20 - Sunday, July 22, 1990 - North Shore News

A tale of two f

SOMEONE ONCE said that marrying is like exchanging
“‘the hurly-burly of the chaise-lounge for the deep, deep

peace of the double bed.”’

It’s the reverse of how |! feel
about where I want to spend my
declining years — ! opt for the
hurly-burly as opposed to the
tranquil seclusion of senior citi-
zens’ housing.

So we are probably the oldest
living inhabitants of this complex,
except for the ancient trees. All
the rest are upwardly mobile
pairs, or families with smaf
children.

They're waiting for a house to
be built, or found, although some
of them, from other parts of the
world, seem to be in some sort of
Canadian indenture program.
They come for months or years,
apparently exchanging expertise or
adding some.

The place is especially attractive
to people with young, as it is well
fenced and embraces lots of play
space and recreation amenities.
There’s shopping close by as well
as a public pool-and-park.

Kids are pretty easily
monitored. We enjoy the shinny
skirmishes and the ball practice
and the hop-scotch and learn to
skip nimbly out of the path of oc-
casional illicit skate-boarders. It's
life, urgent, unconfined, a joyful
sampling that goes to bed early
and is someone else’s responsibili-

When we came a couple of
years ago, there was a New
Zealand family on our right, two
small children, Mum on hand,
Daddy committed to two years of
Canadian experience. Very open
and friendly, no harm done to
their accent during their tour of
duty. For the kids, their mother
was still their whole environment,
other stuff didn’t matter.

The townhouse on our left was
taken up by a family from Chile.
Three children here, one in arms,
a sturdy little boy of three, and a
pretty daughter starting school.

Unlike the New Zealanders,
always conscious of our great aze
and fearful of disturbing us, the
Chileans handled their new life
with bold vigor.

They stumped up and down
stairs, they slammed doors, they
threw balls they knew not where,
and seemed to make any bath for
any family member a whooping
splashy get-together.

The day they celebrated Chilean
Independence Day the
neighborhood rang  with~ their
salutes to Chile Forever, and loud
proud songs of the country they
loved.

Dozens of people crowded into
the little townhouse and _ spilled
out on to the patios fragrant with
barbecue.

A birthday party for one of the
kids brought aunts, neighbors,
children from everywhere, Dad
stayed home, and they all sang
counting
endlessly through the house.

Both these neighbors were very
obviously family units, and the
children obviously loved. They
needed one another for comple-
tion of their identity and security
and their frank pleasure in living.

PROVEN RESULTS
with over
8 years experience!

LESLIE LaFLECHE
984-9711 (24 hrs.)

songs and marched-

The children’s eyes were clear
and direct even when they were
howling from fatigue or a scraped
knee. Love was at work in both
houses.

But then the New Zealanders
left for home, and the tenor
changed.

The new residents wore the ac-
cepted shape of a family — two
adults, one male, one female, one
girl-child on the threshold of
teenhood.

The adults took separate vehi-
cles to work in the mornings, the
child accompanying one or the
other. On weekends an_ older
woman, called ‘‘grandma’™’ by the
chiid, came and went, sometimes
taking the girl with her.

The day they moved in, I had
offered welcome in passing, and
the lady has responded that she
hated moving at any time, but
that they had ‘‘decided to con-
solidate households.”*

This was clearly none of my

vintage years
Eleanor Godley

business, but the child troubled
me. She wore a constant look of
anxiety, her face pinched into a
frown, and much of her afternoon
was on her own when she returned
from schoo! alone. She scemed
never to smile. Nothing of the

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amiulies

“joyous sampling’”’ here.

Until one Saturday morning,
when we were buth on the way to
the bus stop.

She hailed me, to check her
timing, she was quite animated.
She explained: she was on her way
to meet her grandmother who was
taking her and her friend to a
treat somewhere. Was I going to
work?

} told her that after years of
working in my husband’s office |
was now a free agent.

“Do you still live with him?”
she wanted to know.

Taken aback, JS answered
“*yes,”? rather crisply, to which she
responded, *‘My grandma doesn’t
live with her husband any more.
She says he treated her ‘like
dirt.’""

To curtail further confidences, |
asked about the promised treat,
but § was full of dismay. How
was this child ever going to know
the welcome bonds of a suppor-
tive family group, the foundation
of a comfortable and successful
personhood? How would she ever
learn to trust an embrace, to un-

derstand sharing, to give and
receive love?

{ could see her progress from
consolidated household to con-
solidated household until she
herself moved into the limbo that
leads to lonely, damaging one-
parent family life. She’d go
through her whole life with a face
like a fist, never trusting, ever
wary.

There’s a virulent virus loose
amongst young North American
women,

It causes them to worship at the
masculine shrines of money and
power, and to deny their talents
for healing and loving and nurtur-
ing and rewarding. Don’t get me
wrong: men are OK, and lovely
companions and bread-winners.

We, the elders, without experi-
ence in women's liberation, had
no idea of the havoc it would
wreak.

tt is only when we see family
disintegration, actually, the family
as mutant, that we realize the
gross error of its underlying phi-
losophy.

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