The Street - A Composite Sketch (4)

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 fourth part of the anatomy of The Street.

House number four, directly across from number three, was originally owned by a French-Canadian family. We rarely saw the man of the house, frequently did the woman. Their two teen-age boys, like their father, were rarely to be seen. Since they lived directly beside the ingress to the ravine trails, we would on occasion see the woman, a tall slender, affable woman who liked to chat. On one occasion we found her frantically beating the bushes on either side of the trail leading into the ravine.

Looking, she said, for her sons' exotic reptile, which had, once again, managed to escape. Why, we asked, was she looking for it, and not her sons. She grinned, said she was fond of it, and since she looked after it more than her boys did, she felt responsible for it. Knew it could never survive on its own, since this was not its native habitat. We never did discover whether she found it; it had, she told us, escaped on a few previous occasions and each time she had rescued it. They lived in the house only a few years before selling it and moving on.

The family that moved in was a very young one. He of German extraction, she of old Canadian Irish stock. She had, in fact, a face like a pudding and a shape that reminded one of a sack of potatoes. But she was energetic, young and enthusiastic. In contrast, her husband was well formed, handsome and extremely fit. She an extrovert, and he an introvert, shy but well-met. They had fraternal twins, a boy and a girl. The girl much larger than her sibling, more outgoing, but aggressive as opposed to his submissiveness.

Once, when another mother waited with her child on the street corner for the arrival of the school bus, she pointed out to this new neighbour that her six-year-old twins were bullying another child, having surrounded him and plucking at him. The while chanting some little teasing refrain. The put-upon child looked miserable, but the mother of the twins simply looked surprised, commented, "are they?" and did nothing to have her two desist. The girl clearly the leader, but her brother willing enough.

Before long the family acquired a family pet. They had wanted to get a Portuguese water dog, but it was too expensive. Instead they chose a mixed-breed small dog half resembling a cocker spaniel, but finer-boned. It was a hyperactive little animal, and the family did nothing to discipline it, so it ran amok in the neighbourhood and people would give it treats, hoping it wouldn't be run over by traffic. Everyone enjoyed the little dog, and was concerned for it, but the owners evinced little concern themselves.

The young mother did train her dog in one way, to unfailingly relieve itself not in their backyard, but to travel the few yards to the precinct of the ravine and do its business there. It was permitted ingress to the laundry room and kitchen, nowhere else in the house, that adorable little bundle of energy. The father worked as an IT specialist in his own contract business with a partner. The mother was a practical nurse, and found employment in a nearby health clinic.

The children quickly accustomed themselves to their new neighbourhood and readily found new friends, adjusted to their new school. There were some neighbours whom the mother took to, others whom she considered unfit for her company. They thought it would be a good idea to do some travelling with the children to impress upon them the vastness of the world about them, so they travelled to Greece one summer, Italy another.

Then there was the high-tech crash, and the father's business went kaput, and he found it difficult to find employment in his field, so looked elsewhere, but with no luck. And the mother was sick of working at the clinic, decided she would attend normal school to become an elementary school teacher. But, on receiving her professional accreditation, the teaching market too became depressed. Family helped them muddle along.

With or without a steady income, living well or frugally, they were not the kind of people to respond to requests for charitable giving. It wasn't a tradition in their family, she explained. They weren't 'giving' people. Charity, she was fond of saying, began and ended at their front door. She had a falling out with some of her neighbourhood friends who resented that she always took and never gave. She was always on the lookout for giveaways, but never offered anything herself.

One of the neighbours, an older woman, had offered to teach the daughter rudimentary piano skills, and the girl willingly attended these spontaneous 'classes', then suddenly dropped off without so much as a thank-you, and the woman felt aggrieved. Her brother spent his leisure time at the area recreation centre with its large pool, where he took swimming lessons and became a proficient swimmer.

The children were friendly enough, quite unlike their shy and retiring father, but they too came to an unfortunate parting of the ways with their closest neighbourhood friends. They made do with the friends they made at school. Their father eventually found good employment again, and their mother won a permanent position with the federal government.

Both children are now semi-adult, both still attending school; she a Catholic (although they were not Catholic; the mother felt her daughter would receive a finer education there) French-immersion high school, and he an ordinary English-language high school, although their mother had wanted an enriched learning environment for both, knowing how essential it would be for future employment to have bilingual credentials. The girl still towers over her brother in stature. As she does in academic achievement.

The mother has discovered the pleasures of gardening. The father has become an ardent bicyclist. The little dog's antics have mellowed with age, although he still presents as anxious to please, and rushes about hither and yon.