The Street - A Composite Sketch (20)

Not a very long street, just off a major arterial, it is shaped like a question mark. At the conclusion of the bulge it meanders into another street. One half of the street backs onto a heavily wooded ravine, a neighbourhood treasure, though few of the street's residents quite recognize its value, nor make use of its propinquity. It cleanses the air everyone breathes, it hosts birds and wildlife and presents a treasury of wildflowers throughout the seasons. At one time the street, part of a larger suburban community, shared a small-town address. It has long since been subsumed into the greater national capital of the country, through a wide-ranging amalgamation of communities and even farms. The street and the houses on it were built two and a half decades ago. The domiciles are comprised mostly of single-family, detached dwellings, with a handful of semis verging on the main thoroughfare. Many of the residents are the original home purchasers. They would comprise roughly 50% of the residents of the street. The semis appear to have changed hands far more often than the detached homes. And those homes that have been re-sold have often enjoyed a succession of owners. The original home owners who moved into their houses when their children were small have mostly bid farewell to now-grown children. The street represents an amalgam of family types, and there is a significant percentage at this time, of retired people, singly and in couples who, though their houses are meant for family occupation, still opt to remain in their too-large, but comfortable and familiar and valued homes. It is a very quiet street, with little traffic other than those who live there. The house fronts are diverse, and attractive. Most residents take care of their homes, seeing them as their primary investments. Furnaces have been replaced, and air conditioners, and also windows. Kitchens and bathrooms have been remodelled, and people have added decks and occasionally airy 'summer houses' to the backs of their homes. One-third of the homes boast swimming pools, in-ground and above-ground. Most people take pride in their properties, and feel they must achieve lawns that are weedless and smoothly green. Some painstakingly remove weeds by hand in the spring, others hire lawn-care companies to spread chemicals on their lawns. Invariably, the people who look after their own gardens and lawns have superior gardens and lawns. Each house has a large tree planted in front; maples, ash,crabapples, spruce or pine, fully mature. This is a community that is truly mixed, representing people from around the world, come to Canada as immigrants, settled and making the most of opportunities open to all its citizens in a free and open society noted for its pluralism and dedication to fair representation. There are the extroverts and the introverts, those who prefer not to mingle, others who do. They are herewith loosely sketched:

This is the Twentieth part of the anatomy of The Street.

The couple that bought the house on the curve of the street bought themselves a huge pie-shaped lot. Their backyard was easily twice the size of the others on the street, but for their neighbour to the left of them, also on the curve, also with a double-sized lot. Funny thing about people who have a lot, they always crave more, no matter what that 'more' consists of.

For this couple, with the huge lot, more meant that when fences were going up they insisted that every inch of property remain uncontested as to ownership. What they claimed to be theirs was to be respected. So that when the people with the backyard to their right with its modest dimensions were claiming what they felt certain was theirs, the amply-dimensioned owners clamped onto ownership. The others shrugged assent, content with what they had. Human nature, it seems.

This was a second marriage for her, first for him, both middle-aged. Her son lived with them, a very nice young boy, in high school, whose competitive swimming and diving prowess his mother was inordinately proud of, and encouraged. She was herself a math high-school teacher, her husband general manager of the city's famed National Arts Centre.

She reminded her neighbour of that old actress Mercedes McCambridge, without the charm. She had a rather grim sense of self in the world. Not much to discuss with her, other than her son's talents, and their commitment to encouraging it. Her husband had a tight smile, rarely revealed. He was most certainly what most people might claim to be mildly misogynistic. He would never discuss with a woman anything of substance, but would ignore her presence, and insist on speaking instead to her husband.

Casual greetings were all right, but verbal commitments of conversation relating to anything of value were not to be wasted on women. Marriages can be odd relationships; onlookers often wonder how it is that two people seemingly so unsuited to one another decide to forge marital bonds. Their interior discussions taking place in the confinement of their home often wafted exteriorially at high decibels.

They did not stay long in their house and it was sold to another young couple, francophone-Ontarians both, and both from the area. With a little girl and an even younger boy. He had supple physique and hers was, to be kind, substantial. They both worked for the same employer, a government security unit.

As soon as they moved into the house they began to effect physical changes in its interior, having a ceramic tile floor laid in the kitchen and a granite counter placed on the kitchen's centre island, the carpeting torn out and oak strip flooring installed. Her word, wish and whim was his command. Not that he did the physical labour, but he saw to it that they contracted with French-speaking labourers whom she could command to do her bidding.

In fact, she commanded him also, constantly. And her husband responded with alacrity. They doted on their children, both unaffectedly sweet-tempered and sociable. The girl and the boy did not spend much time with the children on the street, preferring the company of their school friends. With one exception, as the boy grew older, he and the Indo-Canadian boy up the street played in the same hockey and soccer leagues and grew to like and respect one another.

Unlike the Indo-Canadian boy, however, this boy did not do well at sports. And unlike his sister who performed very well academically, the boy languished in regular schoolroom classes. He was identified as someone who would benefit from attendance at a special school for academic under-achievers operated by the Ontario government.

It meant that he would have to leave home weekly and live in at the school, located miles from the city, but his worried parents signed him up for the project, hoping that it would result in his being able to achieve academic par with his peers. It did help; once his two years of attendance there was over, he entered the regular student stream at a local high school.

His sister had once wanted to be a popular singer, an entertainer, but that was when she was a pre-teen. As an older student she became attracted to the idea of studying medicine. Which pleased her parents no end. One child of theirs at least would achieve a higher education, might join the elite stream of professionals.

They knew their younger child never could aspire to academic success, and they were fine with that, not wanting to place more pressure on the boy. Neighbours would see the father patiently explaining over and over again to his son how to use the lawn mower or the snow thrower. He learned slowly, methodically, but he learned.

When the children had been younger their parents had decided to transform that huge backyard into their own personal summertime haven. They had an in-ground pool installed, and it was costly because they had a semi-ravine lot necessitating special work to ensure the pool was evenly placed on that slanting lot. They had a shed built to house the pool's mechanical components.

They had a 'cottage' extension built on the back of their house, and a huge wood deck, extending from the cottage toward the pool, with a large encircling deck around the pool, completely transforming the backyard. And a patio built of brickwork too, of course. Little of the backyard, in fact, was left for lawn and garden, and that suited them just fine.

The pool and the decks and the gazebos they installed on the decks all made for a very comfortable and inviting familial entertainment unit. They were ultimately disappointed in the 'cottage' attached to the back of the house. It was too uncomfortably hot in the summer, and too cool to be used in the winter, since it hadn't been winterized. But it was the spirit of the thing that counted.

They had a dog and a cat and had installed an 'animal door' leading into the cottage, which they found quite convenient. The cat was a neighbourhood hunter, bringing home baby rabbits, squirrels and birds. The dog, a female, was flighty and excitable, and from the time it was a pup, was convinced it was the alpha being in the house, and that everyone needed to follow its emphatic desires.

It wasn't far wrong; it was a middling-sized part golden retriever, a really beautiful dog, but ferocious and emotionally needy at both and the same time. She would flop for a tummy rub whenever a neighbour was handy. She would snarl at her master whenever he wanted to enter his bed at night, asking her please, to move over. The local dog groomer refused their custom after the first encounter.

For the first few years, the mother enjoyed inviting their acquaintances from the workplace over for a yearly barbecue and swim. That worked for them at first, then became an inconvenience. Her mother and father had used often to come over when the children were younger. At that time the children's grandparents, both retired, used to provide their in-home daycare for a few years.

Her mother was a nurse, her father retired from private business; corpulent and ill, so that the nurse-mother had to perform kidney dialysis at home for her husband for years until he finally died of kidney failure, not presenting as a likely transplant subject. After that her mother began to travel the world, finally able to satisfy their curiosity about other geographies.

They saw no need to travel, themselves. They had it made. Good jobs, reliable income, and a home they loved. They had indifferent relations with their neighbours, for some odd reason restrained, although they could not be claimed to be unfriendly. Anything but, in fact, and with the few neighbours whose close presence they acknowledged they did enjoy good relations.

But they were and are insular in their outlook. And remain content with that.

c. 2009 Rita Rosenfeld