An Afternoon In The Old Neighbourhood

The moment I see it on my Facebook feed, I know I’ll go. Gerry and I don’t, as a rule, go to garage sales, but one held in the Christian education center attached to the church where I was baptized (the first time), where I attended Sunday School as a kid, went to Brownies, and crossed the street to go to choir practice at every Thursday evening, is another matter altogether.

And so it is that after our afternoon yoga class, Gerry drives to the Minto United Church on the corner of Oxford and 7th, and parks across the street in front of what was once Tom’s. The footprint of the candy store is still there; I envision the glass display case filled with a variety of penny candy and the cooler on the opposite wall where bottles of cold pop were stored. Tom and his wife lived in the back of the store (dad stopped by now and then to enjoy a glass of saké with Tom, much to Mom’s chagrin), and it’s astounding to me how small the footprint of the place is because besides being a corner store, it was home to Tom and his wife.

After telling Gerry about the store and Tom, we cross the street and head into the garage sale. We don’t find any “must have” items, but we pick up a couple of books: a Mary Lawson for me and a Herman Wouk for Gerry. While Gerry pays the $2 owing for the books, I let my mind wander.

Remembering my Brownie pack (They’re not called Brownies anymore; now they’re Embers. I wonder what Lord and Lady Baden-Powell would think about that.) I was a seconder (or maybe a sixer?) in the Fairies. We’re the fairies, glad and gay, helping others every day. It’s funny now the little song we sang while we skipped around the toadstool, hands joined, to join the rest of the pack each week.

Remembering lining up in the basement with the rest of the kids wearing white gowns and following the adult choir into the sanctuary singing “Holy, Holy, Holy.”

As we make our way toward the door, a sign advertising a bake sale catches my attention. Wait a minute! I stop and look again. The address is just up the street from the church and it’s a familiar one—1065 7th Avenue N.W.—the house Dad built where I spent my childhood! I nudge Gerry and point out the poster. “That’s my house! We have to go.”

We drop the books off at the car and walk up the sidewalk I walked on countless times in my childhood and there, on the lawn in front of a bungalow where I played tag with my friends in the summer and fox and geese in the winter, sit two smiling women at a table piled with baked goods.

The younger, a daughter, rises and goes into the house when we approach. While we peruse her offerings, I tell the woman my dad built the house and that I spent my childhood here. She’s delighted.

“How long have you lived here?” I ask.

It’s been seven years, since she came from Guyana to this home in a new country. Her husband came fifteen years ago and worked to save enough money to being his family.

She tells me about her family: a daughter in university, another in grade twelve, and a third in first grade. Her husband drives truck and is away from home. I ask how she likes living in Canada and this house in particular.

“We like it. People are friendly. It’s a good neighbourhood,” she smiles.

It always was, I think.

We chat for a while and a car pulls into the driveway that Dad flooded for us to skate on in the winter. Two men get out and she tells us that one of them is her brother. Her daughter, the one who was sitting with her when we arrived, comes back outside and the woman tells her, in their own language, our connection to the house. There are smiles all around.

And so, we bring home sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and a banana loaf that were baked in my mom’s kitchen 53 years after she passed it onto someone else. I’m tickled by the thought. The kitchen must look different than it did the last time Mom cooked a meal or baked cookies there, but it was her kitchen first and therefore it remains her kitchen in my mind. I think she’d be pleased knowing good things were still coming out of it.

I think Dad would be pleased that this hard-working and, by all accounts, loving family have made the house he built their home.

I know I am.

And, by the way, the cookies are delicious and I expect the banana bread to be equally so.