Growing up is Hard to do.......

Well, here I am, a young Nova, sitting at the end of the table in the old house. Note the old patterned curtains and the aforementioned phone, hanging on the wall. Hard to have any privacy then! Thin panel board on the walls, and I'm looking through a photo album.

This shot was taken after a shift at Larter's. They hired me before graduation, and I had just had my eighteenth birthday. They trained me in May so I could start right away, as soon as I was done of school. And I couldn't wait.

That last few months of school were pretty carefree. I knew I had a job and that took the pressure off of trying to figure out what I was going to do. As I mentioned earlier Momma didn't want to hear me talk of plans or further education or anything like it. I think it remained unspoken, but I knew the immediate future was me being at home. I had a lot of fun too though, and I remember the summer before was fairly epic.

My uncle Art had asked me and cousin Harold if we'd paint the house. Well, he may as well have asked us to change out the motor in the tractor too, we had about as much experience!

But he bought the paint, we started it, and I'm not sure if there was as much painting as there was roaring with the laugh all the time. Mostly over nothing. We were an awful pair, once we got together. We are the same age and we'd already had a childhood full of hijinks and torment. All we did was giggle and laugh, and just because we were in High School, that didn't stop. I remember when we had almost finished the paint job, we noticed streaks on the shingles. Hm, nobody mentioned we were supposed to stir the paint each time, and be thorough about it. Whoops. But Art never complained or maybe he was just too busy to see. And on the plus side, while I was there, I was fed royally, because Kathleen didn't know any other way.

We had paint on the ground. Paint in our hair. Paint on our glasses. We stepped in it and walked it into the house. The dog had a patch of yellow paint. And yes, there was even some on the house. To this day, I don't paint. I didn't like it then and I don't like it now. I'm not sure about Harold, I think he paints, but a different kind!

There were porches on both ends of the house, so we had to climb up there to paint the second floor shingles, and drag the buckets and brushes up too, so you may be sure the other siblings took that opportunity to remove the ladder so we'd be stuck. No problem. All we had to do was climb on the roof and get in a window. Amateurs.........

And when we were finished, just in time for school, Art hauled us into the parlor to pay us the agreed upon sum......$15.00 each, which was a lot of money back then and we were about 16 years old at the time.

Here's Momma having a good day, safe in her bed, with Krystal as a baby, hiding behind her.

After my father died, it was said Momma was never the same. She took to her bed and really never left it. She had people pick things up for her, doctors made house calls, even the priest would come on First Fridays to give her the sacrament. I had been doing all the housework and cooking for years. Early on when I was about 13 or 14, Momma gradually gave me more and more responsibility. I learned how to spend Saturdays doing the heavy chores, such as scrubbing. Big deal you say!

Well, it was a big deal. The floors in the old house were tiled. Those old small squares of hellish tile that the devil himself couldn't destroy. God they were tough. So I had to scrub them with hot soapy water, with the old fashioned string mop, no Swiffers in those days. Then they had to be waxed. and not the liquid squirt on kind either. It was a tin of paste wax that had to be applied by hand, down on your knees in a sweeping motion. Then, the finishing touch....once it was deemed that the wax was dry, the floors had to be polished.........with an upright floor polisher, which was a step up from hand and knees again, with a rag.

But my God, when you were done those floors were a sight to behold! Just gleaming! Perfect for company.

Then any mats or rugs were taken outside to be cleaned before they could go back down on that shining floor, and the porch floor was cleaned too. Since Momma didn't have a runner or anything like that, I would spread flattened out clean cardboard boxes down to catch muddy boots or dirty shoes before they got too far. And I know many of my readers will remember that process.

Baking also had to be done because on Sunday at our house there was a steady parade of visitors to see Momma. I learned (and by "learned" I mean a lot of flops) to bake biscuits and bread. We had a woodstove, no electric range yet, so I had to get the oven just right and that took a lot of experience. In winter keep the wood to her; in summer, keep the oil to her, too hot in summer for burning wood, but we still had to eat. A kettle boiling at all times for washing up as you go, because we had running water, thanks to my father, who had indoor plumbing installed after the war, but we had only cold water, no boiler for hot water yet. The hot water tank attached to the stove came later. So I learned. And as the high school years went on, I got better, and I will forever be grateful for having learned my skills the hard way, on an old wood stove.

Momma was a terrific cook, resourceful too, so I learned from the best. I also found out in recent years that Momma and Dottie had catered many weddings and I was lucky to have spoken to one of the brides. In chatting a few years ago with Therese Peters, she told me that her wedding cake was made by non other than Lizzie and Dottie, and she said it was a marvel. I was so proud to have heard that.

I mastered cookies and cakes and later on I was proudest of my pies, but my god the sea gulls were fat in Lower Rollo Bay, due to how many attempts were basically inedible. I remember one Rhubarb Pie fiasco but that's another story for another day. Suffice it to say that while I was out on a date, Momma had company who were just leaving as I was getting home, so I looked at the table and low and behold......Momma had served a "lunch" and all I could see was a pile of plates with uneaten puddles of pink pie, forks carefully placed on top. What a friggin mess, and I was humiliated. The sugar had gone to the bottom, the crust was tough as leather, and I was mortified. And in my defence, I was probably all of 15. But I am happy to say, these days I have mastered pie making, and I take great pride in them. Still my favorite dessert to make and take.

Sunday was the busy day at our house, as mentioned earlier. Sometimes Momma's nieces Jenny Stubbort and Margaret Doiron would spend an afternoon with her, and they knitted and chatted the day away. What a lovely pair, they were sisters, and they loved talking old times and of course hard times with Momma. And they taught me a lot about sewing and knitting too. And always tea and lunch. That's where Saturday's baking came in.

One of my favorite memories as a kid was Sunday afternoons, watching for the cousins to arrive to go swimming. Most of you who know me know where I live, so it was pretty convenient to grab a towel, shinny down the bank and hit the waves! The grown ups would visit a bit first then amble down to the flats and stand waist deep in the water, and continue chatting while keeping an eye on us. We would head for the group of disconected legs in the water, and pretend they were tree trunks, and manoeuvre in and around them. It was great fun. And it was hard to get us to come home. We were a large group of cousins and it was such a fun day. But, we'd get hungry and our bellies would force us out. Irene would be the last one out of the water, she'd be blue, but too stubborn to come in.

We'd trudge up to the house where Momma and Kathleen and Dottie would prepare some food for us. A feast!! A mountain of peanut butter sandwiches spread thickly on white bread, washed down with gallons of orange Koolaid, sweet and cold, stirred up in those large glass jugs that bitter orange juice used to come in. A plate of cookies if we were lucky, and sometimes a dish of canned peaches. That was cheap food back then, and Momma did what she could. Not one morsel of it was healthy, but does anything give you an appetite like a day at the beach? We played hard, and we survived it. A golden memory, and Art left our house, heading out the Hall gate, as we called The Black Rafter, in an enormous car, with kids hanging out the windows, running behind it, as he pretended to leave some there, everyone roaring and laughing. Those were good times.

The summer of '75 was still magical for me, even with the added responsibilities at home, and I also had 3 teenaged brothers at home. Since it's a long walk to Souris from here, I had an elderly neighbor who would drive me back and forth for my shifts, if Jamie wasn't available, and it soon became obvious that I needed my own car. So I saved and saved and Momma helped too. Jamie taught me how to drive. (What better excuse could two teenagers in love find to go gadding about and parking? Like, seriously......) I took my driver's test, passed, and was proud to have learned another skill. And I was eighteen years old.

Momma and I figured we had enough saved to make the purchase. The big day came and Jamie, Momma, Freddie and I went to Charlottetown. The men decided to look at Hillside Motors first, and there she was. A car in our price range. A beauty that was one small wad of cash away from coming home to Rollo Bay with us. They took her for a drive, deemed her safe, and the deal was struck. We paid exactly $1000.00 for her, a princely sum.

The car was gorgeous. And what was it, I'm sure you're all dying to know.....

Not a sporty little model. Not a VW, that would have been way too cool. A Mustang you say? No way.

No. It was an enormous used 1969 two-tone Pontiac StratoChief. Gold in color, black roof. The biggest car I ever saw, they don't even make them anymore. It was as long as the Coast Guard cutter Cape Spry, and poor petite little Nova could hardly reach the pedals, let alone see out of it. You must remember that even the dimmer switch was on the floor in those days, and she had power brakes which I didn't know anything about.

Freddie had come along to drive my new car home, as I felt uneasy about driving anything from Charlottetown to Souris. He left it parked in his driveway, just across the road basically from ours, so Jamie let me out there, and I drove it the rest of the way home.

Except, when I was ready to pull into our driveway and had to put the brakes on, I jumped on the pedal, which is what I was used to in Jamie's car, standard brakes. Not anymore. As big and heavy and long as the StratoChief was, when I slammed on the brakes I had it nearly on end. Left a nice black strip on the road too. What a learning experience.

What a show piece that car would be today.

Momma was very proud of it too, and loved going for a drive. Once in a while, she'd go shopping, but sadly, not a lot, she just didn't have the strength for it most days.

Although I was working now, earning about $85.00 a week, a weekend off was still nice. Jamie and I were becoming serious. We still enjoyed a drive, or an afternoon at the beach, complete with some food, either from Donovan's if we were on the Northside, or Mama Jacques, if we were on the Southside. And like a lot of people, even today, he was a non-swimmer, but I loved to swim, I still do. Later on, I taught him to swim and snorkel, which he enjoyed when our kids were small and on the shore a lot. I remember snorkelling so much one afternoon, that when I got up, vertigo hit me and I threw my guts up. But I digress..

God he was good looking, and he still is. And look behind him, there is my ever-present sewing machine. It was a cabinet model Singer that Momma bought for me as soon as I started Home Ec projects and she could see how much I loved it. I still have that sewing machine and cabinet. And that boy.

But one sunny Sunday afternoon, a lot changed.

After lunch Momma choked on a gumball, of all things. She had a notorious sweet tooth and always had a dish of something around. It was terrifying to watch, helplessly, but somehow she dislodged it. It seemed like she choked a long time. She never lost consciousness, but we all got quite a fright. She seemed fine. The boys went back to whatever they were doing, and Jamie and I went for a drive, and I ended up at the drug store, where I worked the last couple of hours before closing. And I'll never forget the phone call I got, while at the front cash.

It was my aunt Mildred, who lived up the next field and she was a Registered Nurse. Momma was her mother. She let me know that Momma began acting strange and her speech was slurred. They got her to a doctor, and somehow she wound up in Kings County Hospital suffering from a stroke. They put it all together, the choking spell must have been severe enough to burst a blood vessel, and it was causing the damage. There was no way to know if the damage was to be permanent and thankfully it wasn't, Momma made a full recovery.

But I don't think I did. The guilt and shame I felt was indescribable. I felt I had let her down, when of course there was nothing I could have done to change things. I bawled my head off for days. When I went to the hospital to see her, all hooked up to machines, and heavily sedated, I couldn't be consoled. She was 69 years old.

But the summer went on, Momma came home, my brothers all kept on attending school, while I worked full time at Larters, came home at lunch most days to get Momma's lunch, grab a few groceries, pay a bill or whatever errands needed doing. She was demanding and my carefree days were over. But the guilt stayed with me, and I saved everybody else the trouble and just did everything myself.

As I posted in last weeks' Blog, Jamie and I got engaged the December after I graduated, and when we drove home after Midnight Mass to show her the ring and hopefully share in our happiness, she just turned her head and said bitterly, "I suppose you'll be like the rest and leave."

I was crushed.

And as my friend Donna would say, I was hooped.

I knew then that if I wanted to get married, Jamie would have to move in to that tiny house, already bursting. He came from a family of eleven siblings, and he didn't need any more.

So we built on a large room for ourselves, got married, and my fate was sealed.

Momma called the shots.

No selfies in 1975, I would imagine Darrell took this engagement picture for us, and I remember clearly making the blouse I have on, and the kerchief as well. I took the developed picture to Helen Lyons, who ran articles for The Guardian in those days and had it posted, as all brides did. It was so exciting to wait for the paper and see the announcement in print. I remember sending a copy to my mother, who was unresponsive, as she had ignored my invitation to my High School graduation too, so I had no one there to watch me receive my diploma. Pretty shitty.