The Street - A Composite Sketch (28)

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-eighth part of the anatomy of The Street.

He always liked to boast that he and his wife were among the first to move into their new house on the street. When they took possession of their house less than half of the homes on the street had been fully built. Many were still in the early stages of construction, and the properties were mired in construction detritus. Since their driveway hadn't yet been paved, nor their grounds finished with grass, everything was a mess. Noisy and busy with construction and dirt everywhere you looked. But they didn't really mind, they were pleased to have found the street, to be able to select the house they wanted.

They moved from Montreal, where they had formerly lived. Both were born in Quebec, although she had come from the eastern townships and he from Montreal. He was involved in food production and sales. He had actually met her while she worked as a receptionist at one of the places where he used to drop by, to introduce new food products. At the time she was half his age. She was single, he was married, with twin boys. His marriage, he told her, was an unhappy one. Isn't that the usual line? Well, it was an unhappy marriage; he chafed under his wife's constant eye and bitter tongue, keeping close tabs on him.

His wife was the image of his controlling mother. Why he chose her and married her is one of life's little mysteries. Perhaps he was drawn to her because she was a young and attractive Jewish woman, and his mother had been Jewish. His father he spoke of with real affection, his mother with a shudder of misery recalled. He was raised within neither the Jewish nor the Christian religions, but somehow imbibed Jewish culture and tradition. As did his only sibling, his older brother, living in New York, of whom he often spoke with affection.

Her close relatives would still visit with them, making the trip in the summer months, to stay for weeks, even months at a time. She had two young nephews who used to come and stay with them, unable to speak a word of English. They had no children of their own. And he had become estranged from his two sons. Odd, because the reason they moved to Ottawa to begin with was to be geographically close to the boys who had decided to attend the University of Ottawa. He used to grumble to his neighbours that all the boys were interested in was milking him of money.

His solution to that was to cut off all contact. Enough, he felt, that he paid their mother for their upkeep for so many years, and he was still continuing to pay, since they continued to go to school. Because they were always after him to increase the amount that a court judgement had settled on them he felt aggrieved, and said he would no longer have anything to do with them. Which surprised his neighbours because he voluntarily chose to sever his life from that of his only two children. Later, when they became independent adults with their own lives, he attempted to mend what he had rent asunder.

He was quite involved with the neighbourhood. He knew everyone who lived on the street. And made it his business to know intimate things about each family, because he had a prying interest in everyone. Some people resented this, others simply didn't care, because he was also a very likeable man. With, it's true an acerbic sense of humour; ironic at times, and cutting at others, tending to the personal. And he loved talking, could talk about anything at all for hours on end. His wife, in contrast, was laconic in nature, and shy. Many wondered how they could get along together.

But they did. Their twenty-five-year difference in age didn't seem to matter to them, particularly at first, when they first married and everything was fresh and new and their future together stretched out promisingly. His insisting manner often irritated her, but she coped with it and they valued their lives together, both reliant on one another's presence. As he grew older and his health began to suffer, first from a heart condition, then high blood pressure and then a bad back, she began to take holidays without him. They had used to travel together for active recreational holidays and she loved that kind of activity.

So she joined a women's group and often went away on week-end excursions with them, bicycling, hiking, and sight-seeing, enjoying themselves. He had used to spend time in the community as a volunteer in the ravine, checking on the trail system, reporting to the parks and recreation department of the municipality when things had to be looked after. With his failing health, that commitment fell by the wayside, and he retreated increasingly into his house, although he could still be found outside, often, talking up a storm with neighbours.

Eventually, she began to embark on month-long holidays once a year, going on group tours to Greece, Italy, Egypt, Alaska, Costa Rica and other places of the world. They maintained contact by email, and she always brought home lots of photographs to share with him. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer, underwent surgery, then chemotherapy and recovered, but his health was increasingly impaired after that. Several years later he had triple heart bypass surgery. This time his rehabilitation was far more prolonged, and he suffered from severe headaches which he feared presaged something far more dire. But did not.

He missed their old dog, a golden retriever, almost as much as he missed his wife in her many absences. That dog had used to accompany him on his daily excursions in the ravine, and they both doted on the dog. A big sloppy, overweight, but friendly and intelligent animal that always attempted to recruit people into its playtime routine of ball-throwing, wagging and waggling its big hind-end when it was successful. The dog's slow decline mimicked his, and its death was a blow to them both. It had, somehow, seemed like the child they had never had. And they simply did not replace it, considering it irreplaceable.

They still live there, in their house on the street. The wife still plants a tiny garden consisting only of tiny and beautiful portulaca near the front of their property, close to the road, every year. She still embarks on her exotic and exciting trips abroad. He still ambles from time to time along the street, looking out for any other neighbours who might happen to be out at the same time. His gait may have been compromised, but his cutting humour remains intact. And he continues to look meticulously to his 'toilette', wishing to appear dashing for his wife.