Personal NarrativeBy E.D. Cauchi
At the Grossman Willows there are no more willows and no more Grossmans. Not even the stump from the great big tree. A tornado killed the tree, the summer of ‘92. The tornado had ripped through Innisfil with force that was remarkable only in a township unaccustomed to disturbances in atmospheric pressure. The property was at the south end of Lake Simcoe, off the longest street in the world, past the outlet malls, past the omnimax theater shaped like a UFO, past Wonderland - Canada's largest amusement park. |
After forty minutes in our rusting black Oldsmobile —"making good time," dad would say— Yonge Street turned into Highway 11. Left at the ESSO station, right at the Fifth Line and straight until the beach. Our property was immediately to the right. Cedar hedges lined each side. Next to each hedge, the creek was filled with seaweed and zebra mussels and was trimmed with bulrushes.
Within the lot, four cottages sat evenly spaced apart. They had plastic white siding and dark brown shingles that flapped on the roof when the wind blew past. Dad and Uncle George had built our slanty wooden steps. At the top, the front door was made of flimsy metal and had a window that slid up and down. You entered at the kitchen and could walk through to the drafty living room and beyond that to the porch with the broken floorboard. It smelled like dried grass and damp towels. That was all there was, except for the closet-sized toilet room between the fridge and the orange Rubbermaid cooler, and the bedrooms lining the left side of the building. All four cottages had the same layout. We could walk through every one in complete darkness.
Janet and George had the room at the front. Mom and dad got the lakeside view at the back, because mom was the oldest and that's how these things worked. The walls of my parents' room were wood-panelled and paperthin. We could and did frequently hear a whisper from the next room. The room was quaint, by which I mean cramped. Much of it was taken up by a bed granny had bought at the local flea market. An old wooden dressing table jutted into the doorway. Dad had saved it from a purging bonfire, years before.
Behind the door was a wooden chair, coated in flaky ivory paint. On top was our black rotary phone. 705-456-5370. I still know the number by heart unless I think about it too much. We cancelled the line in 2004, when we all got cell phones.
Next to the chair was grampa's stereo. Not a boombox or a ghettoblaster. There were no slots for CDs or cassette tapes. Only dusty black mesh stretched over large rectangular speakers. Two dials were on its front and, above them, a meter. A tiny red stick within it clicked either left or right, depending on which way you turned the knobs. When it clicked on, the meter lit fluorescent blue, like a raspberry freezie.
In the city, dad worked in computers - that's what he told other grown ups. But at the cottage there were no computers. No television. No microwave. No bathtub. To get to the shower, we had to scurry outside in our towels alone. Skip along the stone path at the front of the property and hope the neighbors, the locals, didn't see. We assumed they would look. We were city folk. We raced to the square shack, next to where our lot met the public beach. We fumbled, opening the rusting padlock. We giggled as we scurried inside and slammed the door shut behind us. We, being me, my older sister and cousin. That was, when we didn't shower in the lake. When we were mermaids. Our shampoo would bubble like sea scum. What a treat.
"When are we going to build a proper shower?" Auntie Janet always asked. By this she meant, "who's going to pay to build me a shower indoors?" But no one ever did. It was not what the cottage was for.
The cottage was not a place for dishwashers either. We had to do it by hand. While I wiped suds off mismatched garage-sale plates, my older cousin danced. Using a soupspoon as a microphone, she introduced me to the saccharine tunes of Aquamarine and Ace of Base.
For two months every year, eight of us lived in four rooms at 1193 Maple Street. Our family owned 1191 through '97. Dora Grossman, my great grandmother, had bought the flood lot in the fifties when my mom was still a kid. As far as I can tell, bubbi made the purchase solely because it was a four-cottage lot. One for each of her children: Bertha, Anne, Murray and Vivian. It was a lovely idea at the time and it worked for many years. But the generations multiplied. One cottage for one child turned into one cottage for two and then a family of four. With the next generation, two families made eight. We got familiar.
Uncle Sid's sailboat and cousin Shari's inner tube were replaced by SeaDoos and slalom skis and inflatable banana rides.
We grew up and the cottages grew old.
Alvin came less often. He was the groundskeeper who cut the grass. The soles of his feet were the thickest I've ever seen. The man never wore shoes. Not even to his daughter's wedding, so word has it. He lived in the tall white house next to the railroad crossing, up the way, where Bell Ewart turns into Bell Aire. Neither are large enough to be called towns or hamlets or appear on a map. And yet big bright blue signs marked their territory. Each week, Alvin came with his wife Barbara to cut our grass. Until they didn't anymore. And the grass grew so tall that a lion could hide within it.
All that was left of the willow trees had been burned in the bonfire pit or sawed into big cubes, sanded and nailed into place as our dock. But one season soon after, we drove up from the city and our lakefront was empty. Our so-called permanent dock had either been stolen or drifted away. The logs around the fire pit we used as benches and to wipe warm marshmallow goo off our hands - they too were gone. The only shadow of their existence were long bald patches in the grass where they'd lain for years. How many years, I never knew. As far as I'm concerned they'd been there forever. And so had we. Until we weren't anymore.
The sale went through last Friday. Something about cutting our losses and back-taxes owed to the township, mom told me. Her speech was slower than usual. She sounded sad. Or maybe that was me. I used to visit every day in July and August. Then my visits reduced to once a summer. In truth, I stopped going. I didn't want to anymore. And I had no intention of returning this year, either. But still, I felt a pang, like I'd been robbed. The new owners wouldn't know how to break in through the back porch by wiggling the door handle just so. Or that the duct tape on the ceiling covered holes from which the baby swing once swung David then Sarah then Lauren then me, with years in between.
Mom said they'd likely knock down the cottages and build one big structure in their place. The property needed a lot of work, she reminded me. But all I could think was that there wouldn't be four cottages anymore for the four Grossman children. And their children. And their children's children: me.
Janet and George had the room at the front. Mom and dad got the lakeside view at the back, because mom was the oldest and that's how these things worked. The walls of my parents' room were wood-panelled and paperthin. We could and did frequently hear a whisper from the next room. The room was quaint, by which I mean cramped. Much of it was taken up by a bed granny had bought at the local flea market. An old wooden dressing table jutted into the doorway. Dad had saved it from a purging bonfire, years before.
Behind the door was a wooden chair, coated in flaky ivory paint. On top was our black rotary phone. 705-456-5370. I still know the number by heart unless I think about it too much. We cancelled the line in 2004, when we all got cell phones.
Next to the chair was grampa's stereo. Not a boombox or a ghettoblaster. There were no slots for CDs or cassette tapes. Only dusty black mesh stretched over large rectangular speakers. Two dials were on its front and, above them, a meter. A tiny red stick within it clicked either left or right, depending on which way you turned the knobs. When it clicked on, the meter lit fluorescent blue, like a raspberry freezie.
In the city, dad worked in computers - that's what he told other grown ups. But at the cottage there were no computers. No television. No microwave. No bathtub. To get to the shower, we had to scurry outside in our towels alone. Skip along the stone path at the front of the property and hope the neighbors, the locals, didn't see. We assumed they would look. We were city folk. We raced to the square shack, next to where our lot met the public beach. We fumbled, opening the rusting padlock. We giggled as we scurried inside and slammed the door shut behind us. We, being me, my older sister and cousin. That was, when we didn't shower in the lake. When we were mermaids. Our shampoo would bubble like sea scum. What a treat.
"When are we going to build a proper shower?" Auntie Janet always asked. By this she meant, "who's going to pay to build me a shower indoors?" But no one ever did. It was not what the cottage was for.
The cottage was not a place for dishwashers either. We had to do it by hand. While I wiped suds off mismatched garage-sale plates, my older cousin danced. Using a soupspoon as a microphone, she introduced me to the saccharine tunes of Aquamarine and Ace of Base.
For two months every year, eight of us lived in four rooms at 1193 Maple Street. Our family owned 1191 through '97. Dora Grossman, my great grandmother, had bought the flood lot in the fifties when my mom was still a kid. As far as I can tell, bubbi made the purchase solely because it was a four-cottage lot. One for each of her children: Bertha, Anne, Murray and Vivian. It was a lovely idea at the time and it worked for many years. But the generations multiplied. One cottage for one child turned into one cottage for two and then a family of four. With the next generation, two families made eight. We got familiar.
Uncle Sid's sailboat and cousin Shari's inner tube were replaced by SeaDoos and slalom skis and inflatable banana rides.
We grew up and the cottages grew old.
Alvin came less often. He was the groundskeeper who cut the grass. The soles of his feet were the thickest I've ever seen. The man never wore shoes. Not even to his daughter's wedding, so word has it. He lived in the tall white house next to the railroad crossing, up the way, where Bell Ewart turns into Bell Aire. Neither are large enough to be called towns or hamlets or appear on a map. And yet big bright blue signs marked their territory. Each week, Alvin came with his wife Barbara to cut our grass. Until they didn't anymore. And the grass grew so tall that a lion could hide within it.
All that was left of the willow trees had been burned in the bonfire pit or sawed into big cubes, sanded and nailed into place as our dock. But one season soon after, we drove up from the city and our lakefront was empty. Our so-called permanent dock had either been stolen or drifted away. The logs around the fire pit we used as benches and to wipe warm marshmallow goo off our hands - they too were gone. The only shadow of their existence were long bald patches in the grass where they'd lain for years. How many years, I never knew. As far as I'm concerned they'd been there forever. And so had we. Until we weren't anymore.
The sale went through last Friday. Something about cutting our losses and back-taxes owed to the township, mom told me. Her speech was slower than usual. She sounded sad. Or maybe that was me. I used to visit every day in July and August. Then my visits reduced to once a summer. In truth, I stopped going. I didn't want to anymore. And I had no intention of returning this year, either. But still, I felt a pang, like I'd been robbed. The new owners wouldn't know how to break in through the back porch by wiggling the door handle just so. Or that the duct tape on the ceiling covered holes from which the baby swing once swung David then Sarah then Lauren then me, with years in between.
Mom said they'd likely knock down the cottages and build one big structure in their place. The property needed a lot of work, she reminded me. But all I could think was that there wouldn't be four cottages anymore for the four Grossman children. And their children. And their children's children: me.