A Pretty Perfect Autumn Day
The almost six year old at Carl Laidlaw Orchards
Because there are never enough stories come bedtime, after we’d finished reading the opening chapters of Pippi Longstocking (long may she rule!), I promised my kids just one more story. Not from a book but a real story, as they liked, of something that had really happened.
This was a kind of magical story. They wanted to know what it was about. I said it was a story about holes.
And so, under the yellow plastic moon that is the nightlight in my children’s bedroom, I began recounting to my kids the story of what had happened to us that very day, just hours before, a beautiful autumn Sunday, a precious moment that happened in that nebulous bit of extra time after we’d finished a very bagel and lox Jewish brunch (waffles and french fries, for the under nine set) and still had a few minutes to spend with our cousins who had come from New York City for a weekend visit and before they were off to their next social engagement and us to ours, apple picking with my sister’s family.
Walking along one of those soulless strip mall plazas suburban Toronto abounds in and that I usually avoid like the plague, my cousin S and I had a moment to talk alone. This was my mother’s first cousin. The two of them very similar in age. My wife, S’s husband, H, and my kids all walking slowly behind. I told S that I hadn’t understood envy until seeing my dad so brutally deteriorate as patients of Parkinson’s do (it’s been 12 plus years since his diagnosis). I told S that to see men like her husband, H, who at 75 (my dad’s age), still working a third of the time, travelling to Europe and Asia to advise on the executive boards he still sits on, high up as he has always been in the business world, but also now with the leisure and time to golf, to travel with his wife. In other words, enjoying a retirement as one could only fantasize it to be. I admitted to S, not just my mom’s first cousin, but a dear, dear friend, with a bountiful heart like my Granny M (who my daughter is named after) that it’s hard that my kids basically don’t have grandparents at all.
S listened and empathized as only women of her generation can, as only my mother’s first cousin could. We were walking, strolling, slow and leisure, middle of the day, when the brisk October air and the clear streaming sunshine made even the Bathurst and Lawrence strip mall … well, less ugly. We were slowly walking to a bank, for S to withdraw some colourful Canadian money. Of course the minute my almost six-year-old saw the thrift store selling cheap Halloween trinkets and costumes we had to go in. Dad making son promise it was only to look. The kids tried on masks. S and H totally easy to come in and browse as only veteran grandparents can be. Happy to let the kids be kids. Laughing with us as my kids tried on ever sillier masks.
Silly Mask figure 1.0
We then went to the TD bank for S. Walking slowly back to our cars my mom’s first cousin remembered that my son’s birthday is three days off. Remembered. Pretty positive that’s because my very gregarious little guy told her. S said, could I give them something, some money? I hesitated. Or a little gift at that thrift shop? And so she did. My kids choosing the most plastic and ridiculous trinkets that would hardly last the long weekend. But that $9 spent on a plastic battle axe and the upmteenth squooshy toy my daughter so does not need… that was S being an angel. S and H both. These cousins who had come in and specially made a point of spending time with each and every one of mine and my sister’s families. Spending time of course with my dad as well. Taking all of us out. Treating us. Stepping in, if for a moment, to fill a hole that will forever need filling.
Well they filled it and then some. It’s amazing what these gesture have come to mean.
A pretty perfect autumn day.