Dizzy

I grew up on an acreage.

Not all the way, I was still pretty little when we moved into town. My formative years were spent on an partially forested acreage, but not all of them, because I am still being formed, at 50, so.... I spent years 0-9-ish on a partially forested acreage.

If you were to drive down Thornton road, and take your first right, you’d drive into the partially forested area. It was actually quite forested, but some of it had been logged several years before I emerged into the world. About half way down to the shoreline that you could not drive all the way to, there was a little cabin that we called the hippie shack on account of the hippies that sometimes lived in it. I was a little confused about what a hippie was, because the hippies in Ukee all seemed to be pretty comfortable with chainsaws, and the hippies in Tofino were pretty not, or so I heard.

If you took the second right, you’d be on our driveway, and so might we, so take it easy. If you stay to the right, you might pass me and my brother pouring gasoline onto already burning Hot Wheels cars in an enactment of great imaginary tragedy that soon has the entire jerry can ablaze. It’s a pretty hard turn, and it gets steep as it curves under the burley branches of the Cedar tree that leans out over the driveway. You can’t park at the house, though, because your car will be in the flight path of the swing hanging from that tree, and the kids-who now stand with their backs pressed to the wall of the house-on the very narrow platform, are waiting for their turn to jump. You could get into the back yard from here, but you’re in the way, so back up.

Park in the front, between the little bit of ivy-covered fence, and the roses by the front door. It’s not a grand entry; it’s narrow, there’s no glass. There’s an open closet on one side, and wall hooks on the other. Most of the footwear is under the coats, and there’s one of those flattened oval-shaped woven mats in the middle. Walk in, and there’s a living room on both sides; woodstove and varied seating on the left, piano and a more open space with some bookshelves, on the right. The carpet on the left is dark blue, I think, and flat, while the carpet on the right is a shag sunset. Walk through, hall to the right leads to the bathroom and bedrooms, but keep going, then go easy to the left, and you’ll enter ‘the addition’. If you go hard left along that wall you’ll encounter the narrow, and exceptionally steep stairs to the basement where it sounds like someone is riding laps around the furnace with the Big Wheel trike.

I had a green plastic push bike that was named the Cricket bike. That was my ride down those stairs once, and it hurt. We all did it at least once, somehow. There was a very short landing at the bottom, it was concrete, and so was the wall, and the last two steps, and the floor. Just before the bottom step there was a shelf, or open studs, where my oldest brother had pickle jars full of formaldehyde and....things, critters, maybe, that I wasn’t allowed to play with. It smelled awful when I took the lids off. For some reason that's the memory attached to the memory of me tumbling down those stairs on the cricket bike, that, and the dirty mustardy colour of the stair's thin carpet.

I don’t know when ‘the addition’ was built, but it was also before I emerged into the world. Fridge, stove, 90 degree counter corner going left, sink under the window, more counter, another 90, a bit more counter that was sort of like a bar. Walk past the bar and you’re in the dining room. Lots of windows in this corner of the house, and there are benches where kids sit on two sides of the large dinner table. The seats of the benches are shiny green faux-leather vinyl, and I think the backs were orange fabric. All home made stuff. There was storage underneath, and when you lifted the seats up, there was often unwanted vegetables tucked away. I’m remembering a lot of orange. I think the dining room/kitchen carpet was largely orange, like country rose orange, and probably the counter tops, too.

Looking out of the dining room windows, you’ll see some big trees that our terriers would often chase bears up with such ferocity that the poor bears would stay up in the tree until nightfall. I remember seeing my Mom chase a bear, too, because it was eating her strawberries from the garden. There’s an irregular, free range lawn bordered on the low side by a fairly constant creek. On the upper bank of the creek there is a large Alder tree from which hangs a tire swing in which kids sometimes spin themselves until they are sick. A little way down, and to the left, there is a simple plank bridge crossing to a well worn trail through the low scrub which opens up into a small meadow called Kevin’s park.

Besides creek spanning bridges, my brother Kevin also engineers dams, forts, trails, burrows, possibly hedges, and who knows what else in and around his park. Ever industrious, he’ll collect some tools, disappear into the park with them, and get to work. There was a trail that led past the well, and down the steep bank into the old growth where the burned out cedar was, then out onto the beach, but it was a bit spooky in there for five-year-old me, so the park was often as far as I would go. I don’t remember helping my brother with his projects at all when I hung out in his park, I just wanted to climb on stuff, then jump off.

There was a great big cedar butt sticking out of the bush into the park. Salal, cynamoka, and huckleberry bushes grew thick on the top of it, so you couldn’t walk down it very far. The center of the butt was all rotted hollow and there was bushes growing out of the hole as well. The contours of the fallen tree made it easy for me to climb, and I’d sit on the mossy top and watch my brother work on stuff. When he was done, he’d throw the tools; shovels, hatchets, saws, hammers and the like over the creek scrub, and into the back yard, then, if he could find them all, he put them away. Looking back, it’s a flawed system, but I was five, and I liked watching him spin around and around then let the tool go flying. I think he’d call out first, but I can’t be sure. Like when we’d play on the tire swing, by the time Kevin was done throwing tools out of the park, he’d be kinda dizzy, so that day, when I jumped off the log for the last time and he threw the last tool, a one-clawed claw hammer, he hit me right in the forehead with it.

I don’t remember landing. It was a long time ago, and I’d just been clobbered, but I remember looking up and seeing Kevin crossing the bridge, and hearing him calling Mom as he ran for the house. He said I was hurt, so I ran after him. I clearly remember him stopping to pick up one of the tools and throw it farther up the yard as he went. I don’t remember it hurting, but I remember there being some distress among the adults at the sight of my exposed skull. Head wounds also bleed a lot. Mom was sitting on the toilet and holding me as Dad mopped up the blood and tried to close the wound. That was impossible. There was some concerted praying, and we all settled down. Not Kevin, though. He thought he’d killed me, the poor guy.

We had to go to the hospital in Tofino, which is about 30 minutes away, so we all piled into the Country Squire station wagon and headed out. I laid in Mom’s lap and she tried to keep my head closed, but her fingers kept slipping on the blood, and I got the feeling it was pretty frustrating for her. I don’t remember being scared, and I don’t remember it hurting. No one was freaking out. I think my sister was fascinated. She kept asking questions, even when we were in the hospital.

I remember losing sight of my Mom when the doctor put the cloth with the hole in it over my head so he wouldn’t get stuff in my eyes while he was stitching me up, or whatever it’s for, and when he started to sew my head back together, I began to laugh.
I laughed so much that he had to stop, and I started laughing whenever he started sewing again. I couldn’t stop. It tickled. It took him a long time to get all sixteen stitches in.

Anyway, that was the first time I became insufferably hilarious when I was badly hurt. It was far from the last.

I had to draw a self-portrait the other day, so I was thinking about how I got that scar.