3. Sometimes You Shouldn't Just Do It!

 

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 too much sand in the mortar because the bricks bulged precariously after the rain. I was allowed free rein on the toolbox and turned the record player into a paintbrush spirograph. I even figured out how to fix the HiFi stereo with sticky tape when I blew the speaker playing Alice Cooper’s ‘Slick Black Cadillac’.

When I graduated to a home of my own I was in heaven. Richard had no Idea how useful I was because he was a naval officer and went to sea almost as soon as we settled in our first marital home.

No matter where we lived though it seemed that as soon as the ships left something would need fixing. But with a little thought most problems could be fixed with the same prowess that dad had inspired in me.

For instance, when the dryer stopped working in a Halifax wintertime, with two diapered babies, I figured out how to change the thermostat. In another house the toilet leaked into the basement just before my parents were due to arrive. They were coming to meet their first two grandbabies and would be sleeping right under the drip.  The hardware-store guy showed me how to caulk and after I had baked muffins for my impending visitors, I hurriedly squeezed out goop to plug the toilet hole. When I came back to the kitchen, one of those sweet grandbabies, Tim, had fed the muffins to the plants. Thankfully Mum and Dad saw no trace of the mud and crumbs when they came into our hallway. They were laughing too much because I was helping them out of their coats as if they were two-year olds. I had been on my own with the little ones far too long.

One time I successfully changed the oil in the car. This was before dedicated lube shops existed, but maybe I should have taken the car to a service station. Especially because that evening was the Naval Ball. I was so blown away with my competence that I never thought what changing the oil would do to my hands. I used every household cleaner I could find, and then camouflaged the remaining unbudgeable oil with the brightest nail polish I owned.

Car maintenance was a great learning curve. Do you know what happens when you put dishwasher soap in the windshield fluid container? The wiper blades bubble. And it takes forever to remove the evidence.

 Once there was a worrying click-click-click coming from under the hood. The mechanic couldn’t find anything wrong, but I was insistent, so he came for a drive with me. We’d only gone a few meters when he told me to stop the car. He’d heard the click too so I wasn’t crazy! He stepped to the front corner and bent out of sight for a second. He took a tiny little pebble out of the tire tread.

Despite being completely OK-ish to live on my own though, I really needed my husband. Over the years Richard grew to know me so much better than I did. He would remind me when I was stuck home with a napping baby, that this was just a phase and I’d be able to get out soon. I was hugely biased and whereas I was very good at knowing my faults, he would keep reminding me of my abilities and would encourage me to build on them.

The navy life also taught me things I should never do on my own.

Like give birth!

The year before Tim was born, we had been sent on a foreign posting from Victoria to England and our furniture was put into storage in B.C. While we were in the UK, Richard was told that his next posting would be to Halifax. Our little family comprised a toddler, Simon, and one on the way, due imminently. I imagined the logistics of the posting. What if I went into labor in a hotel in Halifax while we were waiting for the furniture to arrive from Victoria? I could not picture how it would work. In 1983 there was no such thing as paternity leave, or even giving the father days off when a baby was due.  I wrote a letter to the base social worker to ask if there was any set up in Halifax that might help. He told me not to worry, our toddler could go into foster care if that happened. The thought horrified me.

We decided that I should stay in Ontario with my in-laws and Richard would go ahead to Halifax, find us a place to live and call for our belongings to be shipped from Victoria. My in-laws were wonderful; their house was always so full of love. Happily, they squeezed Simon and me into their tiny, overcrowded home.

The big day came. My father-in-law drove me to the hospital, my sister-in-law took over Simon-duty, and I was admitted to labor and delivery. All by myself. A couple of people popped their heads around the door; my brother-in-law who came on his way to work and a student nurse who adopted me as her first case study, but it felt very lonely. Tim was born and they shipped him off for inspection. I was wheeled into the recovery room where I was given an egg salad sandwich.  From every other cubicle, you could hear happy, exhausted chatting. In my cubicle not even, the sandwich made a sound. Richard said it was excruciatingly lonely in Halifax that day too.

Because of this experience, as a couple we vowed that we would never again choose to be apart.  And that was the best decision ever, for better or for worse, and, funnily enough in sickness and health too.

One posting Richard had, was only going to be for a year, to Toronto. Many officers who were sent on this posting thought it was the worst and chose to live apart from their families, taking temporary accommodations.  However, because of our vow, for us it was a no-brainer. We rented a house in ‘Scarberia’, bribed the kids with new bikes and to this day they remember it as one of their best years ever. There was the zoo and the lake and the Rouge River and huge Sunday dinners with their cousins.

The biggest test of our vow to never to be apart was placed on us by sickness. We lived in Kingston at the time, and we had taken our family to Toronto to visit my in-laws. Mark, our six-week-old baby had been quite poorly but none of the doctors would listen – it’s just colic they said.

Well, it wasn’t. Mark was taken into Sick Children’s Hospital in Toronto that weekend, very close to death.   We stayed in Toronto as long as the military would let us but, after a week, Richard was called back to Kingston. I could have stayed back in Toronto with Richard’s parents, but we had made a vow to each other. It was so hard to do but, with a huge lump in my throat, we left Mark in the care of the medical specialists and drove with our other two little boys home, to Kingston. The doctors thought they had a diagnosis and were going to spend the next week building up Mark’s strength. The specialist promised to call every night. Which he did.

 

Until the fourth day. Six o’clock passed with no call. Then seven. Then just before eight the phone rang. Something had gone wrong, Mark was fading. The specialist said he’d call again in a little while when the doctors knew more. Oh, my goodness. That moment the only arms in the world that could console me were Richard’s. We just stood tightly together, holding our breath until the phone rang again. Over an hour later the doctor called and told us that Mark had started responding.

I love my in-laws very much, but nobody’s arms would have held me the way Richard’s did that night. Our vow was perfect.

There are some things you really should not do by yourself.