Postcards from Home
“I went to Europe to paint the great cathedrals, but I couldn’t get our home out of my mind …” Amy March. Home, and family is the 1994 version of Little Women, for me.
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What makes a house a home? Well, your home is where your heart is, and that is unique to everyone. For some of us, it’s a place where we feel safe. For others, it’s based on who is waiting there for us when we get home each day, whether that is a pet, or other members of the family. And for others still it all has to do with the memories we take away from our homes, and carry with us throughout our lives.
For my first speech, Madame Chairperson, Fellow Toastmasters, and Valued Guests, I would like to discuss a little bit about my childhood memories of my family’s home, the family traditions we celebrated there, and the community that was our building when I was growing up.
Until I was 12 years old I lived at 170 Sentinel Road, in a corner apartment. This building was situated barely one minute west of Keele St, right in between Finch and Sheppard.
Let me take you into my apartment. I remember that my Mother always encouraged imagination and creativity, and gave my sister and I all the tools we needed to develop our imaginations and our ability to create stories.
My sister and I would often play out on the balcony in our giant Little Tykes Turtle Sandbox for Hours, or under a tent made out of a Carebear blanket and chairs. Under this tent we would often take different pieces of plastic “play food” and have our own picnic there listening to a nature soundtrack of a rainfall in a forest.
We also had Lego, Duplo, and PlayMobil, and we would set up entire towns all over the living room that would last for days, with a PlayMobil mansion we got from Santa one year, hospital equipment, a railway, a farm set, and a Duplo house among other things.
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Our house was also a place for many family gatherings. Easter and Hallowe’en were some of my favourites. We would wake up Easter morning to an apartment filled with chocolate eggs and bunnies that the Easter bunny left for my sister and I to gather up; lining the hallway from our bedroom to the living room, on the kitchen table, by the TV and radio – EVERYwhere!
On Hallowe’en, my cousins would come over, and the adults in the family would hide candy all over the apartment, and then we would search everywhere in the dark, using only flashlights, to try to find all the goodies that were hidden. Those were good times!
Another family tradition was Friday night. Every day of the week would bring health food to our table, but Friday night … we would use this little wooden yellow table, and we would have hot dogs, chips, orange pop, and we could watch any movie we wanted! Luxury is simple when you’re seven years old!
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Taking a step back for a moment, to see the bigger picture, this place that we lived in was more than “just” a building; it was a community. Our building was filled with young families, and very friendly people.
My Mother was friends with the superintendent’s family for years, so we always had a place to go and spend time with friends in our own building whenever we wanted; how grown-up that felt! They had sons that were a little older than us, and They had a Nintendo Super Mario game in their room; a HUGE attraction when you’re about seven years old.
I can remember playing with a lot of the kids in the building all year round. Our backyard was divided into a flat area large enough to get most of a baseball game onto, and along the far side was a strip of graded earth that started low and rose to over six feet at the far end, so that third base was about four feet higher than the rest of the baseball field. In the fall, we would pile leaves at the bottom of the hill, and roll or jump down the hill into the leaves, and all the kids would help to gather up the leaves for that purpose. In the winter, we would slide down the highest section of the hill, and our Father and cousins would make turns and ramps out of the snow and ice, and play the kind of game that all guys play, no matter what age, of who can get up to the fastest speed going down the hill.
Another favorite winter pastime for us was when the superintendent’s husband would plow the snow to the back end of the driveway, (back in the days when we … had snow in winter!), and our Father would take hours carving and shoveling out house or fort designs for us to play in, and they would last until another snowfall meant they needed to be plowed over, or they would melt.
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No matter what the time of year, there was always something going on at 170 Sentinel Road, always some adventure, or new game. It was a huge part of my childhood, and I have many fond memories of it. It also has also painted a picture in my mind of what I want my future home to be like, to feel like, and what memories the next generation might create for themselves there.
Thank you for allowing me the chance to share my own memories with you, here tonight.
