I was two years old the first time my father held me. Having never been around infants before he vaguely recalled hearing that if you didn't hold them properly, their heads would fall off. So this is how my father held me that first time -- carefully, so my head wouldn't fall off.
I was one of those exceptionally quiet children. I didn't make trouble. I didn't make demands. I didn't even talk until I'd passed my third birthday. My mother says this is because I didn't have to, pointing with a chubby finger at any item I desired would send my two older sisters scrambling to bring it to me. Where a finger failed a few words of gibberish conveyed my needs adequately; we spoke the same language, my sisters, and I.
In my second year I once wandered away from our home. My mother was familiar with my silences by then and likely thought I was immersed in play in some corner of the house instead of toddling happily across the fields that separated our home from the neighbor's. When she finally found me, I was sitting in a dog pen along with a team of twelve wild huskies who routinely dined with feral ferocious delight on the fresh carcasses of animals. I was fearlessly examining their teeth. Somehow, she and the neighbor were able to get me out of there without my body being torn into a tasty appetizer. That was twice that my mother's intervention saved me.
It was shortly thereafter that my brother came into our lives. If you look at the wedding pictures it all becomes quite obvious, for there are my parents, their smiling faces forever captured in black and white, my mother's belly unmistakably swollen with pregnancy. It turned out that the long-ago doctor was wrong and my father wasn't sterile after all. No one could have been more surprised than my father himself, but when Richard was born, he was, as we like to say in these parts, the dead spit of my father. Ian followed less than two years later.
We lived on a farm then. In lieu of rent, my father tended to the owner's large herd of horses. He hadn't known a thing about horses, of course, but dad was always a good talker and managed to convince the farmer that he did. It was a lovely farm. I recall a wide expanse of green grass bordered by trees and a white corral fence. The farmhouse was large and roomy and my mother kept it immaculate. One evening when we had guests, my father brought one of the horses out to give the children a ride. I was the last one to be loaded onto its back and as I lifted my arms upward, a stray dog came dashing and barking into the yard. The horse bucked, her back hooves driving squarely into my face. I was thrown, unconscious, across the yard. When I came to a few minutes later I began to sob because my beautiful new white blouse was drenched in blood. It took 48 stitches to close my cheeks where they had split, amazingly, on the inside only. Even my lips had to be stitched together and for two weeks I lived on nothing but eggnog -- a concoction I cannot stand to this day -- delivered through a slender straw. To look at me, you'd never know. I was lucky.
When I was four, we moved into the nearby town. The school and its play yard was situated directly in the town's center with all the houses arranged neatly around the square. Accustomed by then to the wide open spaces of the countryside, I'd never seen a building get that much attention before. I used to sit patiently on the wide wooden steps that led to our front door and stare at it's red brick exterior as I waited for my sisters to come home and play: Maureen in grade one and Colleen in kindergarten. But then, we fell behind in the rent and the landlord threw us out. It was the first time I recall ever seeing my mother cry.
We moved in with my aunt and her family for a while. It was kind of them, good intentioned, but I didn't like that place. My father became terribly ill with pneumonia, something he was prone to all his life. Once more, we thought we might lose him. I had horrible nightmares at that time of black misshapen ghouls reaching out with long tentacles to disturb my sleep. I'd lay frozen in my bed, caught between sheer blind terror and the desire for comfort. I managed to devise a way to exit the bedroom so that my feet need never touch the floor until I jumped from the dresser next to the doorway, into the hall. Then, I'd dash just as fast as my four-year old legs could carry me and leap with a frantic sob into the middle of my parent's bed.
Shortly thereafter, we found a place of our own. To keep costs reasonable, we shared the house with a newlywed couple that lived in the basement. I had a lisp in those days and I recall they used to give me a quarter to sing, Go Tell It On The Mountain, the singing of which would prompt them to erupt into gales of friendly, good-natured laughter. Then, they'd pat my head affectionately, mutter that they'd have children of their own one day, and send me back upstairs to hide my quarter in some secret place. Something else I recall (Ha!) we had few toys; no dolls. But we did have some miniature furniture. My sisters and I, we used to get up early and take the dead mice out of the mouse traps before our parents woke. These would become our dolls, dressed in clothing made of toilet tissue and pushed in a miniature pram with the beaming pride of any new mother. Geez, kids will play with anything! We didn't care, but our mother was horrified.
That was a happy year. A good year. I have many happy memories of that place. My mother drew a picture of a monster to scare away the other monsters that plagued me in the night and taped it to the head of my bed. Reassured by the magnificence of her fierce love (no monster would dare cross my mother!) I slept soundly at last. When I turned five that winter, the nice man in the basement promised me a surprise. He bundled me up and led me outside. I watched eagerly as he scooped an opening into the snow to create a small grotto and then placed some sparklers upon its frozen stage. Oh, the snow! It came alive with shimmering, twinkling lights! I was purely delighted. All these years later, I can still remember the blue glow of that crackling electrified flame. For the first time, I understood that winter has a magic all its own.
That Christmas was also magical. I don't know what my father did, perhaps he robbed a bank (something I'd not hold against him) but when my siblings and I walked into our living room on Christmas morning, it was like walking into a toy store. The room was filled with gifts. From the tree in the corner, all the way to the door where a sheet had been hung to contain the wondrous surprise, there was hardly space to walk for the presents. For my sisters and I, there were dolls with tiny beds and highchairs, and a kitchen cupboard and oven set made out of wood with matching just-our-size tables and chairs painted in bright primary colors. There was even an E-Zy Bake Oven with miniature pans and cake mixes! We were paralyzed with delicious pleasure.
Spring came soon enough and in the spring, one of my sister's friends confessed that the buds of pussy willows were an acceptable form of currency at the local candy store. We gathered all the pussy willows we could find and then placed them with greedy grubby fingers on the counter next to our chosen delicacies. Some stranger standing behind us was moved to compassionate comedy by our plight and bought our treats for us; this gesture of goodwill temporarily alleviated our disappointment at not being rich beyond belief.
After spring, came the redolent warmth of summer. I recall playing with a lot of mud that summer. Mud pies and mud stew and mud to stick your feet into as you giggled at the gushing tickle oozing up through your toes beneath the shade of the manitoba maples. But every once in a while, one of my mother's children would go wandering too far and she'd find them later, her face drawn and ashen with fear. Then she'd bemoan the lack of open spaces and implicit danger of cars hurtling through residential streets.
So it was, that in the late summer, we packed up the family once more and moved to The Farm. It was to become my first home.
