The Street - A Composite Sketch (21)

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 Twenty-first part of the anatomy of The Street.

They were quiet, and modest. They moved into their new home once half of the houses were occupied on the new street. Still, they had bought a lovely lot, nice and deep, unlike those on the opposite side of the street, and they backed onto the ravine, as well. He was one of the first men on the street to put down brick pavers in a walkway from his driveway to his front door. They planted two exotic magnolia trees, one in the front garden and one in the back, and the trees, although they weren't meant for that climate, thrived, every spring bursting with huge, beautiful blooms.

They represented another mix of Ontarians of long standing; he an anglophone, she francophone. They actually resembled one another physically, middling-height and spare, lean faces, breaking out easily into genuine smiles of friendship. She used to take public transit to her contract work with the federal government, making instant friends with others whose normative work transit that reflected. He, for the most part, seemed to work from home. His job was to mediate stalemates in worker grievances, a labour negotiator, and he was good at it.

They had two children, semi-adults, attending universities. It wasn't long before both children graduated and moved on to lives of their own. Their children were as industrious, capable and good-natured as they themselves were, and they had no fears that they would not find their place in a contented and satisfying future for themselves. Both the young man and the young woman moved out of town to take up their life trajectories, visiting their parents occasionally.

And when the wife decided to found her own contracting-out company she did very well with her insider connections with the federal government contracting arm. So well that she employed others to do what she had done, and was able to live handsomely on her share of their contracted work. Impressing her husband so much that he decided to throw in his lot with her, and become one of her employees. Because there was no need for them to be physically at government offices themselves, thanks to teleworking, they decided to move.

To a generous lot of several acres with a lovely heritage stone house close to Kingston, Ontario. Everyone hated to see them go. They were such pleasant people to be around. But go they did, and their house sold quickly. The new inhabitants of the house presented as an interesting combination to their new neighbours. He had adult children elsewhere from an earlier marriage. She was half his age, Cuban, a classical dancer, she told everyone proudly. They had two children, a lovely little girl and a tiny boy.

They inhabited their new house boisterously, the mother and children. Nothing boisterous about him; he was, in fact, fairly truculent, sour, but quite clearly proud of his beautiful young wife, and enamoured no less of their adorable children. Clearly this was paradise for her, having been taken out of a socialist country suffering under a long trade embargo. They met on one of his postings with the Department of Foreign Affairs. She thought he was a wealthy catch. He thought she was a new lease on life.

People attached to the Cuban Embassy began presenting themselves at the house at her invitation, and although he wasn't entirely comfortable with them, he acceded to their presence; particularly the cultural attache to whom his wife appeared to have attached herself, as a like spirit. Her mother and father were given visitors' visas and several times travelled to stay with them for a few months at a time, helping with the children, and the gardening around the house.

And he continued to travel with his department, but no longer on extended postings, just weeks at a time. In his absence a small red car with red diplomatic license plates began showing up. Staying overnight, and for week-ends. When neighbours saw her she was always delightful flamboyant, cheerful and exuberant about life, her life in particular. Her accented enthusiasms were charming. Her children were quite precious and talented too, she assured her neighbours.

Alas, Paradise turned to Hell, and once he realized the extent to which he had been cuckolded, he invited her to join her lover at the Cuban Embassy or wherever it was he had his diplomatic digs. Eventually they worked things through and although at first care of the children was a shared commitment, it came to pass that they lived permanently with their father. Despite the schism between the parents, he had been given a new lease on life. It was as though he had shed years. He re-discovered the unadultered pleasure of parenting, but as a single, responsible parent.

He bought bicycles for the three of them, himself and the children. During the day when they attended school, he attended to housekeeping and cooking, having by then determined the best course of action would be retirement. He was old enough and had acquired more than enough in the combination of age and working years for a handsome pension.

Neighbours see them now riding their bicycles to local parks, exchanging spirited observations and conversations, happily engaged with life and each other. Thriving.

c. 2009 Rita Rosenfeld