Porch: chance to dream

Older Brother (OB) and I used to sleep on the back porch in the humid nights of Toronto summers. This remarkable sanctuary was build of flagstone and cement up to about three feet, with a wide cement top along the tops. On top of this, Dad framed up 2 by 4s to hold screen and storm windows, and over the top he put stringers of the same to hold a slanted roof.

The whole area was just big enough to accommodate a couple of rollaway beds, and a small kitchen table and wooden chairs. Over time, a huge wisteria vine covered the side of the porch that faced our next door neighbor, thus affording beautiful and fragrant privacy in the spring of the year.

Dad put rolling blinds at the top of each window, but it was more fun to leave them up when we crawled into bed. That way, our eyes had access to the moon and our imaginations to the shadows. There was a huge Manitoba maple tree right along the fence line, overhanging the porch. Under the right conditions, the swaying branches would scrape the porch roof, leading us to snuggle further into our respective coverings (usually kapok-filled sleeping bags) for safety.

Occasionally a plane would drone overhead and the odd car would come to the stop sign at the corner and then move on. Sometimes we would hear someone talking almost inaudibly, and no amount of ear-straining would allow comprehension. For a couple of summers, a bullfrog croaked under the lilypads in the fishpond in our back yard. Dad had captured the big fellow while its mind was on something else, and brought it back from the cottage to keep the goldfish company.

Funny, though. I can't remember any conversations that the OB and I had, although we must have talked. Put two children, even five years apart, into a private room with that much audio-visual diversion, and they're bound to talk. But I do remember the pleasure of just being there together instead of the winter-bound stuffy upstairs of our one and a half storey house.

We did many things together. We read under the covers by flashlight. We climbed up onto the shed roof of our garage and leaped down into what eventually became a raspberry bed. In later years, we performed gymnastic moves on tumbling mats that Dad produced from somewhere (possibly cast off from the school where he taught). Where? From the livingroom into the diningroom, of course.

When Dad finally bought a heavy slate pool table for the basement, it quickly became a family tradition to leave the Mum with the dishes and head to the basement for a game of Boston before it was time to do homework. In our defense, I should point out that in those days, the pool game was often delayed as Dad washed the dishes, and Mum dried, so she was not totally abandoned, but drying took longer. She didn't seem all that interested in pool. Domestic arrangements by Jack Sprat.

I was reading today in the NY Times about families on the Upper East Side of New York who have their children driven by chauffeured S.U.V.s to their preschools and kindergartens, and how this is creating traffic jams as the hired drivers double-park to let the little dears descend from their carriages.

Yes, I would have enjoyed being chauffeured, but then, we lived right across the street from our public school, so early on that taught us the virtues of depending on our own two feet to carry us ever forward. We were NEVER late. How could we be? We were the offspring of two teachers.