Amazing and unexpected things

Sometimes amazing and unexpected things happen. Today was one of those days. A friend who moved recently asked me to return an item she had borrowed for her. Procrastinator that I am, I have put this errand on my ‘to do’ list for weeks.  The destination is fairly close to where we live and today I decided that, while it wasn’t raining, we should take a walk and cross that point off the list.  We had a lovely walk through neighbourhoods where the smell of lilacs still hung in the air. The door to the office was locked and as I took out my phone to call, someone noticed me and came to the door.  We were both masked and I handed over the bag. She thanked me and Richard and I headed home.

            We walked down a different avenue than on the way there and when we got to the corner of the block where I grew up, I asked Richard if he wanted to take a walk by the old homestead. He said he would follow me, so we walked up the familiar street that has become less familiar with many in-fills replacing the 1950’s bungalows. I counted the original houses on the street and noticed the ones that had been taken down since the last time I walked there. As we approached ‘Mum’s house,’ I noticed a car in the driveway. The doors were open and so was the bottom door to the house. As we drew level with the car, we saw a young woman beside it. We said hello and explained why we were interested in the house.

            She said she had occupied the bottom suite with a girlfriend and then when she and her husband were married, they decided to move back into the suite. Her husband and newborn daughter were in the car. She and her husband were in the process of cleaning the suite because they had bought a house of their own. The suite was empty. I pointed out the ‘mail’ sign and the numbers on the upper part of the house that I had made. She invited us to have a look inside. I’m pretty much a rule-follower and we’ve been very careful about our exposure to others while Covid is on the loose. In this case, I didn’t hesitate. I have had hundreds of dreams in which I entered the house and had a chance to see the changes made since I lived there..

            We took off our shoes at the door and walked through the house explaining what the basement used to be like. Here was my dad’s his first bench with a 2X4 that pulled out like a drawer so he could rest his foot on it to shine his shoes.  Here were the stairs that led to the kitchen with a landing near the top where we fed the cats. The furnace was there. Those steps led from the garage into Dad’s shop. That bulkhead had a piece of inner tube tacked onto the bare heating race because Dad was 6’3” and he kept bashing his head on it when he came into the garage. My study was here where there are now two rooms. There were two bathrooms and in one, the fixtures were in exactly the same place they were when Dad added it in the basement. I talked about how, when my parents built the house, both sets of their parents wanted to know why they had bought a place ‘half-way out to Banff.’ All of us laughed. I related how the streetcar line stopped just behind my parents’ property and how the First Nations folks tied their horses out the back of the property it they wanted to take the streetcar into town. I was too young to remember this but my mother told me the story many times.

            All the while the young woman, whose name I neglected to get, listened with interest and asked questions. Richard mentioned that he had proposed to me in my study 34 years ago. The young woman then suggested if we had a phone, she would take a picture of us in that spot. She assured us that she was symptom free and we assured her we were the same. We walked back into what is now one of the bedrooms, found what we figured was the right spot and Richard got down on one knee. I took his hand and she took three photos. She handed the phone back to Richard with a huge smile and said, ‘That is a sacred spot.’

            The three of us walked to the door, put our shoes back on and waved goodbye. I thanked her and assured her that she had made our day. She said we also had made hers. She said, “It’s always good to celebrate lasting love.” I am so grateful that we took that walk today, that our paths crossed, and that a young woman took 10 minutes out of her busy life, while her husband and newborn daughter waited in the car.  Thank you, Young Woman whose name I didn't think ask for 10 minutes of pure magic.