The Street - A Composite Sketch (27)

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-sixth part of the anatomy of The Street.

He had emigrated from France many years ago. It was in Canada that he met his wife; she a French-Canadian. It was interesting to hear them speaking together, for their French was completely different; she spoke with a patois, he a more cultured French. Their children, needless to say, spoke impeccable French and English, quite needful in a society that values the two founding languages and where government at every level offered preferential hiring to bilingual individuals (qualifications aside).

They met at an area hospital, in fact. He a doctor, and she a nurse. Nothing too unusual about that since workplace romances between the young and the unattached are common enough. Oddly enough, he was extremely talkative and friendly and she was reserved; generally character attributes one expects in reverse of their social inheritance. Their children followed in quick succession just a few years after their marriage, and she maintained her professional status, as an operating room nurse. He was an oncologist, and he rose steadily in the hierarchy of the hospital over time, to become the chief of the oncology unit.

They had moved into their house on the street when a mere handful of the houses had yet become occupied. They had selected the house model that they felt best suited their aesthetic and their future needs. She had insisted that quite a number of structural alterations be made; enlarge the upper hall; installation of several glass roof bubbles; building a study on the ground floor without sacrificing the size of the great room, necessitating that the finished house be slightly larger in footage than the original plans. And, of course, using quality finishes, superior in value and utility than originally planned for.

They had their driveway done in paver stones, with a very nice pattern and colour. And they had the windows changed from wood casements to aluminum ones which would never require painting. The cupboards were exchanged for solid walnut models, half with glass doors. And the combination mud-room and laundry room was also enlarged. Lastly, they had a glassed sunroom built onto the back of the house. All of these changes vastly increased the final house price, but they felt they could afford it.

They adopted a succession of little dogs, miniature schnauzers. When one departed this mortal coil, they swiftly brought a replacement on board. And oddly enough each of the little dogs had an operation to remove its voice-box. The dogs would bark incessantly because they were often left out on their own, on a tie-out in the front garden. Their frustrated barking would irritate the neighbours, but not nearly as much as it did their owners. Hence, once their voice-box was removed, the barking ceased to be heard, although the dogs still barked, albeit silently.

The two girls attended area French-language schools in the Catholic School Board, and performed well academically, as one might expect. Their father maintained a keen interest in their progress, was never too busy to help with their homework, and encouraged them to think about a future profession as soon as they were old enough to make that practicable. Eventually one of the girls studied journalism and when she finished her degree, packed off to Indonesia where, despite not knowing the language, she found quick employment with an English-language news network there.

The other daughter decided her mother's profession appealed to her, and while her sister was off in Indonesia she took up nursing. Eventually, she married before her sister, though she was the younger. Her sister met a young man originally from Australia who also worked at the news network. They became a couple, and decided - before the mother who intended to travel to Indonesia for a visit - to re-locate to Australia and look for work there. So it was to Australia that the mother travelled for a month-long trip of re-acquaintance with her daughter and approval of her choice of partner.

Her husband kept busy with his practise, working out of the hospital. Some of his neighbours on the street consulted with him casually, to double-check their own doctors' diagnoses, and he was kind enough not to mind, and to advise them to the best of his professional capabilities. He liked to tell his neighbours how glad he was to be living in Canada, how much more egalitarian he found it socially than living in France, which surprised them. He also discussed with some of his neighbours the politics that took place in the hospital, and his personal distaste for political intrigue.

People on the street were surprised and no little bit upset when news spread that this man, the head of oncology of the major hospital in the city, had tentatively diagnosed himself with colon cancer. He had his diagnosis confirmed, needless to say, by one of his trusted colleagues. And, just like everyone else with that dread condition, he underwent the misery of surgery and follow-up chemotherapy. Having professional knowledge as he did, he confided to some of his neighbours, did not necessarily confer any kind of advantage.

Rather, knowing how dire the condition could be, and how cancer cells spread, he was anything but immune to becoming irrational about his future prospects. The professional in him knew better, but the emotional human being in him fretted regardless and imagined the worst case scenario. In the end, he recovered, resumed his former life, and returned to work. Where he continued to deplore the unhelpfulness and uncollegiality of many of his colleagues. And did his best to treat his patients with kindness abetted now by his own experience.

c. 2009 Rita Rosenfeld