Finding My Mother

I don’t get overly emotional or sentimental.

In my career—education, teaching, school leadership—there is little benefit in wearing your emotions. Level-headed is baseline; anything else—get too high or low—and things tend to go wrong. Except when I am riffing (because I am hilarious) or really comfortable with a group of acquaintances, I tend to hide my emotions.

I was once told, upon receiving the assignment of delivering a eulogy, I was the only one in the family who could do it without breaking down. True, perhaps.

But I do have emotions.

I’ve written and delivered three eulogies, and while I’ve got through each of them, I did feel that lump forming during each. I had to take a momentary pause before continuing. I’m not a sociopath, I know.

I’m not terribly sentimental about anything other than the hockey cards of my youth, and near-every record and CD I’ve purchased.

I have been known to have my eyes leak at the conclusion of a television series I’ve especially respected. NYPD Blue. 19-2. Hell, I’ve cried during more episodes of The Waltons than I will ever admit.

This week I listened to “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” a song I’ve heard several hundred times. But this time, when Bruce sang, “The big man joined the band…” my eyes watered.

I have cried reading novels. In my third year of university, I sobbed reading Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Bottle Neck.”

And I love. My wife. My family. The cats. Friends.

I have had my emotions get the better of me. I am passionate about bluegrass music, and have more than once engaged in spirited debate over the role of resonator guitars in the music. For the record, I could do without them.

I know where I stand politically, and can get as fired up as the next guy when scrolling through my Twitter feed as I read hateful and misinformed, xenophobic, racist, homophobic, right-wing lies and twisted truths.

But this week when I saw a picture of the person I believe is my birth mother, I felt nothing.

No relief.

No sense of fulfillment.

No joy or satisfaction.

Not even rancour or anger.

Nothing.

**********

I was adopted at birth, and as far as I know I am about as well-adjusted as I’m ever going to be. My adoption was never a secret, and I was raised believing I had been chosen—other families got whomever they got. I was chosen.

As charming as that sentiment was supposed to be, my childhood wasn’t easy. My parents separated when I was eight, and the home before that time was a fairly strange and violent place. My mom’s second husband supported us, and over time I’ve come to appreciate more what he did as my father. [I’ve never used the qualifier ‘step-‘ in relation to my father or brothers. For that matter, never used the term ‘adopted’ in relation to my mom.] Still, dad was an alcoholic given to mood swings and violent outbursts, and wasn’t always a nice person.

I knew my life was likely better in the situations I was raised than that which I might have lived.

At least I wasn’t aborted.

I’ve always been thankful for my birth mother’s decision to give me up for adoption. Life hasn’t been perfect, but it has turned out pretty fine. I’ve been successful in my chosen career, made a difference, I like to think. Made mistakes, lots of them, but likely not as many as some. Have regrets. I fret and worry.

But I’ve done things I couldn’t have imagined doing when I was a kid on the river-flat farm. I’ve seen The David and The Birth of Venus. I heard Doc Watson, Hazel Dickens, and Ralph Stanley sing from this close.

I’ve shaken Del McCoury’s hand, and I once startled Emmylou Harris outside a porta-potty. I’ve bungee-jumped. I got a university education, the first in the family to do so. I even managed to earn a Master’s degree. A real one, not one of those American kinds. I’ve swam in the Caribbean. I’ve had a near-death experience. Like, real close!

**********

My adoption records were sealed, so I had no information available to me about my birth circumstances. That’s just how things were done in 1964.

Wrong. My mother lied to me.

I only found this out about twelve years ago, maybe a few more. Sometime in the last twenty or so years, my mom gave me my baby book. I glanced through it, found a poem my grandmother had written—it felt pretty cool to have a poem written about me—read the entries, and put it away in the white stationary box in which it had sat for more than forty years.

And forgot about it.

While I was cleaning and sorting a dozen years ago, I rediscovered my baby book, and found—tucked into the back—a yellowed, folded, typewritten government document. My official adoption papers and birth certificate. The papers my mother claimed didn’t exist. I wasn’t even angry: it just felt natural that she wouldn’t tell me about them.

On these documents were my birth name and detailed biographical information about my birth mother—her ethnic background, her physical features and hobbies, and life circumstance. Less was revealed about my birth father, leading me to believe that theirs’ may have been a short-lived relationship.

But from these I learned more than I ever thought I would know about my birth mother, and me.

And I filed the book and box away again. It was neat information to have, filled in a few gaps, provided me with a source of a new password. But it didn’t really impact me beyond I now kept my eye open for the surname in the obituaries in the city newspaper.

I wasn’t even mad at my mom for lying to me, if indeed she was lying. She could have been, or she may have simply forgotten the information was there.

**********

And then 23andMe came along. My wife wanted me to spit into the tube so that I could find out health information that may be important as I head into my twilight years. It would be good to know if my genetics hinted at heart problems, diabetes, rickets, and the like.

I knew there was the possibility of birth family connections being revealed, and I was okay with that, too.

The truth is, I wanted to find my birth family. When you are adopted—my experience only—something is missing. A connection. There is a concave wound that isn’t near filled, no matter how much you pretend it is. Your family is your family, and you love them. But…there is something missing. A disconnect. “You are them, but you are not of them,” is the best I’ve come to define it.

My mom could not have handled me finding my birth mother. She just couldn’t. She was too…well, she was too many things, but she was definitely too insecure to have me find my birth mother. I’m not being unfair. She requested, no— more demanded—that I not look for my birth mother. I was fifteen, or twelve, when that happened. She was hysterically crying.

So I told mom I wasn’t interested and would never look for her. The crying stopped, and I convinced myself I wasn’t interested. I was curious, sure—but that is different from wanting to pursue something, tracking down my family. I actually registered on one of those sites that were made available to the adopted twenty or thirty years ago, but I never heard anything.

But now that mom is dead, there is nothing stopping me from looking. So—what the heck—I spit. And spit.

I was amazed at how few meaningful matches I received. Not surprised. Why would it work out any differently? I apparently have hundreds of fourth-, fifth,- and further cousins, but no one close popped up.

I had my heritage confirmed—eastern European (Romanian) and French Canadian—but no close family relations appeared. Fairly typical. Rejected at birth, rejected by spit and DNA.

Months passed. Maybe a year.

And then a first-cousin connection came in. She contacted me, or maybe I contacted her. We exchanged a few messages, and she promised to gently poke around in the family secrets to see what she could discover for me.

And silence. Didn’t hear from her again.

And then another cousin, actually the spouse of a second cousin. Again, exchanged some emails, shared a bit of black humour. Some descriptions of the possible family from which I had sprung—the province, the area, the family circumstance. Another promise to see what she could shake out of the family tree.

And silence.

In the ensuing months I wondered, What did they find out? Why go silent? How bad could it be?

People get busy, and maybe they just went onto other things.

Then a third relative contacted me, the mother-in-law of the second woman and a cousin to me. I imagine she and her daughter-in-law had shared notes, and decided to continue the contact.

Again, I shared information from my baby book and she promised to do some searching. She had her own adoption story, and was able to tell me more about my possible family and our shared connection.

And silence.

Maybe this is how these things have to go. People need to find the time and maybe even strength to talk about their families’ hidden stories. I understand that. For me, it’s easy. I’m the dispassionate outsider unconnected to these people. They have the skin in this game, not me. Ask the wrong person the wrong question, and all of a sudden, the biggest problem with Thanksgiving dinner isn’t forgetting to open the can of cranberries.

**********

Last week, an email arrived. My DNA cousin had the goods. If all was as it appeared, she was confident she had identified my mother. She didn’t ‘know’ her, but by speaking with an older relative had learned my birth grandparents names, all my birth uncles’ and aunts’ names, and where they lived. She couldn’t be sure my birth mother was still alive, but she had the name.

Google is your friend when someone drops your birth mother’s name on you. A few searches, and I found the name in my birth grandmother’s obituary; that led to a couple old newspaper articles. Nothing else.

A couple more emails, a corrected spelling of a married name, a shortening of a first name and—sitting at my desk at work on a no-bus day—suddenly, there she was on Facebook.

My mom. Staring off toward the right of the camera, smiling and leaning into her husband.

And I felt nothing.

I had been jazzed by the search, the DNA contacts, the back-and-forth emails, tenuous connections with passing cousins, tracking down of the obituary, matching of the names to what I had been provided, the newspaper stories (nothing sensational, just small-town news)—the search was exhilarating. The ‘could I do it?’ sensation.

But, now staring at her, I felt nothing.

Over the years, as a teen, a young adult, now, I had thought that when I saw her face, something would drop. Or warm. Flutter. A connection would be made.

Truly, the feeling was like looking at a menu. Or a solicitation letter from a company you once dealt with. I wasn’t even intrigued.

She’s my mom.

**********

It has nothing to do with her. I hold no ill-will toward my birth mother, and I hope she has had a good life since giving me up.

No, it isn’t her; it’s me. I don’t know if I want to go further and make contact. Not sure how I would make contact. Do I have the right to drop her a letter and say, “Hey—does my birth date mean anything to you? If so, you might be my mother? Do you want to know me?”

I studied her face—didn’t really see any similarities between us, but that isn’t a big deal.

Do I need another family connection? I’ve got family, I’ve got in-laws. Do I need more?

I’ve witnessed two birth-family reunions. Neither went perfectly, and one went quite poorly. I’ve heard ‘Third Times the Charm’ all my life—it was one of my mom’s favourite sayings. Should I?

I have no idea if I even want to, and I suppose as long as I’m not sure, I have my answer.

But.

She’s seventy-five this year, if she’s my mother. Neither of us are getting younger, and we may only have a few more years to even make the attempt.

As far as I know, she hasn’t reached out to me in fifty-five years, and there may be reasons.

Does her husband know she had a child at twenty? Do her kids know?

What is the impact if I reach out?

What is the impact if I don’t?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Addendum: My birth name is Jack Gordon Onofrechuk, and I was born in Edmonton in 1964. If that sounds familiar, drop me an email; I would love to chat. Through 23AndMe, I’ve made written contact with a handful of first and second cousins, and the communication has been positive, in confidence, and consistent: no one wants to ‘blow up’ anyone’s life. If you are my birth mother, please know that I do not hold any ill-will toward you, and I hope that comes through in this reflection: you did what you did, I am confident, for the right reasons. It will always be your choice to contact me.

A Dish From the Past

I own only one thing that had belonged to my grandmother.

I last spent time on the farm, illustrated on this page’s banner and written about—both factually and creatively in various places— on this page,  in about 1975 or 1976 which would put me at 11 or 12. I last saw my dad in 1978, some months after the Grease soundtrack was released: don’t ask why that is significant.

I have been back to the farm site only three or four times since then; once or twice, I simply drove down the gravel road past the farm, catching glimpses of the white house through the trees, the disused outbuildings falling in on themselves apparent as we passed the main driveway into the yard. I believe my dad was still living there at the time—this would have been in the very late 80s or early 90s. I had no desire to visit: he had long before left me behind.

But twice I stopped.

Four or five years ago, while on the way to an aunt’s birthday celebration, I decided to revisit the roads that remain engrained forty years after I lived near them. I followed the highway, without difficulty finding the hidden gravel road, and marveled at how familiar everything felt—not necessarily looked because everything about surrounding the road seemed overgrown and more close, but felt: this was home. As I came to the bottom of the sloped and rutted road leading to the flats, I stopped the truck and took a picture of the hill above the farmland, and another of the homeplace—sheltered by towering spruce trees—from a distance.

As I pulled out and eased around the final bend, I marveled at how the land had changed over the twenty or so years since I had last snooped. Behind me, where once an empty coulee sat undisturbed, an acreage now stood. To the left, where a large farm operation had existed, now were only the fading scars of a home and yard. And to the right, pasture land I had once explored daily—I remember practicing sprints in preparation of some local picnic or another, my chubby legs churning in calf-high mixed grasses—was now overgrown and weedy.

I stopped outside the driveway, and slipped the truck into park. The farmyard that had once dominated my life appeared minuscule compared to that of memory. The milking shelter no longer existed, nor did the milk house where cream had been separated. Most significantly, the weathered grey barn was gone, the only remaining evidence of its existence a nearly empty space, skinny aspen working to claim it. Grandma’s house remained behind overgrown lilac bushes, listing toward the north. After sitting for a couple minutes, I decided to risk driving into the yard, sounding my arrival to inhabitants with what I hoped was a friendly blast of a horn.

A dog came to welcome me, its tail rhythmically communicating no ill will. Again I waited, hopeful the residents would welcome me onto their land; soon enough a couple appeared from the white house. I got out of the truck, tentatively waved hello and from a distance introduced myself, explaining that 40-plus years earlier I had lived on this land. I do not recall their names, but they welcomed me kindly, if with cautious reservation, going through their vague understandings of my mother learned through neighbourhood stories shared, I imagine, at various community events: she was a hard worker (agreed) who kept a huge garden (yes) and was treated poorly by Robert (without doubt.) Warming to each other, and over the next half-hour or so they updated me on the various changes made to the land, how the barn burned for days when they finally leveled it—the ancient manure so impacted that it smoldered forever—and how they didn’t dare go into the old house, which looked like it was about to collapse any moment.

I was invited into the home of my earliest years, and while it looked very different from memory, it wasn’t difficult to become oriented even after four decades. It was still small, but had been modernized to have a more open floor plan. Not wishing to wear out my welcome, and needing to get down the road to meet family at my aunt’s, I made my leave filled with additional stories of my father, including how the gravel company apparently ripped him off as mightily as he had defrauded my mom. Justified, at last.

Three years later, I made the same journey with entirely different results.

I almost drove by the farm site, hitting the brakes only as the weed-filled driveway came into view. The tall spruce still hid most of the yard from the road, and not seeing the house as I had passed, I had become disoriented. Everything was gone—both houses, every outbuilding and shed. Nothing. I backed up to where the house should have sat on my right—through a break in the trees I saw only thigh-high grass and weeds. I pulled ahead and into the drive way, honking my horn and getting out.

Entirely empty. If it wasn’t for the spruce trees framing the yard and the occasional patch of hard-packed gravel poking between the weeds, one might not know a farmyard had once existed here. Where had everything gone? I walked this way and that, without any sense of understanding and  trying to comprehend what I was seeing. Three years ago, two houses, one at the end of its life true but the other well-tended and renovated, had stood, flower beds and herbs flourished, bushes and grass were maintained. Now, nothing?

I snapped a few pictures with my camera, including of the blue rural address sign, and made my way back to the vehicle. Obviously the place had been abandoned, but I couldn’t understand how everything could be gone. Later, I messaged cousins who still lived in the area, without luck. The farm was on an isolated road, one no one would take for any reason other than to get to the farm, and while the next home about three-quarters of a mile further remained inhabited, no one knew the fate of our farm or the people whom I had met so briefly just a few years before. Internet searches of property for sale provided no additional information.

Fast forward six or seven months.

I am at work in my office, and an email from an Alberta author pops into my inbox. School principals receive unsolicited offers from all types wanting to appear at their schools, at a cost—dances, theatre groups, authors, musicians—and most are deleted upon receipt. And I recognized this solicitation from another occasion, but I didn’t delete it this time: I read it, googled the author’s name, found positive comments about him from other schools, and thought, What the heck? The price was right—no charge— he appeared reputable, and we did have room in our schedule for a library visit. Within a couple hours and a handful of emails, we had the details worked out: we would see him in a few weeks. No more thought was given.

I have since often wondered why I decided that day to invite the author to our school. I still have no idea, but am grateful I did.

The calendar turned, and an affable gentleman arrived on the agreed date, a box of books in hand and the first group of youngsters were shepherded to the library: truly, just another day in an active elementary school. While engaging the student in conversation, the author mentioned, entirely in passing, that he had once lived west of Edmonton in a small rural area with which I was familiar. Hmmm, I thought to myself—What a coincidence.

The morning progressed, and the author completed his storytelling visit, quite successfully I should add: he engaged the range of students, from grades one through six. During lunch over pizza and engaged in that rather awkward conversation between strangers I mentioned, “You lived at Keephills? That is strange, ’cause I was raised near there.” A brief back and forth occurred, comparing notes, until he asked, “Where about did you live?”

Not being certain of the exact range road, I described rather flippantly, “In a small white house on a gravel road to nowhere.”

“No, specifically,” he insisted.

“South of the Duffield road, down a winding gravel trail to the flats.”

It was at this time I believe he said, “Schiedeman Flats?” Recognition must have flashed in my eyes because he continued, “Around the bend on the flats, the first property?” I must have nodded.

“That’s where I lived,” he concluded.

And for the next half-hour—punctuated by frequent exhalations of “I can’t believe it” and “This is so strange,” from me—and with one of the educational assistants offering to cover my playground supervision, we exchanged remembrances of the land we had shared, years apart.

He had bought the land from my dad—it was his ex-wife I had met a few summers previous—and he had lived on the property for a number of years, raising his children there. His daughter still lived in the area, down the road and up the hill on land I once unsuccessfully squirrel hunted. He told me rich vignettes of the farm—what had occurred in the years after my sister and I lost contact with dad, what had happened to the property in the many ensuing years.

It was a most exhilarating and unexpected experience, with gaps in understanding backfilled and questions answered. He explained that the gravel company had bought the rest of the land from his ex-, having purchased the majority of the land from dad over the years as his need for income outweighed tangible connection to the land he possessed. The author wasn’t sure what had happened to the actual home itself, but did know that grandma’s house had been torn down prior to the sale.

From my understanding, it sounded like he had left the land more than a decade earlier, but as an aside he mentioned, “I think I have some of your grandmother’s dishes in a shed at home. Would you be interested in them?” I rather vaguely confirmed I might be, not sure what he was offering: being more than a little cynical, How much? I was thinking.

I don’t have many fond memories of my grandmother Akins, but I realize I don’t have any negative ones either. I believe my memories were coloured by my mother. I remember she lived in Edmonton and came to the farm during the summer for a few weeks each year. Her house was yellow clapboard, two-storey, and filled with papers, magazines, and the detritus of a life of accumulation. She lived most of the year in a (if memory serves) three or four storey walk-up in downtown Edmonton, red-brick with a wooden banister along the straight-up staircase. She had two apartments, and lived on the top floor of the building; her second apartment was never seen, as far as I recall, but I was told it—much like the farmhouse—was filled with her belongings.

I remember her dark, satin- or silk-like dresses, the edges of which I recall running over my thumbnails and between my fingers. I can see her feeding us at her table in the city, overlooking buildings observed through the dining area window. And I picture her tight, grey-blue curls. Unlike Grandma Smith, my mom’s mom, of whom I have vivid memories, that is about all I recall of Grandma Akins. I certainly don’t remember her dishes from the farm.

Anyway, after taking him to my office the day of his school visit, showing him pictures of the yard snapped on my visit the year before and displayed on my bulletin board, and several additional moments of memory swapping, we said our goodbyes.

A few weeks later, delivering copies of his books students had ordered following his visit, the author dropped by the school. After we delivered the books to the various students, it again came time to say farewell, but there was still one surprise for me. Handing me a non-descript cardboard box, he said, “This is all I could find, but I know there are more somewhere.”

Inside was a gift from the farm— a serving dish, perhaps a soup tureen, off-white with blue, orange, and green accents on its lid. It had been my grandmother’s—my dad’s mom’s; while I didn’t recognize it, it was a revived connection to my lost past, to my twisted family history. I doubt it is worth much, and it is—on first glance—perhaps even a bit unattractive. I believe I said as much, unfortunately: filter failure…again.

But, over the weeks and months since as it has sat in pride of place in our home it has grown on me. I quite love it now, and even more appreciate what it represents. It is remarkable that it survived in a home left to the remnants of a hoarder’s collections, obvious disuse, and the forces of nature for generations. Even more compelling is how it came into my possession—an email read rather than deleted.

It is a tenuous chord to the life from which I was removed the day mom decided she could no longer endure her life of abuse and mistreatment, and to a place on which I gave up when I realized my sister and I would never mean that much to the man who had rather cruelly cut ties with us.

But a bond strengthened it serves.

 

 

The Night My Little Sister Beat Me Up

Short story long…

When I was about 11 or 12, making my sister two years younger, we had moved to Leduc as mom had decided to move in with dad and his three sons, all older than us. Our new house had an attached garage that for the first couple years had a sand floor—cars couldn’t drive into it because the sand floor was about a foot down from the driveway.

That left the garage a play area for a couple years. My brother and I would melt plastic soldiers, and then drop them into the sand; the fusing of sand into the ‘wounds’ made their injuries more realistic. Another brother tried to build a boat in there, and I believe the wood stayed up in the storage area built toward the ceiling until the day the house was sold. And, on particularly warm summer nights, mom, dad, and the older boys would play cards in the garage until dad became drunk and aggressive.

Anyway, at some point during this time the neighbour boys—three kids surnamed Phillips who had moved from St. Louis—and my brothers palled around for a summer. Thinking about it, it must have been the year I was 11 because my oldest brother would have been going into Grade 12. During the afternoons we would play ball at the elementary school, and in the evenings they would shoot baskets on the neighbour’s driveway (I seldom was invited to play basketball, but was allowed to stand out in the field during baseball) or hit golf balls in the nearby park.

Somehow or another one evening, roughhousing started and I don’t exactly remember the details, but certain boys paired up to do some wrestling on the back lawn. Eventually, one of the neighbour boys decided it would be funny if my sister was to fight me, and knowing that we would be out-of-sight in the garage, suggested we move in there. In traipsed everyone—probably ten or twelve kids of various ages, my sister the youngest, my brother at 17 the oldest.

I remember the garage door being closed, and the back door slamming shut. I also recall the kids circling around us, leaving my sister and me in the middle—no bets were offered, but in retrospect it must have felt like we were in a cockfighting ring.

I remember other things, too. This wasn’t innocent—this was neighbourhood bullying taken to the next level: not only the neighbours but my new step-brothers thought this was hilarious—pitting non- athletic, slightly bookish, and completely ‘separatist’ (my dad’s ‘go-to’ putdown) Donald  against his little sister. Vivid in my memory is that I knew I couldn’t hit my sister, couldn’t even wrestle her because a) she was a girl, b) she was my sister, and c) mother would kill me. I knew all that I could do was bat her away and block her arms until everyone got bored and went outside to play lawn darts or something.

Unfortunately for me, and egged on by the others, my sister had no such qualms, and came at me like the spitfire she was. Arms flailing, nails scratching, she attacked. I was shocked, of course, and moved back as quickly as I could to move out of her way. In doing so, I slipped in the sand, stumbled, and was pushed down by one of the onlookers, giving my sister the opening she needed. She was on me, hitting and scratching and eventually setting her knees on my arms. This just came back to me: as I am on my back, trying to leverage myself up and buck her off me, she drooled spit from her mouth toward my face.

As I scrambled around on my back, I remember her falling partly off me and as she did she got her fingers into a small hole in my pants; of course, the hole was in my crotch. As I moved around, she got a better grip on the denim material, and I remember the boys laughing and someone yelling out words to the effect of, “Rip them off.” Which she proceeded to do, ripping my pants along the seams several inches, leaving my tighty whiteys the only thing between me and the older kids.

It wasn’t great for my self-esteem, or for my standing in the neighbourhood. I was the boy who got beat up by his little sister, at least in my head. I am certain it was forgotten by the rest as soon as they went onto other escapades, but it has stayed with me not as a traumatic memory (well over it) but as just another example of an event I wish I could have  a ‘do-over’ on.

I should have dropped the little pain in the ass, consequences be damned!

Still, I am more pleased that I did not.

 

“Aunt Nellie’s Kitchen”

My Aunt Nellie was my first hero. When I was  preschool-aged and even after, she was the kindest person I knew. She wasn’t my aunt and now that I comprehend the family linage, she was an aunt of my uncle’s wife. But I never called her anything but ‘Aunt Nellie’ and as far as I know, neither did anyone else in our farming neighbourhood around the Scheideman Flats, an area named for her husband’s family. I loved spending time on her farm and especially within her home.

            Aunt Nellie was in her sixties when I first knew her, stooped with a hunched back and long graying, black hair twisted into a bun. Her eyes always gleamed with friendliness and no small bit of intelligence. Aunt Nellie tended to wear dark, functional slacks with patterned blouses. She moved slowly but with vigor, and was always busy when we stopped by for a visit. If she wasn’t butchering chickens in the walkout cellar or working in her flower gardens, she was putting up vegetables or fruit, carding or spinning wool, or working on a quilt around a wooden frame that took up most of her living room.

            Aunt Nellie never ignored me. She had a seemingly never-ending series of chores to accomplish, but she always had time to pause and visit over a slice of jelly roll and glass of milk. She would ask about my dog, my day at school—I frequently got off the school bus at her driveway, resulting in a walk of almost half a mile to her home—and the happenings around our farm. I never suspected she was mining for gossip, but perhaps she did have ulterior motivation; knowing her caring nature, and having learned about the events surrounding my parents and their turbulent life on the farm, most likely she was simply concerned for my welfare.

            Aunt Nellie was an important part of my life before I turned nine and left the area, although I returned for many widely-spaced visits. As well as I remember her and her generosity, I remember her house—on an impressive slope surrounded by spruce trees, nearly invisible from the distant gravel road bordering it on two sides—even better.

            It seems like I spent a lot of time at Aunt Nellie’s, although I don’t know why. My parents worked on our farm, so I can’t think of a specific reason why I so often was left at her place. I`m guessing it had something to do with my parents’ troubled and frequently violent relationship. I’m certainly glad I was left in her care because I loved it there.

            Aunt Nellie and Uncle Louis’ (pronounced Louie, always) farm was far more impressive than ours, their outbuildings colourfully painted, appearing neater in their functionality with every tool and machine in its place, no piles of discarded lumber or broken implements piled alongside crumbling outbuildings. So concerned was he with cleanliness, Uncle Louis once had me sweep the wooden aisle of his barn. Everything at Aunt Nellie and Uncle Louis’ seemed considered and tidy, in much better condition than our ramshackle, cluttered, and weather-beaten barn, sheds, and granaries.

            I remember their place as vividly as my own home. In their living room, a moose head, nestled between two windows overlooking their expansive pastures, looked down from the west wall. I would contemplate that moose seemingly for hours, studying the contours of its rack, the topography of its nostrils, and staring into its glass eyes. There was a round, wooden spinning piano stool, but I recall no piano. A wood-framed chesterfield with rough, embroidered upholstery and claw-and-ball feet ran along one wall. The room’s floor was gleaming wood, polished within an inch of its life, my mother would assert without rancor. I spent many hours playing on this floor, surrounded by Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs abandoned by the sons who once lived in the home.

            In the fridge, there was always a mutton roast, a slice or two cut off each meal by Uncle Louis to accompany whatever the main course was: I don’t recall anyone else being offered a piece, although I am confident this wasn’t from selfishness—I’m guessing all had previously declined the opportunity. I certainly was never curious for a taste: in my mind, it was something only Uncle Louis ate.

            When I think of Aunt Nellie and Uncle Louis’ home, I most fondly remember their kitchen. The cabinets were lightly-coloured stained wood, not painted, and for whatever reason I thought this made them impressive. Bird figurines collected from packages of tea bags lined the windowsill above the sink. A ripe odor often came from under the sink where a slop bucket waited to be emptied. Depending on the season, a bag or two of wool would sit in a corner beside the spinning wheel, and a substantial and—to my childhood eyes—intricate vertical radiant register dominated the wall beside the wheel. A fascinating cuckoo clock measured the passing hours.

            I have a distinct memory of Aunt Nellie sitting at the kitchen table reading with me one particularly cold winter’s night. Helping with my burgeoning Grade One reading skills, Aunt Nellie and I devoured the adventures of Dan Frontier and his friends. Earlier that same day she had comforted me as my frozen hands brought me to tears; I had forgotten my green and yellow knitted mittens on the school bus, and had alone walked the long drive snaking through their cattle pasture with my fingers first tingling with pain, eventually becoming numb.  Finally safe in her home, Aunt Nellie lovingly held my throbbing hands in cool water, my screams as sharp in my memory today as when the cold razored from my tender fingers more than forty years ago.

            I often sat colouring at their kitchen table. There was one corner drawer devoted to colouring books and wax crayons. As opposed to the rest of their orderly home and farm, these crayons were never neatly kept in packages; they were simply grabbed out by the handful and dropped back into the drawer after each use. I imagine every child who visited the Scheidemans used these crayons and books, but I can’t recall ever doubting that they were solely for my pleasure.

             I probably spent as much time colouring in their warm kitchen as I did exploring the cool shadows beneath the towering spruces that lined their walkways, playing with kittens in their barn, or following Uncle Louis as he completed chores. I don`t recall the action of colouring as much as I remember the contentment I possessed while filling pages of outlined animals and cartoon characters. At her kitchen table was where I remember being happiest, chatting with Aunt Nellie as she cleaned vegetables at the sink or kneaded bread dough or rolled out pie crust at the counter.  

            Several years later—after my first or second year of teaching—I paid what would be my last visit to Aunt Nellie and Uncle Louis’. They were now nearing ninety and moved even more slowly than I remembered. Still, they were every bit as active and sharp as before. Sitting with my wife in the kitchen I had spent so much time in two decades before, enveloped by the smell of chicken stew and freshly baked bread, and hearing stories of great-grandchildren I had no connection to, I couldn’t have felt more comfortable.

            At one point, my eyes settled on the corner drawer. I must have been staring at it for a bit, because when I looked up and made eye-contact with Aunt Nellie she grinned and nodded her head toward it. I got up and, walking to the drawer, I just knew what I would see. And indeed, as I pulled open the drawer, a fresh batch of colouring books and wax crayons came into view, ones used by the latest generation of children to have spent time in Aunt Nellie’s kitchen.

            It wasn’t the sight of the colours and books that got me, it was the smell. When I slid open that drawer, the powerful odor of wax crayons took the place of the more fragrant ones of lunch. I was immediately transported and was once again—just for a couple seconds—that kid who found sanctuary with a couple who had no obligation to care for me.

            I have tears clouding my vision now, just as I did that summer afternoon in the late 80s pulling open the crayon drawer for the final time. Shortly, they would pass within months of each other. I drove four hours to attend Aunt Nellie’s viewing in a city chapel, and I trust that they understood how special they were to me. I visited their gravesites last fall, and experienced an immensity of emotion I’ve not felt elsewhere.

            The children I work with tend to favour pencil crayons and markers. Only the youngest use wax crayons. When I enter a kindergarten class and see the kids colouring their letters and shapes, I become wistful. Each time I get down on my knees beside them to chat and I catch the powerful scent of the coloured wax crayons, I am again in the warmest place I have ever known: Aunt Nellie’s kitchen.

************************************************************************************

This piece was written for a university course, and the focus was to develop a feeling of place. While not every detail may be accurate, the emotions related to this home and to these people, are genuine. Any details that I have mistakenly recalled (or invented) I hope are minor. The place is real, south-east of Duffield, Alberta-and driving past again this month I was again near-overwhelmed with memories. Most of all, I remember the sense of belonging and safety I felt with Aunt Nellie and Uncle Louis. If any of their relations are reading this, I hope they understand how important they were to me. 

2023: The brass name plate disappeared from Aunt Nellie and Uncle Louis’ grave sometime in the last six or so years, presumably stolen by those inclined to sell scrap metal. After having their grave unmarked in the interim, it is now clearly identified for, one hopes, the foreseeable future. Mewassin United Church Cemetery, Parkland County, Alberta. By-the-by, the petrified wood gravestone sat outside their ‘back’ door, and was fondly recalled from my childhood; when I first visited their grave, I thought it was an ideal decision by the family. It was, however, a lot smaller than in my memories!

 

“Home”

Mom has dementia.

            Her blonde hair faded to the colour of water-stained paper, she is in that impossible place where independence is well beyond her ability, but not her memory. She is confident that she should be living on her own at home.

            However, she is confused about where home is: Erskine, the small rural town in which she spent her childhood? The long-ago sold house in Leduc, or the high rise that followed? The seniors’ lodge where she lived for just over a year, or the clinical assessment facility? All are home depending on the day, the conversation, the moment.

            Home is never the utilitarian, bare walled, one-room suite in the locked-down wing of the supported care facility in which she lives, her physical needs attended to by a roster of warmly accented Jamaican women.

            “I’m not as far gone as the others here,” she tells me now, sitting—as always when I visit— on the edge of her single bed. “A bunch of drooling fools down there in those chairs, staring at me.” Bitterness increasingly pollutes each staccato burst of verbal venom.

            “I know, Mom. It’s hard,” I say, wondering how we got on the topic.

            “Hard! I’ll tell you what’s hard!” she says, her voice taking on strength from her indignation. “I caught one of them in here yesterday.” She points toward the particleboard armoire in the corner. “Right there- stupid old fool was putting on my best dress. They take them all.”

            “You don’t have any dresses, Mom.”

            “I do so. Your sister buys them for me. I wear them to church,” she declares, patting her chest.

            “Blouses.”

            “Blouses?” Her eyes shift. “Yes. They take them. Wear them around as if they own the place! Bitches.” Her growing agitation is obvious, her fingers tearing at the tissue in her hand.

            “Mom…” I begin to plead.

            “Well, they are. Miss High-and-Mighty, ooh-la-la! ‘Look at me!'” Tissue flakes fall onto the bedspread. “I told her if she ever came in here again, I’ll punch her. And I will.”

            “I’m glad you handled it without hurting her, Mom. It’ll be fine now.”

            A different emotion enters her voice, animates her face.

            “Your sister bought me those dresses. No one has the right to take them.” Moisture shines in her eyes. Sorrow. Resignation.

            “I hate this place.”

            “I know, Mom.” Come into her reality. “Maybe she needed the blouse more than you.”

            “Oh, I know.” The tears of a moment ago are wiped away, seemingly forgotten. “She doesn’t have much money. None of them do. I do. Don’t I?”

            I nod.

            “Daddy left me all right, didn’t he?”

            “I suppose. You get his pension. It’s expensive to live here; Tash takes care of that for you. You don’t need to worry.”

            “I know— your sister is the best. She takes care of me. I don’t worry about money.”

            She looks around the room. Her face changes again, opens. “I must be rich. You know, I always wanted to be, and look at me now, living in this hotel.” She smiles, comfortable at last.

            Mom isn’t sure where she is. She only knows it isn’t home.

***********************************************************************************

This piece was written for a university creative writing course:

Present a character who is in some essential way a misfit within the world where we meet him or her…

While some license was taken to meet the requirements of this fiction assignment, the setting and dialogue are essentially representative of a conversation I had with my mother. She passed away in May, 2016.