Happy Canada Day to my fellow
Canadians! And to my American friends, Happy Fourth of July for this coming
Saturday!
Today is a statutory holiday
throughout this land of Canada—and this year, it’s smack dab in the middle of
the week—so no long weekends for us this time. Though generally considered
fairly conservative in our displays of patriotic devotion, we Canadians tend to
celebrate our national holiday in much the same way as our neighbors to the
south will be celebrating theirs in just a few days: with parades, picnics and
pyrotechnics.
On Canada Day, my thoughts
always go back to the past, and my brother. When I was a kid we called July 1st
Dominion Day, because this was, then, the Dominion of Canada. And when I
was very young—I’m thinking four or five—I thought all the hoopla was because of
my big brother.
You see, the day that is our
nation’s birthday is also his—and he’d convinced me that all the parades were in
his honor. Yes, I was very naïve (and some today would question my use of the
past tense in this regard).
I don’t know if I’ve ever told
you much about my brother. He is ten years and twenty days my senior. While my
sister and I were never really that close, I grew up worshipping my
brother.
Looking back, I really don’t
know why that was so. He was a prankster, and some of the pranks he pulled on me
were downright mean, by today’s standard. Hell, by today’s standards he’d likely
have been charged with child abuse.
There was the time when he
grumbled about nothing to eat in the house—and then spying me looking up at him,
got this maniacal look on his face and declared that he would have a sister
sandwich!
I laughed, of course. I was
only five. I laughed when he took me by the arm and brought me over to the
kitchen counter. I laughed when he put margarine on my wrist. I laughed when he
followed that up with mustard, and salt, and pepper. I think I stopped laughing
when he took a slice of bread and wrapped it around my wrist.
I know I screamed bloody murder
as he raised my bread-wrapped wrist to his wide open mouth.
Then there was the time, as I
accompanied him into the city to pick up our mother from work (I would have been
about eight), that he told me he’d had enough of me and had come up with the
perfect solution: he was going to take me to the blood bank and have me
drained.
I laughed, because he was such
a kidder. And I kept on laughing, right up until he didn’t follow the usual
route to the hospital, where our mom worked as a registered nurse. I know I was
a little curious when he pulled into a parking lot of a building I’d never seen
before. But I could read the words, Canadian Red Cross just fine. And I was
pretty clever for eight; I knew this is where people went to
give....blood.
He turned off the car’s engine,
got out, came around, opened my door, and grabbed me by the arm. “Come on, let’s
go!”
I’ve always had really good
timing. I screamed my head off just as our mother came out of the
building.
Mother, God rest her, was not
impressed with her first born.
Two major pranks that I never
forgot that were just elaborate jokes. So by the time he fashioned that “noose”
above my swing in the side yard under the willow tree, I was willing to let the
whole joke play out. I think I was nine at the time.
This time, however, it was my
mother, doing dishes in the kitchen and looking out the window, who screamed
bloody murder. I had lost my footing on the swing and the noose actually worked.
Of course, my brother came running. I don’t much recall what happened after
that, but I do believe it was the last prank he ever pulled on me.
Our mother had a way of really
impressing her displeasure upon us. It is entirely possible that my brother—even
though he was likely about nineteen at the time—didn’t sit down for a
week.
The good old days? I know y’all
are likely shaking your heads but yes, they really were.
My brother turns seventy-one
today, and despite the ups and downs and the inevitable disappointments of life,
he’s never lost his sense of humor. And that really is not a bad thing at
all.
Love,
Morgan
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