Carefree Summers

I was born in the fifties. Helicopter parents were non-existent. Most of our parents were barely out of their teens themselves, so benign neglect skirting the cliff edge of negligence was par for the course, which was usually where you'd find the young fathers on weekends. "Go outside and play!" was our mothers' mantra. "And don't come back until I call you for supper, the street lights go on, or you're bleeding." The moms slathered on baby oil, held reflectors under their chins and discussed the merits of Toni® home permanents while we made our own fun.

Someone always had a soft red, white and blue rubber ball, or an India rubber ball which bounced a lot higher, but left bigger bruises after Dodge Ball. We played Red Rover, Red Light Green Light, Tag, and a game with linked elastics pilfered from the junk drawer. Some called it Chinese Jump Rope, but it was actually a Korean game called Gomujul. We called it Jumpsies.

Every girl had at least one skipping rope and knew several songs. Taking a turn in Double Dutch took mad skills. You had to choose the exact moment to leap without getting snarled up or neaned in the noggin, as my grandmother put it. Then you'd sing:

I'm a Girl Guide, dressed in blue.
Here are the actions I must do.
Stand at attention, stand at ease,
Bend my elbows, bend my knees.
Salute to the captain,
Bow to the Queen,
Turn my back on the dirty submarine.

Ordinary Movings was a game you played alone. You'd bounce a ball against a wall, and call out and perform various actions. There was a tweedle and a twaddle move at the advanced levels. We'd also pilfer our mother's lingerie drawers for a single stocking, load it with a ball, stand against a wall, and whip it back and forth over our bodies while reciting:

Have a cup of tea, sir.
No, sir. Why, sir?
Because I have a cold, sir.
Where'd you get the cold, sir?
At the North Pole, sir.
What were you doing there, sir?
Catching polar bears, sir.
How many did you catch, sir?
One sir, two sir, three sir...

And....more bruises. Hula hoops weighted with sand were used in contests difficult for girls like me without curves but easy for the older girls, who could mesmerize the boys as though they'd tossed them opiates.

Everyone knew "One, two, three O'Leary" and:

On the mountain, stands a lady,
Who she is I do not know.
All she wants is gold and silver,
All she wants is a nice young man.

Except we changed the "nice young man" to "ice cream cones" because ice cream always trumps young men when you're seven. We played with intense focus and competitive spirits, and there was strict enforcement of the rules, no exceptions, even for younger siblings.

There were apple trees to climb in the orchard next to us, forts to build bikes to ride and roller skates to be screwed onto sneakers with metal keys. If we felt really ambitious, we'd organize an impromptu game of baseball on the local school diamond, and grab mitts, balls, bats and players as we ran like a pack of feral dogs to the local park. If fall meant games of conkers, summer was for marbles, and winner-take-all tournaments. I had excellent hand-eye coordination and killer instincts, so I usually came home with my purple velvet Crown Royal bag filled with booty (which had a whole other meaning back then, as did thongs, which were worn on our feet.) It drove my mother crazy when I swaggered home, as she found competition unladylike. All's fair in love and marbles, I'd argue.

If we were lucky enough to scrounge up a nickel each, we'd head to the local general store where I'd freeze with indecision. I could buy one bottle of Coca-Cola, snap it open on the side of the big red cooler, and it would be gone in a couple of gulps. Or I could get one Popsicle, or a Jet (chocolate covered orange sherbet), or a lemon fountain with a licorice straw, which meant hacking up a lung full of powdered sugar. I always opted for penny candies, because a nickel bought a lot. As I shifted from foot to foot, the clerk would fill a small paper bag with black balls, Pixie sticks, Bazookas, wax lips, candy buttons, licorice pipes, BB bats, and sometimes, a bonus bag of salted sunflower seeds. We'd head home, pile on the hammock, crack the sunflower seeds with our teeth and spit shells into the grass, as we chattered like the birds overhead.

Eventually street lights would flicker to life, and our mothers would holler for us to come in to bathe, and slather our sunburns in Noxema cold cream before bed. But we'd always sneak in one more game of hide and seek on the way.

Olly olly oxen free!

 

Cottage Life

Summer is winding down

There is a day, every summer, when you know the warm days are coming to an end. There is a subtle shift in the air, the light is different, the mornings a bit colder and one day, you catch a whiff of smoke from someone's fireplace and you know it's time to say goodbye for another year. We're almost at that point, but I cling to the myth that summer ain't over until the last kayak is put away, the bird feeder is packed up, and the garden is put to bed. My nephew agrees.



I'm still at the cottage, which is why my posts are few and far between. Forgive me if I haven't responded to your emails or comments. Dial-up is so long and frustrating I want to pitch my laptop in the lake, so every so often (when I can't stand it anymore) I wander down the dirt road to my friend Anna's cottage and steal a bit of her high speed time while we share a cup of Chai tea. So forgive me. I will be back. Just not yet.

I've still got a few more days here in paradise before I pack up and fly my Youngest to university. It's bittersweet saying goodbye to one's children - you know they're going to be having one of the greatest adventures of their lives, where they will make life-long friends, perhaps meet the love of their lives, choose a career path, discover books and philosophy and aspects of themselves they never knew existed. But it's wrenching for a mother to watch yet another child leave home. And it's just as hard the third time around as it was the first.

Every little birdie has to leave the nest someday, or so they say. I say fight dirty and stock the nest with homemade brownies, lots of cold cuts and a flat-screen TV.

Summer Daze - Flippin' Goodtimes

Back when I was a kid, my absolute favourite family vacation was at Paignton House, one of the old Muskoka lodges on Lake Rosseau. My sisters and I (my brother wouldn't be on the scene until years later) would clamber into the back of the family station wagon, play I-Spy and sing Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer until my mother reached her breaking point and swatted us into silence. That was the cue to stretch out as best we could, legs entwined, and count telephone poles. “Wire, wire, wire, wire, pole, wire, wire, wire, pole, wire, wire……sky, sky, sky, sky, sky….” Another swat. Silence. “Wire, wire….” and on it went. Inevitably, one of us would vomit just as we arrived. We’d stumble out into the parking lot, newly released from our four-wheeled prison, grateful to gulp the pine-scented air.

The guests were a mix of Canadians and Americans, evenly divided. This resulted in a friendly rivalry probably dating back to the War of 1812. We’d stage Canucks versus Yanks volleyball games. The winning team was awarded bragging rights, and the privilege of pitching the hapless ref into the lake. Of course, by the end of each stay, we were all best friends - the American kids now drank pop, and the Canadian kids, sodas.

Drew, the ref, was also our bus boy. A tall, wiry kid with Buddy Holly glasses, he was habitually late and exhausted and always arrived barefoot. He left his loafers outside the kitchen so he could slide into them and smoothly enter the dining room. One morning, someone put a couple of raw eggs into the toe of each shoe, but Drew took it in stride with a shrug and a smile. He was always rewarded with the biggest tips.

We thought Drew was the coolest boy ever. Every evening, he donned a formal jacket and marched through the grounds swinging a brass bell to announce dinner. The gaggle of children trailing him grew with every step, until he resembled the Pied Piper. The kids clamored as loudly as the bell, begging for a turn, but it wasn’t as easy as it looked. The bell was heavy, you had to get the rhythm right, and the clanging made your eardrums dull with pain.

For many of the other young staffers, it was their first time away from home. They boarded in a few cabins behind the main lodge, and empty liquor bottles and scattered girlie magazines gave away their secrets. We found one of the magazines in the woods, featuring a large-breasted woman with thighs the size of the prime rib they carved up on Sundays. We giggled over it and held it up in front of our flat chests until our mothers caught us and dragged us off by the ears. The offensive magazine was turned in to the front desk manager with stern warnings about the corruption of minors. If anything, it drew us closer to those cabins, where those insouciant boys would lounge against the clapboards and draw lazy pulls on cigarettes between cupped fingers, and stare at us, daring us to say hello.

Second-storey rooms in the main lodge were used mostly by couples, since the cabins were reserved for families. The hallway was long and good for races if you didn’t get caught by the housekeeping staff. Big, old-fashioned locks and iron keys in the doors meant it was easy to spy on the occupants. Once, a group of boys gathered around one door were giggling, and they called me over. I remember a large naked woman with pale skin and violent red hair who had been willingly thrown on the bed by an equally large and naked man. I had no clue why they were wrestling like heathens, but judging from her squeals, she really loved to wrestle. The boys shoved each other and laughed beside me. Suddenly the naked man turned and fixed a beady eye on the keyhole. We fell on the floor in a knot then ran screaming down the hallway, out the side door and down to the dock where we leapt, fully dressed, into the water.

It was a heady time of canoe races, shuffleboard, and tennis during the day, bingo games and starlit dances on sultry summer nights. Dads got silly and played ‘strip golf’ dressed in layers of aprons, frilly skirts and shower caps, and moms sipped martinis, smoked, and gossiped. We kids ate on our own at the early sitting in the dining room, and we pretended we were grownups. That’s how I met Fred Beasley, the love of my twelve-year-old life. While I sipped my Shirley Temple and batted my eyes, he picked up a Cornish game hen with two forks and made it dance. You just don’t meet a guy that suave every day.

Paignton House is long gone - it burned down years ago and was replaced by a giant timeshare resort. But sometimes, if I concentrate, I can almost smell the pines, and hear that brass bell ringing through the woods, announcing one more dinner.

Have a great summer!