they hunkered down to a lifetime of battle, full of tumult and the occasional truce, together a boiling cauldron that threatened to overflow but never did. The result for us was a rich, exotic stew of opposites—intense, confusing, and sometimes dangerous.
Like most fathers, Dad took the family car to work in the mornings and Mum did her shopping on foot—in her tennisdress. The Oakville Club was perched over the harbour, offering tennis courts, sailing berths, and the annual cabaret, but the main social hub, it seemed, was our house. Mum reached out to everybody.
I remember as a child thinking it perfectly normal that complete strangers joined us for meals. Sometimes, we were surprised to see they were even wearing our clothes. Mum would invite passersby in for tea. Dad would pick up hitchhikers and bring them home for dinner; if they’d been standing out in the rain, he’d give them a dry shirt. When the minister at church announced that a runaway teenager needed an adoptive home, Mum was the first to put up her hand. Suddenly, some sullen sixteen-year-old girl would be occupying our spare bedroom, stealing our things. Mum once tried to adopt a thirteen-year-old bike thief after she read in the paper that he’d been arrested for operating a gang. “Why would they put a child like this in jail?” she said. “If he can organize a
Similar Books
