Time slips away and months go by. I did not get done what I had planned. It was a summer of children moving, traveling, and a host of other family distractions.
When I was growing up our parents were not so involved in our lives, even when we were very young. Children went out to play, and were called home for meals and homework by mothers on front porches throughout the neighborhood. The group of neighbourhood mothers always seemed to know where we were, and what we were doing, as we found out if we stepped a toe out of line, the news reaching the relevant parent with lightening speed, and certain punishment. Today parents have complex, busy lives, revolving around their children: with daycare, after school programs, piano, dance, gymnastics, hockey, soccer, scheduled play dates. Parents are involved in all aspects of their children's lives. My own mother would often shake her head, as I loaded the kids into the van, and zoomed off to another activity, or to pick up or drop off my children and their friends. She sometimes would say she didn't know how I did it. She really did admire her modern daughters, but there was an implied questioning, and in my ears, criticism, of why we did all these things? Were times really so different? Did the world demand such vigilance? I heard these silent questions, and I was always annoyed at how she did not seem to understand.
It has only been very recently that my mother has shared some parts of her past. In my mind's eye I see four small girls from long ago. In the early 1930s in Montreal, children swam in the river from "Flat Rock" in Lasalle. It was a long walk from Verdun, miles and miles. Much of it was on dirt tracks, after the paved part of Bannantyne Road ended. Most hot summer days, my mother and her friend, both just six, and her older sister and her friend, age ten, would set off to Flat Rock for the day, alone. They walked, their wax paper packet of tomato sandwiches made, packed and carefully carried by the big girls. My grandmother cleaned offices at night. She needed to sleep during the day. My grandfather had been killed in an industrial accident two years before. Limited insurance depleted, and no social assistance in existence, my grandmother worked. My mother's two year old sister played quietly by the bed, or napped in her crib. The other two girls were expected to play outside, the older sister in charge.
So on hot summer days, with the lure of a cooling swim, they walked. My mother does not remember the walk to the swimming spot well. The swimming and splashing with friends, and the taste of the warm, soggy, but delicious tomato sandwiches, are vivid for her, as is the walk home. I visualize the tired little legs going slower and slower, as they trailed through the fields, lunch a distant memory, her big sister's admonishments to hurry ringing in her ears. I feel the joy and relief they must have felt, on the few occasions when the girls were allowed to catch a lift part of the way, with the milkman or bread man. The delivery men would take the opportunity to allow their horses to gallop on the dirt trails, as a break from their steady, slow clomp through their rounds. Sometimes they would allow the girls to hop on the side steps of the delivery wagons, and take them on a splendid ride, closer to home. But this was a rare treat, and I imagine how long it would take such little girls to walk so far summer day after summer day, alone.
So I shake my head, and say I do not know how you did it Mom. I hope you are not annoyed that I don't seem to understand.
