Cookie's Wife--and other details

My mother spent the first 4 years of Dad's illness looking after him at home. I remember those years as being very difficult for her, and very hard on her. There were times when my dad would wander at night, and we would drive around looking for her. He would often stagger as if he was drunk, and this was embarrassing for her. Once he vomited grape juice in the kitchen and dining room. There was purple "throw up" on my math text book, and the walls were splattered. Our walls were covered in a green geometric-patterned wallpaper, and years later we would notice the odd speck of purple that wasn't properly washed off. I refused to use my math text, even though Mom cleaned it off. She went to my Grade Two teacher to explain and asked if we could exchange it for another copy. For all I know, she just told me it was switched; but, I believed it to be a new copy, and continued with my math homework.

Just a little side note here: I do not remember any teacher asking me how my dad was doing, or for that matter, how I was doing. Everyone pretended what was happening was normal, even though it was most definitely not normal.

The Doctor told my mother that when it got too much to look after Dad, he would have him admitted to hospital. The way I remember it: Dad woke up and tried to go to the bathroom. He fell and couldn't get up. Mom and my sister tried to move him, but couldn't. In the morning Mom phoned the Doctor; the Doctor sent for an ambulance; Mom got my sister and me ready for school; the ambulance drove passed us while we were walking to school; our dog, Suzy, was very upset, and sat in the window watching the ambulance take my father away. There was no lady with the alligator purse.

I can only imagine how difficult that morning was for my mom.

He never came home again.

Regarding Cookie and what happened to him

My dad was a ship's Captain on the Great Lakes. After I was born, he got his pilot's licence and would pilot foreign ships through the Welland Canal. In the winter he taught Marine Engineering at Georgian College in Owen Sound. I remember my dad as being a huge man, with lots of freckles. So many freckles that he won a freckle contest and his picture was in the paper. He was a jolly man, and liked to laugh with people. He fished, golfed, skidooed, drank beer, and smoked cigars. My Uncle Wink recently told me that on my Dad's Latin exam during his graduating year from high school he wrote "audios Huarache's, the steamboats are calling". I don't know if he translated it into Latin or not. My Dad's cousin Ray said that it was his impression that my dad was very intelligent and could have done anything. It might have upset my grandfather who was a Doctor in Wiarton Ontario, that his eldest son did not follow in his medical footsteps. A sailor? Honestly, I think the water called his name. Apparently my Grandmother's family came from Island Magee in Northern Ireland; and that our ancestors were sea-faring people. Perhaps sailing was in his blood more than we realized.


When my mom and dad were engaged some guy started an awful rumour about my dad. Said he was swept overboard by a cable. My mother said it was horrible waiting to get confirmation about it as my grandfather dealt with trying to locate the ship. Grandpa gave Mom a tranquilizer which she said didn't work at all--it just made her more upset. When they discovered it was a rumour, my mom's brothers had a few "words" with the jerk who started it all. I wonder what he had against my Dad? Didn't everybody love him? As a kid, I just couldn't imagine that.

In the early '90s I worked as a waitress for a few months in a little artsy cafe in Owen Sound. I was a terrible waitress, but I do remember very clearly hearing a Stan Rogers song while wiping tables called "White Squall", and there is a line in it that went "a red-eyed Wiarton girl lies staring at the wall, 'cause her lover's gone into the white squall." It was one of those moments when I could have dropped a tray of dishes. It froze me inside. Could Stan Rogers have been in Wiarton during the time of the rumour? Did he hear about it?But Mom said Wiarton had a lot of sailors back then. They were a dime a dozen.

In 1972 I was 4 years old, my sister was 8. Dad was felled by a mosquito that left him with a brain injury. The virus he contracted was called "Encephalitis", and I hated that rogue mosquito ever since. Dad's symptoms were high fever and headaches. The story goes that when my mom and dad's friend Maryann was having her third child, he told her he was simply experiencing sympathy pains. My mother looked after Dad at home for a couple of years, then sent him to the long-term ward at the old General and Marine Hospital. He was only 36 when he "took sick".

I'll write more later, this is enough for now.

What's in a Name?

Coming up with a good blog title befuddled me. It raised all kinds of questions--how do I want people to view me? Should it have something to do with me being a mom of 3 boys? Should it somehow contain my love of writing and big huge dream to be a published children's author. Perhaps it should have something to do with the teacher-librarian side of me? Or, maybe it should focus on the fact that I'm an Island Girl now! Oh, and then there's the whole trying to lose weight and get in shape part of my life. . . .

What the heck do I want my blog to be about? And, does it have to have just one focus?

I chose the name "Cookie's Daughter" because for so many years, I felt that first and foremost I was my father's daughter. Who my dad was and what happened to him, and what his life was like really did shape who I am. I think it did, anyway. My sister might disagree. My husband might disagree. But for so many years I felt that I lived in the shadow of Him.

I'll write a little about my dad's story in my next entry.