We walked through a new neighbourhood today, Fresco and I, while Trombone was at preschool. Not new, just new to us. I usually drive through it on my way somewhere else. So do most other people, I am guessing, as we only saw one other pedestrian, an older South Asian man walking slowly and pausing every few feet to look up at the trees.
I walked up to Edmonds Street from the preschool, which is West of there by a few blocks. As we strolled along this very high car-traffic street, I noticed the awning for the “Dancin’ Stars Studio” and suddenly remembered that there had been a targeted shooting that killed a guy dead in the back alley behind that studio. Just last week!
(The news didn’t mention the business down the block, something called “EYI,” whose windows were mirrored and which, when googled, is revealed as “Essentially Yours Industries,” a distributor of, among other things, a weight loss supplement called “Calorad.” I think that is far more intriguing. Mostly because of the mirrored windows.)
Everyone knows a gangster shouldn’t return to the scene of the crime, but I still looked sideways at the dance studio as we went by. Quickly.
Turns out I should have been more nervous about the Mohawk Gas Station on the corner. We often purchase our gas there but we pay at that pump and I never thought about how secluded the woman (it is usually a woman) is who works in the gas booth. It is just a booth; the store that sells things is across the parking lot from her. She has no co-workers. She just sits there, essentially in the middle of a major intersection, waiting for her shift to be over. I am guessing.
Today as we waited for the light to change, I heard shouting and swearing and saw her chasing a guy out of her booth. He deftly dodged three lanes of traffic and disappeared on the other side of the road. She shook her fist at him and went back into her booth, hopefully to call the police, but who knows.
I walked for another couple of blocks, looking for a bakery to get a muffin because on preschool days, I can somehow get a snack together for Trombone but not for me. Inevitably I drop him at school and realize I’m starving. Two things are happening: 1. I think I am more serious about his snack because he has a Spiderman backpack and 2. I am thinking in the back of my head that I could just go home during preschool. Except I never do. I always do something else. Tuesday I went to the mall. Did I eat while I was there? No I did not.
Do I need a Spiderman backpack? I don’t really think so.
But today I had Fresco and he is a lot harder than my brain to placate with “yeah yeah we’ll get a snack in a minute” and even over the roar of traffic I could hear him complaining he was hungry so after finding no bakeries, I went into 7-11. It smelled like a public bathroom in the 7-11. I don’t know why. I don’t want to know why. I bought a muffin anyway. I almost bought an energy bar but it had a best before date of June 2009 and I’m not paying for expired energy.
Fresco thrilled with the muffin (banana chocolate chip, so, cupcake might be more accurate) we continued along Edmonds and I promised Fresco we’d find a playground on our way back but first I really needed to get to Value Village. There is a Value Village at the end of Edmonds, you see. Edmonds and Kingsway. It is not the best I’ve been to (that one is in Chilliwack) or the worst (North Road, Burquitlam) but it’s good enough.
We walked in the door and I spotted what I wanted. Hanging at the front of all the wretched pre-fab halloween costumes, a small child’s fuzzy white jacket for $1.49.
Fresco is going to be a sheep for halloween, you see. He says “baa” really well.
Then I set off looking for curly headgear in white but he refused to keep any of the wigs on (the one that stayed on longest made him look like a mini-Amadeus. That is next year’s costume) so that was a lost cause. I did pick up a snowy white tuque, though, which will do double-duty as, well, a tuque. I am not frivolous. I am buying Sensibly.
Another toddler coat caught my eye, a lovely deep red with fuzzy lining, just Trombone’s size; another $1.49! What the heck? I think they were so cheap because: their labels said “Baby Gap,” but closer examination revealed fake Hong Kong Baby Gap (I have fallen for this before and tried on Fake Hong Kong Gap Pants in my size that barely cover my knees) but obviously if I am at Value Village I don’t give a hooter’s beak about the label. $1.49 is the right price for something that will be worn for 5 months.
We strolled back along Edmonds for a while, which seems more palatable and less criminal closer to Kingsway (counter-intuitive, this, since Kingsway has always rung with criminality to me but the area around Edmonds has been Developed and Re-Branded so it looks shinier these days) – we passed the excellent Simba’s Grill and a few Thai places that looked good, as well as the Balkan European Foods Supplier. We detoured into the Eastburn Community Centre’s back yard, which had a play structure but it was for much bigger children so I enjoyed seven or eight heart attacks while I watched Fresco lurch around in his cumbersome rubber boots, faking me out by pretending to sit on the slide and then standing up again and then slipping on the wet wood and then we moved on.
There was a big park for running through so we did some of that. A man was feeding birds, so we watched as pigeons, crows, and seagulls arrived in great, squawking groups to enjoy tasty, tasty seed. Fresco thought about chasing some of them but was distracted by the last of our muffin.
We continued on a side street, Fresco holding my hand, me pushing the empty buggy. He loves to walk as much as his older brother prefers to ride. It is funny and sad to see a 3.5 year old walking while his 1.5 year old brother pushes the stroller.
We passed two blocks of stucco, ’80s houses. Then we came to two blocks of elder care homes. I was struck by how sad they look, even from the outside. That institutional brick, the boxy windows spaced exactly the same distance apart. The window coverings were pulled back, so we could see the fluorescent lighting, the cupboards built in to the walls and the colour of those walls, all of which screamed Hospital, not Home.
Fresco wanted to go in but I convinced him to keep picking up wet leaves instead. I stuck one red leaf in his new white tuque and he looked like an unofficial (VERY UNOFFICIAL, don’t sue me or put me in jail, pls) Olympic mascot.
We crossed back to the preschool side of Canada Way and then walked along one of the residential streets. On the East side of the street, the houses were all older, with big, grassy, treed lots. Some of them were really run down. One of them had six cars parked on the lawn. On the West side of the street, the houses were all new. All were variations on the (late ’90s?) earth-tone stucco theme. One had the strangest little chimney-looking pillars sticking out of its roof; none of which pillars was an actual chimney. That house also had a Very Grand front yard, which was not a yard at all in that it was paved with stones and had a fountain.
I have never seen the stereotypes of East Side and West Side so clearly expressed, with only a road between them. It was like the East side of the street was on an ancient burial ground or something. I did notice that the West side was on a pipeline, so maybe those people had more money to renovate because they’d paid less for their properties?
Or it could be tied to drugs and gangs. Or drug gangs. Or gangs of drugs.
We turned West to the school and I noticed Fresco, by now riding in the buggy, in a telltale sleep slump. He caught a few minutes of delicious, fresh air sleep before I had to take him into the classroom of yelping three year olds to find his brother. Who took advantage of Fresco’s sleepy stage to get a good, long hug in before we headed back to the car and home to our neighbourhood – where you can’t turn around and touch the ground without hitting a park or a grocery store. I don’t know how we chose such a good family neighbourhood to live in before we even knew what kinds of things make a good family neighbourhood. But I am grateful for our dumb luck.
