I remember the car ride. CFRA radio was playing the latest hits. Songs by Terry Jacks and the Four Seasons and Stevie Wonder and Elton John and Bachman Turner Overdrive and even a little Anne Murray and René Simard underscore the car rides of my childhood, when I look back, as I'm doing now.
The lyrics weren't always clear to me and I think that says little about auditory function and a lot about a mind's developmental age - like, I remember a song that went "Long distance love affair, lovin' on the phone." But at the time I had no idea the singer wasn't saying "Long distance Loverbear". I wouldn't have known about love affairs, let alone long distance ones. So I figured it was some kind of big, really awesomely friendly bear who called you up using Bell Long Distance (hopefully on the weekend when the rates were two thirds off).
I don't hear that song played on Golden Oldies nights but with all the people meeting over the internet it really could be resurrected as an anthem today. They were just ahead of their time, whoever "they" were. Oh and by the way, one of the nicknames I've given my husband? Loverbear.
You know, really, every sentence here could begin with "I remember", but I think I'll self-edit as I write this and spare you that level of gravitas and self importance. At the end you'll see why.
The car was big and long and flexible-seeming like an archer's bow and the back seat was smooth and firm like the bench seat in an old 50s diner. The seatbelts were long enough to wrap around 3 or more children at a time. The seatbelt clasps were as massive and unwieldy as those you'd find on a Boeing 747. Forget to put on your seatbelt and when the car stops suddenly it'll throttle you worse than any car accident could have. That's why we usually shoved them down between the seat and the seatback.
As my Dad drove, and my mom looked ahead, all the neighbourhood landmarks wizzed by the backseat window. There were a lot fewer landmarks built at that time than there likely are now, and some of them were 2-storey heaps of dirt. It didn't occur to me that these mountainous fixtures weren't permanent, though. That they were harbingers of another subdivision to come. This was Orient Park Drive in what was known as Blackburn Hamlet, an eastern suburb of Ottawa.
My brother was there too. He is in a lot of my memories because he is only three years older than me. In this memory I think I must have been 7. He's the one I'd share a piece of Juicy Fruit gum with. Or he'd be the one sharing a piece with me. We'd sit in that back seat and very carefully, with great deliberation, tear the flat stick across the middle. But the tear would always angle-out in a way that gave one of us the "bigger half!". A short while later when the flavour wore out that dispute would happen all over again. Why didn't we each take a whole piece in the first place?
That day, in the car, we were going somewhere. Not sure where. Maybe church. Maybe hockey. Somewhere mundane, that I'm pretty sure of. So it wasn't a special day or anything like that, but I remember getting a very special idea I had never thought of before. I see my young, tanned, curly haired self as though I'm the camera and not the person. I see the lightbulb turn on in my eyes. I see the smile spreading outward, and the relaxed, knowing, satisfaction of it all. I see the scene that played out on the screen of my child-mind's imagination: a lovely home, palm trees, an abundant spread of candy, a swimming pool, handfuls of shimmering coins (yes, coins). It would be a secret plan - one I wouldn't share. Until now.
Like the overlooked puzzle piece that you turn around a different way and suddenly things start fitting together, I came to a realization. When I grow up, I thought ... when I grow up I'm going to be rich.
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