Memories: Our Home Oasis

by SHARYN ANDERSON
(Kitchener On)

The thing about being the oldest child and a girl in a family of seven children is that I remember from the time I was 9 yrs. old - almost everything my younger brothers and sisters did at their very young age. When I tell them about this or that and the other thing, they all say oh yes that's right and how can u remember all that you tell us? I was older and able at 9 to remember and all of them could relive their young lives through me and my memories...

When my mom married Ken and had 3 more children, we moved from a house at 1 end of the street to a house at the other end of the same street. This move was like night and day, why, well I'll tell you why. On the east end of the street was a junk-yard, and factory that made caskets, there was a grocery store which the city had torn down and built a fire-hall, that was really noisy! And there was another factory almost beside our bedroom window, factory workers coming and going from the site would wake us up at early morning, parking or driving cars in or out of the parking lot.

Mom and Ken were renting this house on the east end, nice house, just on the wrong property! The only good thing about the east end was that there was a brand new dairy queen on the corner! SO When mom told all of us we were moving to the west-side of the street and that they had bought a new house for our family, I remember we were all very very happy – the house was all by itself, serene, beautiful, set on a beautiful piece of property, across from the park, where we could play and mom never had to worry about where we were, she could see us from the front porch!

There was a river over the hill where we all went swimming, the water in the river way back then was so crystal clear, it was like living at a lake, living there was always so very wonderful for all of us! Our Friends would come down to the west side and join in the fun, we would go across the street from monday to friday and join all the other kids at the park for arts and crafts days, every week all summer long, what fun we had! We would climb the trees and we all got together and made a fort, oh what fun we all had those summers when we were all so very young!

On Saturday or Sunday whenever we all got together, and if it wasn't raining, we would play tin-can-cricket, oh what fun for everyone! Then we would all put on our swim suits and go swimming for the rest of the day. What good times they were~~ mom would prepare family bbq's hot dogs and hamburgers and at the right time of year, we would have corn on the cob (yummy)and a bond fire.


In the winter, parks recreation would make an ice skating rink for all the children and we could skate or the boys would play hockey together, what fun! The rink was so close we could put our skates on and walk over to the park and spend hours there just having fun. Mom would have hot chocolate ready for all of us when we got back to our nice warm cozy home!

Yes those were the days of having a ball and it never cost mom a penny to see that we, all of her children were very happy when we were very young and growing up. Yes I remember and if my brothers want to hear it over and over , I will tell them how moving from the eastside to the westside made the big difference in all our lives!

God bless mother, a real inspiration to us all!

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