The Long Road Home

Bonnie and David took the ride back to her childhood home for their Easter Vacation. The road is straight from her present home to the past.  Drive off of Bernie Road onto the Trans Canada and then don't stop for for six hours. Take no lefts, no rights until you get to 19th St in Calgary and then it is a mere few blocks home. The six hour ride turned into a seven hour ride – just finding out how to get to through those mere few blocks is problematic. If you see a sign that points toward the University, that might not be the road to take, Bonnie found out as she circled Sarcee Trail and other major routes for an hour. Better she should have been trying to get to Doral’s and Anita’s on that drive.

I saw them first, knocking and peeking through the basement window. Bonnie said that so much has changed that she couldn’t even find her way through her own childhood back alley to the place where she had grown-up. What gave her destination away is that on that ride she saw Connor’s face through the upstairs fishbowl window that is always open – a sure sign that she had arrived home.

David brought toys, snacks, shoes for winter, shoes for summer, and all of his own sleeping gear. All of this will be neatly stored in the bedroom the three of us are sharing: 2/3’s for David, 1/3 for Bonnie and Arta There is not much left behind at the Shuswap that belongs to David.

Lucky me.  For a week I will have two Davids in the house: David Lorne (24'ish and first cousin once removed) and David Doral (6 years old).

Even with all of the new surroundings and places to explore, there was only one place David Doral wanted to be after 11 pm. That was at the kitchen table where discussions of free will vs. pre-destination and fate were being sounded by Mak, Brian, Connor and David Lorne. David Doral tried to break his way into the group, first by plying them with offers of candy from his one gallon snack container: lemon life-savers, strawberry gummie bears, and sweet and sour soothers.

On David Doral’s second trip upstairs, the men at the table moved over, found a spot for him by one of them, and he listened long and hard.

On David’s third trip upstairs he took some paper and smellables (pencils that are flavoured with smells of root beer, blueberry and orange).  He sat there creating a story to tell them about turtles. Their discussion was so intense (always skirting the edges of philosophical determinism) that he came downstairs, got his set of headphones that keeps out the white noise, and went back upstairs to continue working on his own project.  At the end of the night he did have a story for them, a four page book, carefully stapled, the smell of the lead on each page carefully identified and a text in his mind.  Only Bonnie and I had time to hear the inaugural reading of it.

Oh the intense joy of being among the older men when you are six.

To be continued ...