Big flawed heart

The image I carry around about my childhood is divided into two parts: the early years (0-7) and the fat ones. I don’t remember being a toddler, but as far as I can tell from pictures I was a happy one. Blonde hair, blue/green eyes, with loads of baby pudge in the cheeks. I’m told I received a great deal of attention for being the baby of the family. My sister and others called me, “the favourite.” The knowing of this fact gave me a certain amount of pride while simultaneously beginning my obsession with pleasing everyone as best I could.

I was a lot like my father who was also a favourite among many. We could be together for hours, rarely speaking, taking in the moment and never felt the need to fill any silences. There was a comfort and ease in our relationship, one like I have never had with anyone since.

We lived just outside the town limits of Wallaceburg, Ontario, Canada. A blue-collar community representing every cliché you’ve ever heard about a small town. Everyone knew everyone and they all knew your business. Because of this it was super important to mind your manners and not do anything to embarrass your mother. We lived about six kilometers outside town limits. Our house was one of many running either side of Dufferin Avenue, bungalows with long driveways and big backyards edged by corn fields.

“Be careful crossing Dufferin,” was a repeated warning from my grandmother and considering Dufferin was a main road running through the entirety of the town, she really wanted us to be on our toe’s, crossing it was inevitable.

If you continued past our house, over a small creek and up to the golf course, you came to a fork in the road, slight left and over the bridge landed you on Walpole Island First Nations Indigenous Community located on the mouth of the Saint Clair River. If you went right, you carry on to some even smaller communities along the river.  In either direction there were ferry ports to travel over to the United States. We made these trips usually a couple of times a year to go to concerts or do some shopping. Before every school year, we dressed in old clothes and worn-out sneakers and went across for back-to-school clothes and supplies. On a near empty tank of gas we would squeeze our car onto the ferry, arriving in either Algonac or Marine City, Michigan depending on which ferry we took and immediately filled up with cheap gasoline, beer and smokes. There was always at least one comment about how Canadian beer was stronger but, U.S. beer was cheaper. So was practically anything else. At the closest mall we divided up small purchases between people and stores so all receipts were low in value. Once we had everything, we found the washroom and stripped our old clothes off and layered as many of our new ones on as we could stand. Everything including our old sneakers went in the trash. There was usually a stop at Gar’s restaurant for eats. They served popcorn to every table, had huge pitchers of beer and we all sat at picnic tables inside which they encouraged you to carve your name into. Then we rode home with brand new “dud’s” my dad called them.

On the ferry back, my parents went through the receipts and decided on what ones we were going to claim. We got the same speech before pulling up to customs.

“Don’t talk unless they speak to you. If they ask if you are a Canadian citizen say yes, but nothing else.”

My parents were good people, but I felt like we were doing something wrong, which I guess technically we were, but on the grand scale of wrong – this wasn’t even on the radar. I kept my head down, lips sealed, hiding the tip of my bright white sneakers under the seat in front of me.

When it was our turn to approach border security, my gaze fixed on the back of my dad’s head as he told them we bought twenty-five dollars worth of merchandise and if they asked, he would hand them a few receipts totaling close to or a little bit over what we were entitled to. I held my breath. Sometimes they would look in the back and see my sister and I in our brand new “duds,” munching on snack food only sold in the U.S. Depending on the officer they would either ask a bunch of questions to flex their ego or nod and wave us along, back through to Dufferin Ave.

I felt safe on our little slice of land on the out skirts of town. The neighbourhood holds a tremendous number of memories; running wild most days with friends from yard to yard, house to house, relationships and memories to last a lifetime. Friendships blossomed, some were tragically lost. We were family. There was comradery, parents parented other children, mothers fed those who weren’t their own, even if you were a troublemaker, you were safe with us.

One night my mom was driving me and my aunt home from town. There were no streetlights, and it was downpouring hard, making it hard to see. With the hazards on we moved slowly out of town into the blackness. We came up on a man walking on the side gravel, hood up, head down, shoulders slouched. My Mom slowed the car and pulled over, rolling down the passenger window and asked this wet, scary dude if he wanted a ride.

I was always told not to talk to strangers, but here we were pulling off in the middle of a storm, pitch black, asking a faceless stranger if he wanted in our vehicle, a scene right out of a 80’s horror movie. He accepted and got in the back seat with me. I was sure we were going to die. He casually shook off the rain and lowered his hood. Instant relief. It was Keith, a teenager who lived across the rode from us. To be clear, my mom had no idea it was Keith, it could’ve been a killer, but if it was I most likely would be dead. She saw him struggling and made a decision, one I would sadly not make today, but it gives you a sense of how we operated. It was more important to take a chance and care for someone on the side of the road, drenched from rain, in dark creepy clothing then to leave them to fend for themselves.

Two days later Keith held up the gas station not even a kilometer away from where we had picked him up. He wore a ski mask and left the scene on his dirt bike. The same dirt bike he rode up and down Dufferin daily. Keith didn’t make great decisions as a teen. Were we surprised? Nope. Was this his last tussle with the law? Not a chance. Did I ever feel unsafe with a masked robber living across from me? Not for a second. It was just Keith. He was rough around the edges, but in a pinch I knew I could count on him. There was zero evidence to confirm this, it was just something I knew.

His family had a Saint Bernard named Sandy. When I was in the early elementary years, we caught the bus across the road in front of their house. In the winter, I would be out in full snow suit, boots, hat, wiping my nose on my mitts, waiting with the others. Most often Sandy was beside me, trying to chew the ball on top of my hat. One time she slipped and bit my head. I pushed her away and held my breath until the pain eased. I didn’t say anything. If I had there was a chance, she wouldn’t be able allowed to be with us anymore.

In high school I went to a bonfire in one of the backyards. I drank a mickey of peach schnapps and passed out in the grass with my head on Sandy’s side. That was the last time I drank peach schnapps. It’s also the last time I remember seeing Sandy.

We lost plenty of dogs to speeding cars, parked a bunch of snowmobiles and dirt bikes in the ditches over the years, but the insane number of drunk drivers who randomly ended up in our front yard was truly insane. Every so often, a car would just leave the road in the middle of the night and come to rest in front of our house. There was no reason why it was always our yard, but it was a miracle no one was ever hurt or connected with the twenty-foot spruce tree in the center of it.

Normally I would sleep right through and hear about it in the morning, but one night I woke up to an engine revving, spinning tires and the sound of my dad swearing a blue streak on the way down the hall.

My Dad was a quiet man, until he ran out of patience.

“Son of a bitch. Mother fucker!” Also, some interesting facts about him, he was quiet, had a great sense of humour, was well liked about town…big potty mouth.

My older sister and I ran out of our rooms in our matching nightgowns looking like we had just wrapped a Little House on the Prairie episode. My Mom was already out on the front step yelling words at my dad he was paying no attention to. My sister and I watched from the front window as he stomped his way across the lawn in jeans shorts (it was a thing then), work boots and no shirt.

It was raining and mud flew from the back tires. I don’t remember what kind of car or who it was, all I remember is my dad waving his arms wildly and cursing. I felt a squeezing sensation in my stomach and it was hard to get my breath. I know the feeling now as anxiety, before then I only knew I felt it when there was conflict, especially if my dad was involved.

My first memory of anything was a result of anxiety. I was seven. My Dad, then a young, strong able-bodied man had a heart attack resulting in a triple bypass. I remember nothing about this time except this moment. Back home after surgery, still with hospital bands on his wrist he was on the living room couch in a blue bath robe and he let me touch his stitches. He was likely trying to make me feel at ease when he joked about having a zipper and asked if I wanted to see it. I guess I must have said yes because he opened his robe to expose the stitches starting at his throat and ran to his navel and yet another set from his inner thigh to the ankle. A triple bypass 40 some years ago resulted in being split open like a hunted deer. The scars from surgery faded, but remained visible as a constant reminder to us all of what could happen at any moment.

So, I worried. Worried and ate.

He was a ticking time bomb. So that night, watching him approach this car in the pouring rain and pounding his fist onto the driver’s side window felt like my world could end at any moment.

Eventually the revving stopped, the wheels were silent and the driver’s side door opened. A large man rolled out headfirst, landing on his knees about a foot away from my dad. It took a few tries but eventually he righted himself and stood, towering over my father. I felt the slight pull of my sisters’ fingers touching the back of my night gown.

The man took in my dad for a second, toppled closer to the car and leaned against it for leverage. He seemed to understand he was the problem. He dug deep into the front pockets of his jeans and came out with some debris and a few coins. He reached out and took my dad’s hand and tried to place the contents in his palm. Change fell to the ground, he looked at it for a second as if contemplating whether to pick it up, but instead dug into his coat pocket and came out with more. He continued to dig for change and my dad who had stopped yelling, stood there watching this man fumble for anything to make it right.

The whole thing came to an anticlimactic end. Someone called the police, the man ended up in the back of a cruiser and a tow truck came right behind. No charges were laid, there was no talk of suing. My Dad chatted with the police and was confident he could fix the damaged lawn himself. With a wave of his hand, he shoed the cruiser carrying the pesky drunk out of our driveway, satisfied to let the guy suffer his own consequences in the jail cell he was spending the night in.

He came back in the house, took off his muddy boots, ordered us to bed and headed back to his room where he was asleep within minutes. I know because I checked to make sure he was breathing.

The irony to the whole situation is my dad was a mechanic. Chances were, he would be seeing that man and his car again, not because he was the only mechanic in town, but because he was best known for being an honest one.

He was a good man with a compassionate, flawed heart. He would have a few more heart attacks through the years and I would have more to worry about. He died when he was 58 years old, 23 years after the triple by-pass that was only supposed to give him 10.

I’m extremely grateful for the extra time, but it sure didn’t make losing him any easier. He was a stand-up guy. The respect the town had for him was never as apparent then the day of his funeral. Hundreds of people came, receiving them took hours. I can still feel the church bell ringing loudly, vibrating in my chest. As we followed the hearse through town, people stopped, took their hats off and laid them over their hearts because that’s what small town people do. The police station pulled the flag to half mast and came out of the station to saluted him from the steps as we rounded the corner to his final resting place.

The town had lost a good one.

I would never be the same.