The Street - A Composite Sketch (34)

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-fourth part of the anatomy of The Street.

Here then is the last story of the families living on the street that was new two decades earlier. Although this represents the last story of the many families who make up that particular neighbourhood on a very short street in the heart of a much larger integrated community of people from various backgrounds, cultures and religions, this particular family was in fact the first to move into a house on the-then new street. And, as it happens, they also represent, in their forbears, the original Europeans to have settled in Canada.

They are Franco-Ontarians, French to their core, but also as Canadian as it's possible to be. Their first thought of self is as of Canadian, then French, then Ontarian, quite unlike Quebec-origined francophones. When they moved into their new house they were absolutely enthralled with the prospect of living out their lives on that street, in that house. It is a corner house on a spacious lot, with a large park directly across the street, and they have the ravine to their back. In the park there are various large play structures for area children.

And there are a number of area churches, which has always been vitally important to them because they are staunch Roman Catholics. They had both just embarked on their professional careers, she as a primary-school teacher, and he as a high-school science teacher. They loved their jobs and took their profession very seriously, feeling that society had entrusted them with the vital occupation of stimulating the young to learn, to discover, to engage eventually in a self-directed search for knowledge.

Their dedication to their work was well known by their colleagues, and appreciated by their various school administrations. The young people whom they taught reciprocated their appreciation for their efforts; they were generally acknowledged to be extremely effective at engaging and motivating young minds. And they were, understandably, anxious to begin their own family, to be given the opportunity of shaping and nurturing and supporting the needs of children of their own.

So wedded to the notion of parenthood that they had five children in fairly rapid succession, and she, of course, opted to stay at home to ensure that their children became imbued with their very own values and appreciation for life. They meted out emotional support and firm discipline almost equally, and instilled in their children a life-long church-attendance habit. This family prayed together, grew together, the parents observing with satisfaction and love the social and emotional maturation of their brood.

They were exceptional neighbours, in the sense that they extended good fellowship to everyone. Most people who moved into their homes on the street after this young couple recalled that they had been greeted by the pair upon moving in. She was slender, with flashing dark eyes and long curly hair, like a nyad, a water nymph of Greek legend. He was her cavalier, attentive to her every movement, each initiative. They made a striking pair. Little wonder people remembered them.

They were enthralling as a symbol of how young love appeared, and how a brace of intelligent and active people could form a superlative relationship in their marriage. He knew her body language and deciphered from it the quality of his own reaction. When among others, their glancing eyes making contact with one another continually, speaking volumes about their mutual love, respect and admiration for one another.

They were always to be seen together, strolling along the street, pushing baby carriages or strollers, the older children clinging to them. In the park they would have impromptu picnics to the delight of their children. They would play ball games; the parents would watch indulgently as their older children took tender care of their younger siblings, encouraging them to clamber up the ladder, down the slides. When the youngest was old enough they would all embark on bicycling escapades; the parents first the children in graduated size.

The family, just as with all the others on the street, grew older, became increasingly companionable with their near neighbours, and derived great comfort from the reality they felt in a communal spirit of acceptance and mutual trust. They would look after their near neighbours' lawns, take in the newspapers, in the absence of the home-owners, and the same would be done for them on those occasions they took brief absences for vacations or to visit with relatives.

Their gardens were always neatly arranged and well cared for. They exchanged perennial plants with neighbours each fall, when everyone was busy putting their gardens away in preparation for winter. If a neighbour fell ill, they brought over home-baked goods and offered helpfully to do chores, their concern so evidently genuine. The children, three boys and two girls, eventually followed one another from elementary school to high school and then on to institutes of higher learning.

And then, suddenly, neighbours realized they hadn't seen the father for a week or so. It was assumed he had taken a solo trip to visit relatives, or had gone away on a professional development course as occasionally had occurred. But the week turned into a month, and finally the mother confided, ashen-faced, to her closest neighbour that her husband had left. Left? Where to? Her face crumpled as she candidly explained that he had decided to leave his family. He had embarked on a new life-adventure with a much younger woman.

She was frank in discussing her dilemma, suddenly becoming a single parent. Albeit of grown children. The children were shocked and disgusted, felt abandoned and betrayed, as much themselves as for their mother whom only they knew how deeply the loss of her beloved life partner anguished her, hearing her weeping in the kitchen, at night in her solitary bed. The two older boys reconciled with their father when he explained how torn he had been in making his decision.

He told them his love for them and for their mother would always remain intact. But another, new emotion had overtaken him and he had felt helpless to deny it. They relented in their anger, and visited their father and his new partner occasionally. The younger brother and the two girls refused to accept his explanation and his choice to leave their mother. Their mother hardly knew where to turn, how to deal with her pain. She remained mute with her children, refusing to judge their father, or to condemn him.

It sounds trite, I know, but she took professional counselling and that helped. She returned to the workplace, at a retail store, and eventually managed it. And a year after her husband left, and she felt she had finally come to terms with her status as a woman left for another, younger woman, she succumbed to her children's suggestion that she look for a companion animal. The three younger children still lived with their mother, and the two boys were often over, but they felt that caring for a helpless young puppy would help their mother.

Eventually she did just that. And the neighbours who thought so highly of this family became accustomed to seeing the woman, no longer slender, but still possessed of a lovely smile tinged now with sadness, walking a small feisty dog on leash, recalling years long past when she and her husband walked together with complete fulfilment as a happy family, with their young children in tow.

c. 2009 Rita Rosenfeld