Funny how memories form, dissipate, come back in bits and pieces.
And others are burned in your brain forever.
If some were to ask me "what were your happiest moments as a child?" the answer would be simple and straightforward: the time we lived in a tiny village in New Brunswick. We moved there when I was five years old, and left when I was nine and a half.
The last year wasn't so great as I was then old enough to realize something was wrong between my parents, who then split up the summer of '79.
Then came the Nightmare Years, but let's not get into that.
Happy moments... It's all a big blur. I remember kindergarden and not speaking a word of English those first few months. The cement-floored room in the basement of the tiny school. The metal set of monkey bars tucked in the corner, Mrs Grace the teacher, smacking said teacher on the forehead with a wooden block the time she wanted to smell my breath to prove I had stolen that bag of Munchies chips, recess in the bare back yard, the times I got to ring the big bell to call everyone inside.
Yes, I did get written up for that.
I wonder if my mom kept that note?
Then first grade, which was on the first floor of that old building. Oh, how I absolutely loved school... the heady scent of fresh blank notebooks and newly sharpened pencils, learning to read and write and then devouring books from the tiny library (Hardy Boys were my favorite!), the teachers letting me make class copies with the mimeograph machine - crank, crank, crank, out came the blue wet pages of paper - and then the school lunches in the cafeteria, I loved to take four or five slices of that super soft white bread, fold each in half and only eat out the middle bit - LOL!
I think my mom knew I did that, since she made sure to feed us lots of fresh veggies from her big garden. Smart lady, she is.
One year every class had to perform a play, our class chose Hansel and Gretel. Not only did I have horrible stage fright (still do), the sadistic teacher chose me to play the freaking witch of all things!
I wanted to be the pretty Gretel, I would have been happy playing a dancing tree!
But no, I was the ugly one with a green face, a huge nose full of warts and a pointy black hat. I remember my dad making me rehearse my lines in the livingroom, I absolutely did NOT want any part of it. I stomped, I cried, I sulked.
There are photos of me on stage somewhere, miserable as bat crap.
But still, it was the best time of my life.
There were a handful of people in that village. We had a tiny post office next to a 7-11, and I think there was a gas station. There was a tiny anglican church where I went to Sunday School, I had my friends and I was happy. Brilliantly so.
I had to walk to school (a whole 7 minutes!), I had a curfew but that was it: the rest of the time I was free to go where I wanted and to do whatever it is that kids did in the '70's. My dad worked in the CP Rail shop so we lived in one of their houses a few feet from the train yards. I grew up with the smell of diesel engines, black oil, tar and toil. To this day the sight of a big red engine brings tears to my eyes - relics of a past long gone.
I used to cross all those train tracks - being careful to look both ways - to go visit my dad at the shop.
I remember his small office, the gray metal desk and chairs, the ice machine in the corner that had little rectangles of ice with holes in the middle, the giant pit in the middle of the cement floor where workers climbed down to work on the bellies of the giant engines.
He brought my brother and I fishing at the river that ran behind the yards, where I was always lucky enough to catch disgusting black writhing river eels - I never touched them, just screamed as he pretended to drop them on me after unhooking them.
Yep, mean dad.
There were four houses along the yards, which were down the hill from the village. We lived in the third one, meaning not the very worst, delapidated house but just about.
It was a tiny, rotting, crooked place but to me it was a castle. My dad built us a swing set from tree trunks and painted the collapsing wooden garage, he built flower boxes and mom was brilliant at decorating with no money. She maintained a lovely garden, she sewed our clothing, made jams and preserves and bread while my dad did his best to stock the mudroom's closet with as many empty brown beer bottles as he could.
When you're a kid, you don't concern yourself with these things.
You concern yourself with not getting into trouble, not getting your hair full of burrs, not letting adults find your tree house or sand pit that housed your Matchbox car collection. You did your homework, you played with friends, you ate your dinner and spent as much time as possible playing outside or trying to negotiate one more extra hour of Saturday morning cartoons or the Muppet Show on a lucky night.
I could write an entire book on those years, but now's not the time nor the place.
Probably never will be - sometimes the best place for so much bittersweet is locked away in memories. Snug as a bug in a rug.
A few years ago, I re-visited that place.
My brothers told me they had gone and there was nothing left, the houses had been flattened, the train yards ripped up, the shop demolished, the land cleaned up. I had to see for myself.
They were right.
There was nothing left, only the hilly bank on one side and the river on the other, much smaller than I remember. In the middle were tall grasses and some trees. I could barely make out the road where I learned to ride my bicycle. I walked and I walked through the fields, scouring the place for landmarks, anything that would prove I was there once.
I found bits of tracks where the shop used to be, a big roundabout thing that turned those big red engines 180 degrees.
I found the little nook and dock by the river where we used to fish.
I found the tree that used to be on our front lawn, felt its familiar arms that used to hold my sneakers and I. No sign there was ever a house, a crumbling garage painted brown with a white Fleur de Lys on its sagging door.
I don't know that I'll ever recover from that.
