A beautiful home, built to last
By: William MacDonald - June 15th, 2007
It seemed only appropriate that there was scaffolding all over the church where my mother’s funeral was held. She was, in fact, a builder-a builder of home and family. Her greatest buildings were her children, her grand- and great-grand children, and a loving marriage of sixty years.
As any good builder knows, to do good work you have to have good tools. My mother’s tools were kindness, courage, a dry wit, a sideways glance, patience and a recipe box that would make Julia Child green with envy. But her sharpest tool was love. When asked by one of her children why something she baked tasted so good, she replied, “Because there is love in it.”
Her creative talents lay not only in the kitchen. She made a whole home. As a child of the depression she knew the value of a dollar and always sought the best price for anything she needed. Her determination not to pay more than she had to often left shopping companions and sales clerks slack-jawed and dizzy with amazement.
Like Edmund Hilary, she would return home for her shopping expeditions loaded down with proceeds and would proudly share stories of her exploits and successes while drinking a cup of tea at the kitchen table.
Tea was a major part of my mother’s life. “Is the kettle on?” was the most oft-heard phrase in the house. It was the cure for everything.
Like a cup tea, Mom also had the ability to soothe, warm, refresh and fortify you so that you could carry on. Friends and neighbors would sit at the table and chat for hours over endless cups. Of course, tea never meant just tea. There was always something sweet, like a homemade chocolate chip cookie.
Mom’s calm was perhaps her most marked characteristic. Nothing ever seemed to rattle her. While spending the winter with my father at their home in Florida, a call came from their home in Cobourg, Ont. A very distraught neighbour explained that a water pipe had broken and let tens of thousands of gallons of water rush through their house. It completely destroyed it, and all of the contents.
After explaining all the dire news to my father, the neighbour asked to speak to Mom. She came on the line and said that she couldn’t talk as she was already late for her hair appointment and would call her later. The neighbour was amazed. “But the house is ruined, all your beautiful furniture, paintings, carpets!” she said. “Well, I can’t do anything about that now. But I can get my hair done,” replied my mother.
This “get on with it and don’t complain” attitude was molded in her childhood on the rugged coast of the island of Cape Breton. No matter how far away from it she was. Cape Breton to her was always “home”.
It was a home filled with adoring parents, protective brothers and loving sisters, all of whom watched her board a train with her new husband in 1947 to start a new life in Toronto. She was nineteen when she married the man she loved, having started courting during the war while he was home on leave. Having grown up on the same street, they had known each other from afar. So when he offered her a ride home on his bicycle one day, she accepted. And that was that.
Over the next sixty years they built a relationship that was nothing short of amazing. There was never a cross word or the stomp of a foot. Instead their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces, nephews and many friends enjoyed endless laughter and full stomachs in a beautiful home built on a solid foundation made to last.
Now the time has come for my mother to lay down her tools, knowing that they will be picked up by the generations she has inspired and loved. Letting them build for themselves homes and lives rich in kindness, and wit, courage and devotion, where the value of a dollar is understood, where the kettle is always on, the tea always hot and where there is always something sweet to eat.
Teresa MacDonald
1927-2007