Grandma and Grandpa were here all through our childhood, for as long as I can remember. My dad visited both faithfully and cheerfully, every Sunday evening, also for as long as I can remember. He would always bring some or all of us with him. Mum came sometimes. Sometimes she did not. Dad would also frequently stop in on the way home from work, to drop off, check up, and just generally perform his filial duties. Also we all visited every Christmas Eve in the afternoon, just before going back across the river for our annual skate on the frozen surface of Whitemud Creek.
Things were quiet at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Grandpa Duncan was not given to many words, or any displays of affection. Grandma Duncan, perhaps marked by this, spoke mildly, and maybe tentatively. Occasionally she would speak a bit sharply, or wearily.
Grandpa was given to small contentious, even ill-tempered outbursts. Grandma would occasionally push back a bit, just for the sake of asserting herself a little. It was not nearly abusive, or alarming, this manner of theirs. It could be disconcerting, though, and uncomfortable.
My dad absorbed and inherited something of this manner. As did his sister, Shirley! And us too, in varying degrees. It was just the way we discussed things. My mum didn't much care for it, and would occasionally say as much. It wasn't until much, much later, that I recognized this habit of countering what other people said, even if it didn't need countering, as being a real problem. It came from seeing things very precisely, and sometimes inflexibly. Nothing terribly wrong with that. But it could also lead to conversation as lightly pitched battle, or even interrogation, to gnat-straining, or a degree of presumption. It could lead to discouragement, or weariness.
There was a rumour, an oft-spoken notion, that Grandpa Duncan was closed and occasionally abrupt to hide a tender heart, and a his-generation self-consciousness about exposing it. Is this true, or is it a small perjury, designed to make a presence out of something that really, unfortunately, was only an absence? I don't know.
My dad and his sister Shirley were given to the manner of conversation that I just described. They were not, however, given to emotional reticence, or withholding expressions of love, affection or approval. In this way they were very successful in surpassing their own parents, in overcoming, to a most considerable degree, shortcomings that probably couldn't be helped anyway.
My Grandma Duncan had an older brother, who died in infancy. For that reason and also in her own right she was a much beloved child, doted over by affectionate parents. My Grandpa Duncan was very badly, even brutally treated by an unkind stepfather, for years and years. It is reputed that he tried to defend his several siblings from this stepfather's ministrations, and that being just a lad, he was only semi-successful in doing so.
(We can't quite for sure confirm that story. Grandpa would never talk about anything in his past, or anything at all, hardly. There is also a story that he was drafted by the Chicago Blackhawks, but had to stay home and work. True? Cool! True? Cool!)
Closer up now. Right through that front door there was a matt where we left our shoes. Just further their telephone was wired to the wall. It was in this little space that we first saw baby Sister Lisa, just home from the hospital. She was snugly wrapped in a baby quilt, and for all that I was only three years old, I remember very well that she looked at us, sweet and smilint.
The living room is on the left, through that bow window. When we visited we would sit there, looking at each other. We would play quietly on the floor with the noble Bowser, who also arrived when we were small. He was actually the big brother to our own dog, Cookie. Sometimes Grandpa would tell Bowser that Mum (Grandma) had just cooked them a very good meal indeed.
We would go down the hall to the bathroom and select some of the Archie comics arrayed in the rack there. That's the window to the right of the front door there. Sometimes we would sit in there for a while. Or we'd come back out to the living room. While the older folks spoke, or sat silently together, we would read, and then trade comics, and then read some more. Grandma also took the Readers' Digest. When we were tired of comics we would quietly work on our word power.
Small dining room, straight back. There was, predictably, a dining room table. Grandma was often doing jigsaw puzzles there. Hard ones, with thousands of tiny pieces. Tap, tap, she went, with relentless patience and industry. We would often play cards on that table too, usually gin rummy. Much has been made of Grandma Duncan's creative relationship with the rules of that game. This is a fact that is beyond any disputing. Less remembered, perhaps, is how often, and for how long, she was willing to play with us, and how kindly she did so. Also, our mild-mannered grandmother would quiet often just pick up the entire discard pile. A couple of you kids have inherited this bold trait, without even knowing where it came from.
Against the inside wall in that dining room there was a tall floor to ceiling shelf, full of Grandma's unaccountable and quite hilarious collection of true crime books. For some reason she had a real taste for murder. We would sometimes sit there quietly, looking in amazement at all manner of gruesome photographs.
In addition to being so bloody-minded Grandma Duncan was also, just as much, a devoted, life-long Lutheran church lady. Another small room upstairs served as her craft room. (Does that fact say something unexpected, something supportive and indirectly affectionate about or rather from Grandpa?) Her piano was there, and on it she played church hymns with a remarkable barrelhouse left hand. Here she knitted and crocheted, creating a pretty formidable number of well-fashioned quilts, blankets and afghans. I took a lovely nap under one of those afghans after dinner every Sunday afternoon, all the way through my teenage years. It was especially delicious when there was snow outside, which was very, very often.
Grandma would also paint in this room, canvas after canvas of very creditable landscapes of Alberta prairie and mountain scenes, for years and years.
Around the corner from the dining room was a small kitchen. It had a bread basket on the counter that was, for some reason, really fascinating to us. Probably because we wanted to be fed. Apropos, there was also a cookie jar. Fig Newtons, the cream-filled with that bright circle of jam in the middle. Just further along was a screen door, and stairs down to the small-ish, very nicely proportioned back yard. In later years Grandpa lost his leg, incident to the long-term near-life-long effects of smoking. He withdrew within himself, even more, though you almost sensed, once in a while, a caring question from him, a softer answer, a tinge of caring.
Grandpa lived for several years after that operation, which actually helped him, forced him to quit smoking. He spent much of that time in their, now his bedroom, which is the last window to the right, under the awning. Sister Susan was unusually and maybe uniquely successful in engaging Grandpa in conversation, usually in that same room. Or, it may be, that she just took it upon herself to talk, whether or not Grandpa said anything back. We used to say that she talked his leg off, which isn't funny at all. He must have been gratified, probably touched that she took the trouble to do that so cheerfully, and so frequently. Or maybe, as I think was sometimes true with men of a certain generation, he was just overwhelmed. Kids can be a mysterious set of energies and enthusiasms.
When he was quite old, and when Grandpa was quite old too, noble Bowser collapsed out there in the back yard. Grandma was out. Grandpa came around in his wheelchair, looking for him. He saw him, through the screen door. He got out of his chair, crawled labouriously down the stairs, pulled his dog to him, and held him until he died.
