THAT SCOTTISH COOL In summers, we would go up to Georgian Bay To be with my mom’s sisters and parents And spend all day splashing on the beaches of Parry Sound Then climb the big tower and look at the million lakes Pick blueberries among the big glacial rocks. I was awed by my aunties -- Doe, Win, Joan And my grandparents, Jack & Mae Mom was so happy with them Graceful, educated, witty, strong beings of integrity. These Scots set the real model in my life and loved me A regard that didn’t have to demonstrate itself. It was just there -- and it was fine, sane and good. Jack had met Mae getting off the train and helped with her bags She was getting home from teaching. He loved her with a love that was quiet, strong as rock. He would canoe with his four beautiful daughters. All the boys were after these fine women. He would pleasantly interrogate them As they came to fetch them for dates And let them know he expected nothing but The most towering and honorable behavior of them. Dad came to Parry Sound in 1939 on the North American A big passenger ship, famous throughout the Great Lakes. He asked her to dance at the Belvedere Hotel. It was on a cliff overlooking Georgian Bay. He was a journalist, a writer, like her dad - and from the States. Birt was tall, thin, mysterious. Nan would say “It was that writing thing that got me.” Jack’s dad, Alexander Dick, was publisher of the North Star. He was an engineer, a grad of U. of Glasgow. He would go out in the wilderness and build railroad trestles His sons would do the same when they became men. They would have snowshoe races and get around by canoe. One of Jack’s brothers, Balfour died at 24, of diphtheria. Such a handsome lad Every time his name came up Everyone would say “poor Balfour.” Jack’s wife died a decade before him. Once we were standing at her grave and he said. “That’s where I’m going to be, beside her there.” And he was. They’re all dead. Mae’s dad, Samuel came alone at 13 on a ship Escaping the potato famine in Ireland Raised by uncles in northern Ontario, farming His wife Sarah Hamilton, wore black when widowed. She would take a wee sip of scotch each afternoon with tea. “Good for the heart,” she would say. When mom (Nan) died, I stood there with my sisters And sprinkled her ashes over the graves of her parents. We wept like babies. She was so good -- funny, a joy, gorgeous Not one speck of her interested in sadness or regret. They were always making jokes about the Jack’s name, Dick And Mae’s name, the Irish Hare. They said I was mostly Dick and would slap their thigh. Such a deep part of me wishes I were raised there Immersed in all those hale Scot and Irish genes Playing hockey and caring about soccer and Toronto. Instead I was raised among the English And would walk the lands of flat lands of Michigan, Which I longed to escape and did, And learn their moody, lonely, crazy ways, A people without clan, drifting free A million choices. Be anyone you want, do as you will. It was my fate and I was so guided to do it, To set up a new clan in the new mountains of Ouregon. It’s a tribe of writers who raise their kids differently. We hold them all the time and speak our love. It didn’t make them soft, as mom feared. She told me I must spank them. She was visiting and saw how I only showered them in love. By the time she left, though (we were driving north) She said, Johnny, you were right. You’re giving them love; you say ‘I love you.’ No one ever said that when I was growing up. It was only in movies, romance stuff. Your kids are beautiful and good. They are going off in a new direction, a new kind of world. I patted her shoulder. ‘I love you, mom.” She wiped away a tear. Her Scot cool had always hurt That was her way of apologizing for it. A legacy had been broken at that moment. I was truly, finally free of it. A new age had taken hold. My kids have heart, a new kind of love. They won’t have to learn it, as I did Screaming in therapies, tripping in the mountains. It’s already in them. We did that. We changed the world And it can never go back to what it was. ~
Posted on: Fri, 06 Sep 2013 16:39:28 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015