A Birthday Walk

I had a birthday recently. The three of us went to a lobster dinner on Baldwin Street. Then we walked back and forth on Baldwin checking out the changes since we were last there.

But it wasn't the recent changes I saw. It was the long past I remembered. When our family first arrived in Canada, we landed in a house on McCaul Street, around the corner from Baldwin. Although I had been on Baldwin many times since we moved away, this was the first time I looked at the street with eyes from forty years ago.

The street didn't have all the shops it does now. In fact, most of the houses were residential. The apartment complex across the church wasn't there. The only store that was there was the variety store The Man walked in to get a newspaper. Same location, same business, different owners. The current owners are Oriental. Back then, the owners were white, the store without its stark fluorescent lights and much lively than it is now. It was our bread and milk store.

Dad was around of course, a young man of forty, with a wife and four young children. Each day, he gave me $1 to buy bread and milk - 25 cents for a loaf of white bread, and 75 cents for a gallon glass jug of milk. Oh the confusion and suspicion when the jug went to plastic.

We rented our house from a family who lived on Spadina, north of College. We lived on the ground floor - the four of us in the front room (the living room), my parents in the middle room (the dining room) and we cooked, ate, and did our homework in the kitchen. We rented the second floor to another family with six children, and the top floor to two university students.

In addition to renting out most of the house, dad held down two jobs to support us and make a go of it in Canada. He came home after 1 am every night. Often, mom waited up for him. He would sleep in during the day, getting up about 11 am to start work at noon at his cousin's grocery store as a delivery man, hauling sacks of rice over his shoulders to Chinese families.

Then at 5 pm, he'd go to the restaurant where he worked as a waiter till midnight.

At some point, he started coming home late. Sometimes, not till morning. Dad had joined a mah jongg club. A gambling joint. He said it was all very innocent. A men only club. He smoked, played mah jongg, sometimes cards. How mom and dad fought then. Mom didn't like being left on her own day and night. Dad said he needed to socialize, to unwind from the long day's labour. Sometimes dad lost a lot of money. Their fights got worse then.

But somehow, dad saved enough money to put a down payment on a house and we moved. Then we brought my grandmother and uncle to Canada. I wonder if dad's life had unfolded the way he had hoped. I wonder if in his wildest imagination he could have seen how his children would grow up. He told me a few months before he died that he was pleased with how we turned out.

It's funny that despite all the new shops and activities on Baldwin Street, it was my dad's absence I felt, remembering that he lived around the corner with us, forty years ago.