The Peripheries - The Fun of Living in a Navy Family

  There’s no life like it (Part 7) - Military Time When the boys were teenagers, we ALL looked forward to the summer. Summer meant Cadet camp. One or more of the older boys was selected and off they went. And two-, four- or, if we were really lucky, six-weeks later, they would come back. What happened at camp is their story to tell.   Here is a pregnant pause just in case one of them wants to tell their story. Back at home the whole dynamic would change. The life to which we were accustomed was altered, pecking was re-ordered and there was just a little less testosterone around to spark teenage explosions. The year Christian was in grade 9 turned out to be a brilliant cadet year for him as well. He loved sailing and took every opportunity he could to go up to Jericho Beach where the cadet sail boats were stored. Also, in a beautiful moment of unity, my boys had chipped in together and bought their own little sailboat for $200 (including trailer). They painted it orange a...

  There’s No Life Like It (part 6) Oblivious (or, for my children, the flying monk story.) “No, I’m sorry, we won’t be able to come down,” Richard was telling Uncle Bernie on the phone. “It is too hard to manage.” Uncle Cyril, who was Richard’s ‘holy-relative’, a cloistered monk from Wales, was visiting the family in Burlington. We had been posted to Ottawa in the summer and, for Uncle Cyril, living in the same province as his hosts, meant that we must be close by.   However, this was before the highways 417 and 407 were built, when the trip to Burlington took us eight very long hours with all the children in tow. Besides, the twins were three months old. Life was unimaginably busy. The next day, on the phone, I heard Richard say,   “I don’t think so.” He listened a bit longer, wrote something down and put the phone down heavily. Uncle Cyril had decided that if we could not go there, he would come to us. He’d bought a bus ticket and would be arriving at 7 th...

  There's No Life Like It (Part 5) – Help! Before we left Victoria in 1990, my friend Marcia held a baby shower for me. Although the twins would be born in Ottawa, Victoria was the place of my pregnancy. All the ladies from the neighborhood came to swap stories and fete my growing young family. There were reminiscences and advice and lovely packable gifts and more advice. Some of which I listened to avidly, some not so much. I loved listening to Marilyn’s stories because she was my key to sanity. When we found out that my fifth pregnancy was actually the super-efficient two-for-one deal otherwise known as twins, I have to admit I could not imagine how we would manage. But then, in my mind, I thought of Marilyn. Happy laughing Marilyn, who had twelve children. They were a half generation older than mine and the only one I knew was her youngest, our amazing babysitter. But if Marilyn could manage twelve children, in my mind, six would be easy.   So, when Marilyn said, “I r...

  There's No Life Like It (part 4) – Trust and Loyalty Why were our Christmas lights hanging from the roof for two weeks? The roof was high and none of us could reach to finish the job Richard had started just before the General called. He had come down the ladder to take the call and never went back up. Instead, there were hours of phone calls followed by two weeks of twelve-hour days at NDHQ (National Defence Headquarters) calculating, strategizing, responding to the political leaders’ questions and following the Defence Chief’s directions. In the meantime, our Ottawa house looked bedraggled, as if maybe it did not care about Christmas this year.   Inside the house it was a different story all together. We were busy making 3-D Christmas trees and sticking them on every corner you could see. We made star shaped cookies and Froot Loop chains for the tree. The little kids wobbled round the back yard rink holding onto kitchen chairs. In November, Richard and our backya...

  There's No Life Like It (part 3 ) – Sometimes You Shouldn’t ‘Just Do It’   When you are the only person at home you learn to test the limits of what you can and cannot do by yourself. I came into our marriage with a really good sense of my abilities as a handyperson. It was maybe a little overinflated. My initial qualification was achieved at the age of six when I won the school’s fancy dress party, parading as “Daddy’s Little Helper”. With wallpaper-overalls and a paint brush in an old can, I beat out the princesses and pirates and those with less imaginative parents.   As the middle of three girls, it defaulted to me in the following years to help change the fuses, hold the ladder, and hammer squeaky floorboards. Dad and I bought an old bicycle, and I learned how to change tires, bending mum’s silver forks when we used them as tire levers. We built a little retaining wall for the flower bed. I think we used t...

  There's No Life Like It (part 2)– A moving story   As a child I was terrified that my parents would announce that we were moving. They never did. Maybe it was because, at the age of six, one of my classmates moved to Canada. The teacher said she was really lucky because in Canada children didn’t start school until they were six, so she had a two year head start on them all. But was she lucky? She just disappeared into a void, there she was, gone. Then, at eight I lost my childhood friend, Richard Summers, the same way. The Summers’ family moved to Canada too. That was a little better because there was an enormous party, the adults all went to the West End to see Dave Allen in The Talk of the Town and twelve kids had one giant sleepover, topping and tailing in every bed available. The next day I was entrusted with baby Stella’s harness as larger people dragged bags and bulky coats onto the Heathrow train. It was very cold in Canada. And then they were gone too, leaving ...

  There's No Life Like It (part 1) – Naval Communications We lived in a kind of ‘twilight zone’ of marriage. To my civilian friends it seemed a bit surreal. It was a life that allowed for each of us to grow as two independent people during deployments, one with her feet firmly planted on the ground and the other with his feet carrying him through the ship’s engineering spaces. But, when the fleet came home, we were one inseparable couple. Back in the seventies handwritten letters were our only means of communication, and my heart would leap when I saw the familiar handwriting waiting in the mailbox.   We wrote to each other often, but the letters would sometimes not arrive until after the ships had returned home. One letter I received was in beautiful calligraphy. It must have taken hours to write, each character carefully crafted just for me. During deployments we never spoke in person because the ship to shore radio was only for naval communications. I imagine it was also ...