45) Oh Canada

O Canada- Name that Crop

Dad was from Kamsack, SK, Canada, a small town to the northeast of Regina.

Although he and his parents were all deceased, Mom kept in contact with his family over the phone.

Eventually, Mom got information to piece together the history of Dad’s mental illness. His parents had always lied about it, but his Aunt P was a wealth of honest information. She told Mom how they kept dad locked in a basement. She told Mom about psych ward stays, and Dad’s ex-wife.

The best part was that Steve and Margaret were not around to distort and convolute it all. I think Mom had hoped that those answers would bring her peace, and I truly hope that in some small way they did.

A few weeks after I ran away from home, and was dragged back, we ended up going to Canada for my dad’s cousin’s wedding (Aunt P’s daughter).

Grandpa, Mom, the girls, and I went up in an RV. It was pretty cool.

I had travelled long distances with Grandpa before but only across Colorado and Nebraska, (and that one very long trip back from Indiana). I actually knew the patterns of those regular road trips pretty well.

Grandpa would usually quiz me on the order of towns going across I-76 from Denver to North Platte. He could tell you every crop, in every field and when it was planted.

He knew his winter wheat from his alfalfa for sure. So did I.

He could also tell you the histories of what families owned a lot of the land in between the two. He knew more the closer we got to North Platte.

He knew which counties Nebraskans were from based on their license plates.

He could tell you which people came from cattle and horse thieves (spoiler alert, it’s us, we’re the people who came from cattle and horse thieves).

Driving to Kamsack we encountered new crops and it drove Grandpa batty. You could tell he was going through the index in his mind of every single crop he had ever encountered. He was flummoxed.

Eventually, when we were stuck in construction anyhow, he rolled down his window and flagged down the flagger to ask about these beautiful fields of blue and yellow. We learned that they are flax and canola. Grandpa was pretty proud of himself for learning new crops at his age.

Flax and Canola are gorgeous crops.

Change of Scene

I was grateful to step out of the normalized SCRIPTs at home. Mom was still mad at me, but I was a pretty awesome co-pilot, and I’d keep her drink full, the cassettes rotating, and make her a sandwich before she knew she was hungry.

I also did everything the girls needed while we were en route.

She softened a little bit over the course of the trip, but the girls spent most of their time reminding me that I had fallen into disfavor. Little kids are awesome like that.

This was my first and last time going to Canada.

It was Mom’s first time too. It was her first time meeting the people who had mattered to the man she still loved so much her soul ached. Without Steve and Margaret around, it was likely to be a trip full of the connection she had needed years before. Somehow, that put how much of a screw-up I was on the back burner.

Music

I have no idea how it happened.

Thinking back now I’m still bemused that it was even possible, but somehow on this trip, while I was being the Music Master, I found a cassette that I didn’t recognize.

You have to understand, I had been through these cassette cases for years. I had them memorized. I knew which songs were on which mixed tapes, and I still have the playlists for MANY of my mom’s mixed tapes memorized.I knew which tapes went in which case. I knew when Mom made new tapes.

This was NOT a new tape; Mom’s handwriting hadn’t looked like that in years.

I also, independently, had quite an understanding of historical country music. My knowledge on the matter was hardly confined to the contents of those cases. Every Sunday, I would turn on the Classic Country show on the radio.

I could sing along to Pasty Cline or Jim Reeves for hours. For the life of me, I cannot comprehend how I made it to 16 years old without EVER hearing about Eddie Arnold. WTAF?!?

He had the smoothest voice, and I was absolutely melting.

(Somehow EVERY time the Classic Country show played Cattle Call, they had played the Slim Whitman version, which- please don’t get me wrong, it’s a great version- hardly does justice to the breadth of the history of country music. Don’t worry, I wrote them a letter.)

Mom was such a hold out and I was mad. I got over it, but that took time.

She had no idea that I was mad, but I definitely was.

Faery Tale

I was excited to be leaving the country for the first time, to be seeing states I’ve never seen before, to meet “family.” Well, they were my sisters’ family, but they knew Dad and I wanted so badly to connect with any part of him. There were just so many things I didn’t know, and he was in my life for such a short time.

Dad’s family was huge. His mom had 9 sisters, and Pat was one of them. Her daughter was getting married, and her son and I had the same first name.

They were so impressed with Mom, and they loved Grandpa immediately. Everyone was thrilled to be meeting Dad’s girls for the first time.

They acted like I was one of Dad’s girls. Mom took a break from her usual demeanor. The Canadians were also impressed with me, and she decided she’d rather bask in that adoration than demonize me.

When people were going somewhere they would just ask me to come along like there wasn’t any reason not to, and then my mom would just- let me.

We made Shishliki from an old family recipe and pizzas from scratch. We smoked Players and Export As (2/10 recommend).

My youngest cousin, who was only a couple years older than me, invited me to go hang out with him and his friends. Nobody seemed to mind me being there. They took me out on the back roads through that gorgeous country.

They shared their pilsners, and not in that weird, pushy, American way, but just like I was part of the group. We stood around a bonfire and watched the aurora borealis. They told me how lackluster that particular show was and I was in tears at its splendor.

I got to help with the wedding preparations and people valued my contributions. They joked with me, and smiled when I would walk into the room.

It was almost enough to forget how defective I was.

The Wedding

Really the wedding started with the rehearsal, which took place at the Ukrainian Catholic Church. (Not to be confused with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church).

The priest was the town’s favorite, and he was a younger priest, who had been called to the church late. He was married, and had children, and the church had made an exception for him. I was fascinated.

He was very personable and the knot-tiers were clearly comfortable with him. He cracked jokes that were clean but still funny. He really challenged what I thought I knew about Catholicism.

I had been to one other Catholic wedding when I was little and I remember it lasting long enough for me to take 3 naps while everyone else did the Catholic CrossFit. (Yup. That was on purpose. Don’t get me wrong, I always thought it was smart to multitask a community exercise program with worship.)

The bride and groom were adamant that they wanted a brief ceremony, and more time to celebrate.

Frankly, they were pretty eager to hit the honeymoon, and it was adorable.

I met some of Dad’s other cousins. They were vibrant characters with really cool Slavic last names that I wouldn’t dare try to spell now. One had this high-tech super fancy bus style RV, like the kind you’d go on tour in if you were a superstar. It was impressive but it went a bit over my head. Flashy stuff can overstimulate me. He was super cool about everything.

The other cousin was slightly more reserved, and perhaps a little more urbane. He was witty, and sly and had a keen appreciation for others who caught his jokes.

He kinda let me tag along with him at the reception, because Mom clearly didn’t want me near her, and there was DRAMA happening in the younger crowd. I have no idea what it was, but I do know that anytime the allistics start up with those tones, it does not go well for me if I’m involved. Period.

I came to have fun at a wedding, not to have my own personal Carrie moment.

The witty cousin let me bum cigarettes, and I followed him out to the parking lot. He opened the trunk of his car and suggested that there wouldn’t likely be an uproar if one beer from his fully stocked trunk disappeared while he conveniently looked in the other direction.

I’m not a beer drinker. Really, I’m not a drinker, but I’ve had my moments, and that week I was all aboot the pilsners.

I thanked him for letting me hang out with him, which I get now is a weird thing, but I was really grateful. I disclosed that I was really enjoying all of the polka music, which wasn’t played as much at the American weddings I’d been to, and that I’d never really had a dance partner to just polka with.

We finished our parking lot beers (which would definitely have gotten me in trouble had my mom known), and went back into that reception hall and we polka’d our butts off for the rest of the night. Occasionally, the polkas would be punctuated by a two-step or a waltz. It was wonderful.

Mom had taught me to dance, but she’d also predicted that no one who was actually interested in dancing, would ever want to dance with me. (Given how my prom went a year later, I’d say she was fairly accurate.) She danced with me all the time when I was little, and got me addicted to it. Then she stopped dancing with me. I’ve spent a lot of time dancing by myself. I miss dancing so much.

We spent a week in Canada altogether, and it flew by too fast.

I’ve been fighting back storms of tears writing today’s post because I realize now that Mom stopped nitpicking me that week, because she would have lost face with these gentle souls. She said “yes” to me having experiences, and seemed gentle and almost proud of me.

She could do that because they were watching, but not because I needed her. Got it.

On the way back home, she became increasingly critical and irritable. I was trying the same amount of hard, but I wasn’t being the same amount of right. By the time we made it back home she was pretty annoyed by my existence again, and she was fully ready to resume my punishments for running away.

I wasn’t allowed to make long distance phone calls much less international ones, and nobody was interested in writing letters, so I never spoke to anyone from Canada again.

It was like waking up from a wet dream that you can’t quite remember the next day.