MICHELLE THOMPSON/The Globe and Mail
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With a blow to the aged asphalt of Highway 19, the dining room set took a slow-moving spill, crashed and splintered on the side of the road. A beautiful set of antiques lost their lives that day, but it was by no means the first time the family furniture had met an untimely demise.
The poorly shackled load, the bulky behemoth behind the car, was simply a sign that my family was on the move again. We picked up salvageable remnants, checked and retied the load, piled the broken pieces neatly on the side and carried on. Got to keep moving. We were unfazed, as this was a pattern.
Not one move could be recorded in the family archives as incident-free. Some were caused by sheer incompetence, others by the haste or the timing of our 29 moves as a family.
I have just experienced my 45th move – and no, neither I nor my parents are or were in the military. As I write this, I await my 46th move – and, irony of all ironies – I want it. I need it. But this time I can't move.
A little history:
My father was a high-school teacher who had bipolar disorder. He was excellent in his profession, but his disease would get the better of him in a staff-room discussion, and then he'd be seen checking out teaching ads in the paper. In the 1960s, a manic episode resulted in us moving from Ontario's Wellington county, where we'd had various homes in Elora and Fergus, west to Perth county.
In the small town of Milverton, we moved into a lovely, shaded, two-storey home owned by the school board. But just after father had settled in to his role as principal, the board decided to double the size of the school, which meant our house would have to be moved.
We prepared a new foundation and hired a house-moving company, but unfortunately the movers failed to notice the house was double bricked. On the day U.S. president John Kennedy was shot, the report and shudder of a house splitting and crumbling doubled the impact of that tragic day.
We moved into a windowless apartment on the main street and set to work finding a prefab home that would fit on the preconstructed foundation. We moved in. And then father had a run-in with the son of the school board chairman. The town took sides, and our house was pelted daily with eggs, tomatoes and any other missile available.
I encouraged a strike at school in support of Dad, and he had a heart attack while teaching Hamlet as the school board picketed his classroom.
While he was still in hospital, Mom and I applied for a guidance counsellor position for him in Eastern Ontario to get us out of Dodge. He got the job, and we moved to Brockville. That was Dec. 31 of my Grade 13 year.
We moved into a townhouse, but a young kid threw a rock at our new 1967 Mercury, and we moved into an historical home on the main street. The owners said we could have it ad infinitum, the only proviso being that an ineligible daughter might marry, and if so it would be hers (this said with resignation). Of course, she married the next year.
We moved in to "Ontario's first bungalow" in Brockville. That lasted a year, and then we moved to a cottage-like home on the river that never warmed to above
10 C in winter. Next stop was a home outside the city that matched the yellow of our car. That was followed by a move back into the city, three doors down from the historical home.
Because these last two moves occurred during my university years, I'm not sure what precipitated them. Once, I came home for a family visit by train, and had to call from the station master's phone to ask where I currently lived and how to get there.
For my parents, Belleville came next. As for me, I spent the next years in student residences while attending the University of Waterloo, then moved back to the city where I was born, Toronto. There, I went through a marriage and a relationship with partners as peripatetic as my parents.
My most recent move, to a house I had built for my retirement years, was to Feversham, Ont., a hamlet in the Grey Highlands of south-central Ontario. This home has challenged my energy and skill set, and because of health problems I need to move to a city with good medical facilities. But now I can't move.
I survived last winter, one of the worst in recorded history (nobody in Ontario will argue that one), with roads constantly impassable, and I'm not anxious to repeat the lonely and frigid drudgery.
But my house has been on the market for seven months. This brand new, custom-built house won't sell. There are 17 houses for sale in this village of only three streets, so I'm not alone in my dilemma.
I have made lovely friends here, and have put away some bush cords of wood as I deal with the inevitable. But I can't get past the irony.
As I write this, geese are forming their pragmatic "Vs" and heading south. I, apparently, am heading nowhere. I'd better get cozy and try to adjust to Dorothy's mantra – "There's no place like home."
But if I do get to pack for move number – oh, I forget – I promise to pack securely this time.
Jane Crist lives in Feversham, Ont.