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Windsor: my early years
Aug. 28th, 2003 09:28 amIt would be helpful to know why at age 19 I was so unhappy, but to this day I don't completely understand. I came from a stable, close-knit and affectionate family.
I was born around 6 a.m. on March 19, 1964 at Metropolitan Hospital in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. I was healthy and alert. My father says that when the nurse brought me to show him, I looked toward his voice. My mother, who had failed to breastfeed my two older brothers, insisted on doing so with me despite resistance from her nurses.
Windsor is the hottest, stickiest city in Canada. It must have one of the most spectacular riverfront views of any city in the world, looking north at the Detroit skyline. It is important in the automotive industry. My maternal grandfather worked for Chrysler all his life. My paternal grandfather founded a business in the 1930s repairing electric motors, mostly industrial size. Most people I meet who have lived in Windsor have heard of Waffle's Electric. It passed to my father and recently to my oldest brother.
Bob was 12 when I was born. Several years ago he admitted to having been jealous of me. That might explain why I never particularly liked him. I don't remember him ever being mean to me, just disinterested. My other brother, Mike, was almost 10. He doted on me, and I adored him.
We lived on Pelissier Street, in the same neighbourhood where my mother and her mother had grown up. In fact my great grandparents, Dommy and Poppy, lived across the street from Victoria Public School where I attended, the same school as my mother and grandmother. Once a week I would meet Mom after school at the house Poppy had built when there were no other houses around. Dommy lived to be 103, but in my first memories of her she was still in her late 70s. A daughter of German immigrants, she was hard-working and a little abrupt, but very kind. At the kitchen table she would serve me homemade cookies and the coldest milk anywhere.
As a little boy I always preferred to play with girls. I had a big crush on Jill, a girl in my class who was so blonde like me that people thought we were twins, and every day I would kiss her good morning. My other friends at school were Atsuko and Jeannette. Two doors down from us lived Lisa, who was a year younger, but we always played together after school. Our favourite thing was to dress up and play house. We both wore dresses.
My mother was the eldest of six children. Her family was a boisterous pack with Irish genes, given easily to tears, laughter, long goodbyes and especially alcohol. I had 18 cousins on that side, most of them within a year or two of my age. My grandparents had a cat named Nigger.
My father, like me, was the youngest of three sons. His parents lived in a pleasant house on Riverside Drive. My Pappy had been orphaned at 17 and established his business and fortune through sheer will and hard work. The Waffles were more quiet and aloof than my mother's clan, and we didn't see as much of my relatives on that side. Many of them didn't get along with Pappy, but I did.
I was his youngest grandchild by several years. He had a heart attack the year I was born, and I suppose it made him appreciate the simpler things in life. We spent many after-dinner hours together in his study, poring over his stamp and coin collections. Over and over he would tell me stories about his youth, working as a summer harvester in the Prairies, and how he courted my grandmother. Everyone else had long tired of Pappy's stories, but I loved to sit and listen. He is the only adult male I remember paying much attention to me when I was a small child. He also loved to feed waterfowl. Geese and ducks by the dozens would come to his yard off the Detroit River.
In 1965 my parents had bought a cottage on Lake Erie, 45 minutes from Windsor. We went there every weekend. Mom and I would stay there for weeks every summer. My happiest early memories are of running through the grass there, getting mulberry stains on my bare feet and hearing cicadas drone in the big poplars that surrounded our place.
When I was five Bob left home for University of Guelph. Mike followed when I was eight. At the same time, my parents decided to sell our house in Windsor and move to the cottage. They built an addition. Dad commuted to Windsor from that time foreward.
On my last day of school in Windsor I met Mom at my grandmother's house. While swinging on the front porch railing, I noticed a bump on my shoulder. It was the chicken pox. They got into my lungs and I ended up with pneumonia. I had to spend the entire summer indoors before starting grade 3 in a new school in the small town of Harrow.
Looking back I notice a lot of things happening at the same time: a serious illness, moving to a new school, and my great grandfather Poppy died the following year. The hardest thing of all was Mike leaving.
For years I had sat beside Mike at his desk while he did homework. I remember him teaching me how to spell my own name, do addition and subtraction, even multiplication and long division. I followed him like a shadow. It must have annoyed him at times, but he rarely showed it.
Once he left, I became an only child. I didn't have enough self-awareness to know that I was lonely, but I became increasingly isolated after we moved. From the age of eight I felt depression growing in me. I didn't know what it was. I also began to feel an attraction to men and other boys, something I couldn't name. I lumped my depression and homosexuality together. I called it my inner darkness.
I was born around 6 a.m. on March 19, 1964 at Metropolitan Hospital in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. I was healthy and alert. My father says that when the nurse brought me to show him, I looked toward his voice. My mother, who had failed to breastfeed my two older brothers, insisted on doing so with me despite resistance from her nurses.Windsor is the hottest, stickiest city in Canada. It must have one of the most spectacular riverfront views of any city in the world, looking north at the Detroit skyline. It is important in the automotive industry. My maternal grandfather worked for Chrysler all his life. My paternal grandfather founded a business in the 1930s repairing electric motors, mostly industrial size. Most people I meet who have lived in Windsor have heard of Waffle's Electric. It passed to my father and recently to my oldest brother.
Bob was 12 when I was born. Several years ago he admitted to having been jealous of me. That might explain why I never particularly liked him. I don't remember him ever being mean to me, just disinterested. My other brother, Mike, was almost 10. He doted on me, and I adored him.
We lived on Pelissier Street, in the same neighbourhood where my mother and her mother had grown up. In fact my great grandparents, Dommy and Poppy, lived across the street from Victoria Public School where I attended, the same school as my mother and grandmother. Once a week I would meet Mom after school at the house Poppy had built when there were no other houses around. Dommy lived to be 103, but in my first memories of her she was still in her late 70s. A daughter of German immigrants, she was hard-working and a little abrupt, but very kind. At the kitchen table she would serve me homemade cookies and the coldest milk anywhere.
As a little boy I always preferred to play with girls. I had a big crush on Jill, a girl in my class who was so blonde like me that people thought we were twins, and every day I would kiss her good morning. My other friends at school were Atsuko and Jeannette. Two doors down from us lived Lisa, who was a year younger, but we always played together after school. Our favourite thing was to dress up and play house. We both wore dresses.
My mother was the eldest of six children. Her family was a boisterous pack with Irish genes, given easily to tears, laughter, long goodbyes and especially alcohol. I had 18 cousins on that side, most of them within a year or two of my age. My grandparents had a cat named Nigger.
My father, like me, was the youngest of three sons. His parents lived in a pleasant house on Riverside Drive. My Pappy had been orphaned at 17 and established his business and fortune through sheer will and hard work. The Waffles were more quiet and aloof than my mother's clan, and we didn't see as much of my relatives on that side. Many of them didn't get along with Pappy, but I did.
I was his youngest grandchild by several years. He had a heart attack the year I was born, and I suppose it made him appreciate the simpler things in life. We spent many after-dinner hours together in his study, poring over his stamp and coin collections. Over and over he would tell me stories about his youth, working as a summer harvester in the Prairies, and how he courted my grandmother. Everyone else had long tired of Pappy's stories, but I loved to sit and listen. He is the only adult male I remember paying much attention to me when I was a small child. He also loved to feed waterfowl. Geese and ducks by the dozens would come to his yard off the Detroit River.
In 1965 my parents had bought a cottage on Lake Erie, 45 minutes from Windsor. We went there every weekend. Mom and I would stay there for weeks every summer. My happiest early memories are of running through the grass there, getting mulberry stains on my bare feet and hearing cicadas drone in the big poplars that surrounded our place.When I was five Bob left home for University of Guelph. Mike followed when I was eight. At the same time, my parents decided to sell our house in Windsor and move to the cottage. They built an addition. Dad commuted to Windsor from that time foreward.
On my last day of school in Windsor I met Mom at my grandmother's house. While swinging on the front porch railing, I noticed a bump on my shoulder. It was the chicken pox. They got into my lungs and I ended up with pneumonia. I had to spend the entire summer indoors before starting grade 3 in a new school in the small town of Harrow.
Looking back I notice a lot of things happening at the same time: a serious illness, moving to a new school, and my great grandfather Poppy died the following year. The hardest thing of all was Mike leaving.
For years I had sat beside Mike at his desk while he did homework. I remember him teaching me how to spell my own name, do addition and subtraction, even multiplication and long division. I followed him like a shadow. It must have annoyed him at times, but he rarely showed it.
Once he left, I became an only child. I didn't have enough self-awareness to know that I was lonely, but I became increasingly isolated after we moved. From the age of eight I felt depression growing in me. I didn't know what it was. I also began to feel an attraction to men and other boys, something I couldn't name. I lumped my depression and homosexuality together. I called it my inner darkness.
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