Family Ties

Last week I took my mother, who is 85, for a drive out to see my horse. She’s not nuts about horses, but she loves country drives, and is peppy enough to keep herself occupied around the grounds while I go out for my ride. She kept a cautious distance while I saddled up, put on my silly-looking but mandatory helmet, and headed off down the trail.

For some reason, I was feeling pretty pleased with myself about this arrangement. It occurred to me, as I clucked at my horse to get him to trot, that I was showing off for my Mummy. It was as if some little kid inside me was saying, “Mom, lookit! Lookit me riding a horse!”

Evidently Mom was on the same wavelength. “You look all of 12 years old,” she called out.

For a moment, to both of us, it was as if nothing had ever changed. She still didn’t like horses much, or understand why I did. And I was still waving at her from the back of some big smelly beast, just like 40 years ago, when I’d try to get my horse to do something interesting and dangerous-looking, so that my Mum would say, “Be careful! Don’t fall off!”

That’s the thing about families: all families, whether tiny, extended, happy, fractious, or fractured. The people in your family are the people who knew you when. No matter what changes in the world, your family – in one way or another – stays the same. There’s no point in putting on any airs in front of your Uncle Albert, displaying your new Mercedes and your lovely trophy wife. Because Uncle Albert remembers when you got your tricycle stuck in the mud when you were four years old, and how you cried for hours when your eighth-grade girlfriend broke your heart. And he’s going to tell your wife all about it. If you grow indignant, and object, he’ll wink at your wife and tell her that you’re still the same hothead. To your horror, she’ll agree.

Okay, so maybe you have changed. But your family has your number, and they’re not afraid to call it.

Of course there’s a downside to having all these living witnesses hovering around, ready to publicize what you thought you’d escaped. It’s not much fun to work hard to change, and then have someone in your family pop up with the reminder that you failed Grade 12...twice. But then there’s the upside. These are the people who remember what you remember. You might not get along with them. You might all hate each other with the burning heat of a thousand exploding suns, only seeing each other by accident or at Aunt Sylvia’s funeral. But if you all allowed it, you could work some temporary magic. You could revive Aunt Sylvia, in your common recollection. You are the ones who remember that she wore pink-and-yellow scarves around her hair, and always brought ice-cream sandwiches for all the kids. All you’d need to have is a trigger – the mention of a scarf or an ice-cream sandwich – and Sylvia would be back. She won’t have changed a bit.

After our visit to the stables, I drove Mom back into the city. We went right downtown, because I had an errand to run, and she felt like coming along. Mom hadn’t been on the Gardiner Expressway in at least five years. It seemed everything had changed. “Look at all the buildings,” she said. “It’s like they sprang up overnight.”

We started talking about how, when the Expressway was built, the statue of the Imperial lion had been moved to make way. We remembered other road trips we’d taken – the ones when I was a child, and she was the driver. Once, to teach me mapcraft, she let me “navigate” on a drive downtown to see the Riverdale Zoo. I missed the exit, and got us hopelessly lost.

“I guess that zoo is gone now,” Mom said.

I told her it was. She nodded, thinking about this, and all the new, tall buildings. Then she laughed.

“You missed your exit,” she said.