The Street - A Composite Sketch (32)

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 Thirty-second part of the anatomy of The Street.

They are Anglo-Irish Canadians, fifth-generation, in fact, with a widespread extended family on either side. Neighbourly does not adequately describe their attachment to the community they live in and their relations with the people living on the street, although they're far more familiar with those on the bottom end of the street, where they live.

He's a burly man, plain-spoken and not too well educated. She's a petite red-head, the head librarian of the town's library branch. Their relationship has always been a light-hearted affair, in the manner in which they tease one another. The depth of their obvious commitment to one another is not to be doubted, however. Anyone can see that, watching them together.

Their boys were very young when they bought their house. Now, the boys are tall and broad, resembling their father but with the buoyancy of youth. When they were getting through high school, after fumbling through elementary school when their mother did her utmost to help them with their homework, there was the added headache of having to put in the requisite number of hours of volunteer work. Their mother scrambled to ensure they succeeded.

She isn't entirely thrilled by their choices of employment. The oldest aspired to become an auto mechanic and is now employed in the garage of the local Canadian Tire store. Where his fundamentally sound knowledge and struggle to achieve his mechanic's license paid off with respect from his employers and a decent enough salary. His younger brother was interested in cabinetry, and apprenticed to a local cabinetmaker.

At least, their mother sighed to some of her sympathetic neighbours, they'll always be employable. They obviously inherited their father's locomotion through life, not hers. She was a voracious reader; none of the males in their little family even picked up a newspaper. This puzzled her. She had deliberately taken the trouble to patiently read to her boys from the time they were little. And they had been attentive, loved being read to.

True, they were slow learning their alphabet, slower still learning to read, but she always had hope. It was soon dashed, when she finally understood that they loved her attention, her motherly support and emotional tenderness. It was her droning voice that put them to sleep at night, content and free of childish fears of the unknown. Intellectual pursuits were beyond them, they had no interest in anything outside their direct sphere of simply being.

She loved them anyway, just as she did her stolid, undemanding husband. He was a driver for UPS, and he loved his job. Not nearly as much as he loved - adored - his tiny red-haired wife. Her competence and knowledgeability sometimes frightened him. He feared she would get fed up with his inability to match her awareness of public events, literary figures, news in the making. But she never, ever reproached him, accepting him for the loving husband he was.

They had a large dog when the children were small. A golden retriever, a female whom she decided just once to allow her a litter before spaying the dog. The litter of adorable pups went quickly. Once they were gone, and her husband counted the money they made out of the purebred pups with disbelief, joking he could quit work and go into business as a breeder, she decided she had erred, should have kept one for herself.

She then went out looking for a golden retriever puppy, a male, and it ended up costing her more than what they had earned for two of their six puppies to her husband's consternation. The boys loved the two dogs, used to hang off their sturdy backs, playing with them. And as generally happens, as the boys grew older they lost interest in the dogs. Not their mother, she would regularly take them out for exhilarating ravine walks in the evenings and days off.

She had an older sister living nearby. Seeing the two together one knew instantly they were sisters, even though one was much larger than the other; it was the delicate facial features, the flaming red hair. The sister was an acclaimed author of children's books. Her books were translated and sold internationally. And the younger sister who lived on the street was the illustrator of the books.

The boys are now with their own families, although neither has yet had a child. They've settled nearby, in modest houses a short drive from where their parents live. Their mother still has the male dog, although it's too riven with arthritis to visit the ravine any longer. She lamented the passing of the female, three years older than the male golden retriever. When he goes she has no intention of replacing him.

Her husband has become passionately interested in gardening. Suddenly their property has been transformed by the work of his tender green thumb, and she's extremely proud of him. Their gardens have become the neighbourhood show-stopper. Better even than those the fellow up the street with the military has designed and coaxed into perfection. She knew she had chosen a winner, she fondly told her closest neighbour.

c. 2009 Rita Rosenfeld