By Dave MacNeil
Sunday was Mother’s Day, and in the spirit of the occasion, please allow me the indulgence of thanking my own mother. I had planned for this piece to appear last week, but my adventures with an amorous woodpecker bumped it, though I’m sure Mom would understand.
Before I begin, I do want to provide a quick update on the bird who pounded away on my metal chimney cap for a week while in pursuit of a mate. As I mentioned last week, he returned to my rooftop one last time a week ago Sunday, with his newfound partner in tow, presumably to let me know that all that pecking had paid off.
Well, there’s still been no repeat performance, so I can only assume that the fledgling relationship has survived, and Woody’s exploits – and all that annoyance – were not in vain.
So, without further ado, let’s get to the matter at hand.
It’s been 16 years since Mom passed on Easter weekend, 2009, but in many ways, it still feels like yesterday. She had her hands full raising seven kids, and there was no doubt some challenging times along the way, so I’d like to thank her for nearly half a century of parenting, but also for some very specific memories for which I’m indebted to her.
One of my earliest memories was the annual spring quilt cleaning, which saw Mom drag a heavy metal tub onto the front lawn, lugging buckets of hot water and all the quilts in the house (and there were many in a house that had little in the way of insulation). I remember the process taking a couple days, but that mound of quilts on the front lawn offered hours of fun as the family dog, Teddy, joined me in making them our own personal amusement park.
I want to thank her for never questioning my many mysterious ailments on days when I played hooky from school. Despite Dad’s suspicions, she never failed to come to my defence.
“But Eddie, just look at his eyes,” she would say to my father. “He’s not going anywhere today.”
Truth be told, I practiced in the mirror to perfect that look, and I’m not really sure she was actually buying it either. I think it came down to the fact she was happy for the company.
As she’d nurse me back to health, we’d watch Midday Matinee on TV, which I recall being a series of mostly really bad science fiction, interrupted at times with Elvis Presley movies. I recall one movie in particular, Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, which gave me a few sleepless nights. But it was worth it, as bowls of Jello worked to sooth my improvised sore throat.
Some days, we’d even play TV bingo, with buttons as markers. We had an old red cookie jar which Mom had repurposed to store her many buttons, and I would struggle from my sickbed to get that jar down from the cupboard as she spread the bingo cards out on the kitchen table.
I want to thank her for sharing an allegiance to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Having grown up during the “Original Six” era of the National Hockey League, Mom was an even more ardent supporter of the team than me, and that’s saying something.
Like any young Leafs fans growing up the 70s, I hated the Montreal Canadiens, who rattled off four consecutive Stanley Cups between 1976 and 1979. But Mom detested Guy Lafleur with a passion that at times puzzled and surprised me.
For a period of about five years during the late 70s, Mom made sure that I had the family TV to myself every Saturday night during the hockey season, even when the Leafs weren’t playing. This caused great consternation for my older sister, and understandably so as I look back on it. She lobbied hard to switch the channel to CTV’s Academy Performance, which, unlike Midday Matinee, featured some top-rate Oscar-winning movies.
My sister did manage to get her way on one particular Saturday night and that was Feb. 7, 1976, the night Toronto captain Darryl Sittler scored 10 points in a game against the Boston Bruins, a record that stands to this day.
I’m over the disappointment of missing that. I really am. And the fact that I still regularly Google the highlight reels of that game should in no way be an indication that I harbour any resentment almost 50 years later. Really!
It’s possible that Mom spoiled me a bit, and if you’ve reached that conclusion from this column, then you’re probably right. But she did create some of my fondest memories and I thank her for that…even if it is a little bit late!