May, 1970

May brings us my brother Matthew’s first birthday. Matthew’s arrival to the family brings the number of people who have birthdays in the same week to three. Sharon’s, Matthew’s and my father’s birthday all fall within five days of each other. In the future, in the interest of economy, these birthdays would be celebrated together rather than separately but as it is Matthew’s first and he gets his own party. Matthew, already well ensconced as the adorable star of the family, is enjoying with a natural ease the attention. And I, being just slightly over two years old, am trying to find a way to make as much noise as possible. At this time my preferred noise-maker is a Fisher Price toy telephone - a peculiar toy shaped like a classic phone but had a face with bobbing eyes and bulbous red wheels. The telephone made a clacking noise when pulled by the receiver and for a period of time this annoying sound was my entrance and exit music. I am told it drove people nuts so it must have pleased a two year old me.

My father had recently returned with the family boat and he was more than a little apprehensive about teaching my mother how to pilot. One couldn’t blame him, his first and only attempt at teaching a family member how to drive ended with him nearly ending up in the harbour and an expensive repair bill. In the the coming weekends he would be occupied with teaching my mother a new vocabulary like headway instead of forward and sternway instead of reverse, call commands and the basics of engine repair. My older siblings remember these weekends very well as every Sunday dinner, mixing with the smell of roast chicken and gravy, was my mother smelling like diesel fuel and hard grease. My mother was very excited about the new things she was learning and was, for the first time since moving to Bay Roche, returning to her normal self. My father admitted that she took to boating easily.

While the family was accepting of my mother learning to pilot, for the townspeople it was an unusual sight to see a woman at the wheel of a boat. And if my mother was hoping to make friends in Bay Roche she was cutting the potential field down considerably. Even my grandmother, a woman used to having to struggle to fit in, felt that my mother was putting herself on the fringe. My mother did not put much weight in the opinions of others and in the end, she would provide a very convenient taxi service for many women in town tired of the limited selection at the local store. They would have no qualms about asking my mother for a lift to Val Bois or other little towns in the immediate area and the men in town, perhaps relieved that someone else could help their wives run errands, seemed comfortable with the idea also. With her Our Boats, Ourselves example my mother brought a little bit of feminism to Bay Roche.

Hit from May, 1970
Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell