A Good Home

Cynthia Reyes

Description

A Good Home is an addictive read, a profoundly emotional book about the author's early life in rural Jamaica, her move to urban North America, and her trips back home, all told through vivid descriptions of the unique homes she has lived in -- from a tiny pink house in Jamaica and a mountainside cabin near Vancouver to the historic Victorian farmhouse she lives in today, surrounded by neighbors who share spicy Malaysian noodles and seafood, Greek pastries and roast lamb, and Italian tomato sauce and wine (really strong wine).

Full of lovingly drawn characters and vividly described places, A Good Home takes the reader through deeply moving stories of marriage, children, the death of parents, and an accident that takes its high-flying author down a humbling notch. Its pages sparkle with stories and reflections on home as:

• A foundation on which to build connections with children, relatives, and friends
• A place to celebrate the joys of elegant design, overflowing gardens (except for the wisteria vine, which cannot be coaxed into blooming), and the sharing of good food
• A wise teacher, showing us who we really were -- and who we really are

When this brave, clear-eyed, and honest book returns, full circle, to the way it began, readers will want to read it all over again.

Sujets

• Canadá
• América del Norte
• Growing Up
• Victorian house
• Möve
• Cabin
• Pink House
• Reflection
• Childhood
• Childbirth
• North America
• Marriage
• Jamaica
• Résidence
• Children
• Moving
• Child
• Canada
• House
• Accident
• United States
• Home
• Vancouver

Informations

• Publié par: BPS Books
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781927483565
• Langue: English

Extrait

a good
HOME
_______________________________
a good
HOME
_____________________________________
A MEMOIR
CYNTHIA REYES
Copyright © 2013 by Cynthia Reyes
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in 2013 by BPS Books Toronto and New York www.bpsbooks.com A division of Bastian Publishing Services Ltd.
Paperback ISBN 978-1-927483-48-0
ePDF ISBN 978-1-927483-57-2
ePub ISBN 978-1-927483-56-5
Cataloguing-in-Publication Data available from Library and Archives Canada.
Cover photo: Hamlin Grange
Cover design: Daniel Crack, Kinetics Design
Text design and typesetting: Kinetics Design, kdbooks.ca
To my family, past, present and future, and to the stranger who led my great-grandmother across the river
Contents
Prologue
A House Imagined
Part One
Island Home
One
The Little Pink House
Two
Grandmother’s House
Three
Paradise Lost
Four
A House Full of Women
Five
Angels Passing Through
Six
Stick a Pin There
Seven
A Home of Our Own
Eight
I See My Grandmother Differently
Nine
Seed Money
Ten
Afternoon Tea
Eleven
Tempest in a Tea Cup
Part Two
Northern Home
Twelve
Inhaling Ice
Thirteen
A Good Time
Fourteen
Mountain Cabin
Fifteen
Enter, Hamlin
Sixteen
The Red Brick House
Seventeen
Have House, Will Garden
Eighteen
Jamaican Dreams
Nineteen
The Painting
Twenty
Paradise Regained
Twenty-one
Betrayal and Loss
Twenty-two
A Secret Garden
Twenty-three
“Solid and Sensible”
Twenty-four
More Important Than Things
Part Three
Visiting Home
Twenty-five
Mama Throws Down the Gauntlet
Twenty-six
A Lot of Grace
Twenty-seven
My Inheritance
Twenty-eight
The Rebel Gene
Twenty-nine
Market Day and a Confession
Part Four
The Blue House
Thirty
Country Road
Thirty-one
Entertaining Angels
Thirty-two
Doubting St. Thomas’
Thirty-three
The Grandmothers Have Spoken
Thirty-four
Reconnecting
Thirty-five
Red Brick House Redux
Thirty-six
A New Church
Thirty-seven
Expect the Unexpected
Thirty-eight
A Wish Granted
Part Five
The Old Farmhouse
Thirty-nine
Mysterious Charms
Forty
Terror
Forty-one
Hamlin Plants Flowers
Forty-two
Homecoming Days
Forty-three
A Thing of Beauty
Forty-four
Setback
Forty-five
Crying Over Red Shoes
Forty-six
Words Fail Me
Forty-seven
Blessings
Forty-eight
Retreat
Forty-nine
St. Martin’s Day
Fifty
All Shall Be Well
Fifty-one
New Wine
Fifty-two
Strength from the Past
Fifty-three
What Remains
Epilogue
Home at Last
 
Acknowledgements
 
Discussion Guide
Prologue
A House Imagined
T he fire glows brightly, the wood floors nearby reflecting its warmth. The burning logs smell of maple and apple wood. Embers spark. Wood ash sifts through the grate.
It’s a quiet evening in our old farmhouse northeast of Toronto.
It should be dark outside, but it isn’t. A thick blanket of white covers the ground, lighting up the garden. High above it, the snow traces the bare limbs of the old apple trees and tops the thick branches of the evergreen spruce. Everything is tranquil, motionless.
The photos on the fireplace mantel, taken several years before, show our mothers and daughters. Smiling, laughing, playing together. Images of happy times, family, love.
The shelves nearby house books, precious books. A copy of The Secret Garden , the inside page containing a few handwritten words to our younger daughter, Lauren, from her sister Nikisha. An old book of poetry that’s been thumbed through at least a hundred times. The large burgundy-covered family Bible, thumbed through less often, mostly in times of leisure or times of trouble. A photo album containing scenes from Nikisha and Tim’s wedding day. A book about Jamaican culture, along with one on Canadian history.
My husband, Hamlin, lies sprawled on the sofa, his face hidden behind the science-fiction book he is reading. At just under six feet tall, he has to bend his legs to fit.
A dog is curled up by his feet. Lauren’s puppy, here for a visit. Julius Caesar, the tiny part-Pug, part-Chihuahua, the little brown dog with the big name. He opens one eye suddenly, making sure we haven’t sneaked out of the room. Satisfied, he closes it again. In a short while, he’s snoring.
“Hard to believe a little thing like this can make such a big sound,” Hamlin says, laughing.
We’ve been in the farmhouse now for five years.
When we first put in our offer to buy the house, in the winter of 2004, I imagined Christmas lights strung through the branches of the tall blue-green spruce trees at the far end of the large back lawn.
I imagined the family dinners, the birthday parties, the beautiful gardens visible from every window, the warm glow of Christmas in every room.
Our daughters called it a Christmas house and were already planning the decorations. Hamlin – determined that this would be our last move as a family – called it our forever house. I called it our grown-up house because of its elegant, traditional rooms.
“When we move into the new house …” we’d say as we packed boxes and crates with items from the kitchen, bedroom, and dining room of our former house.
“When we move into the new house …” we’d say as we put off hosting dinners with friends.
“When we move into the new house …” we’d say as we decided which items of furniture would fit nicely where we were going and which had run their course.
Then, just two weeks before the move, on a mild evening in June, another car crashed into mine.
Much later, I would look back and say: “A thing that’s going to change a person’s whole life shouldn’t be so quick. It should take more than an instant.” But that’s all it took.
Injured from head to toe, on many days I couldn’t walk, talk, or even think. The move into our new home barely registered in my mind. The tall maple staircase, a welcoming feature of the house when we first saw it, was now an obstacle.
The family dinners and parties, the gardening, stringing Christmas lights in the welcoming arms of the spruce trees – none of that took place.
The active, happy times with my husband and daughters did not take place.
Overnight, my life changed so drastically I could neither believe nor accept it.
On days when I descended the stairs but couldn’t climb back up, I stared balefully at them, and at the house around me, giving in to a helpless feeling or two, giving voice to a swear word or three.
I was trapped. Trapped inside an old house whose thick walls blocked out all sounds, creating an unbearably pure silence. The house’s spacious, high-ceilinged, traditional rooms, beautiful and grand when I had first seen them, now intimidated me as my independence diminished.
“What happens to a gardener who can no longer garden? A public speaker who no longer speaks? A writer who no longer writes? A mother who no longer mothers?” I asked my husband on one of those dark days of fury. “Am I still a gardener? Am I still a writer, a public speaker? Am I still a mother?”
I stopped there, not voicing the question I was too afraid to ask him: “Am I still a wife?”
Alone by myself one day, lying in bed, I faced the silent, empty house and asked those questions, all of them this time. The walls stared back.
Before the accident, I had enjoyed a busy, award-winning career. In my spare time, or while travelling to foreign destinations, I had also written more than fifty stories, getting some of them published, filing and forgetting most of them, moving them from house to house along with the furniture. I couldn’t remember them all, but I knew that many were about the unusual homes in which our family lived, the people we met, our unexpected adventures. Some were even about my childhood home.
“We need to find them, Cynthia,” Hamlin said one day, as he walked into the bedroom. He sat at the edge of the bed and patted my injured leg through the bedspread. “We need to find your stories. Can you remember where we might have put them?”
I stared at him. Remember where we had put them? I couldn’t even remember what day it was. But he was determined to find them.
Perhaps in these stories, he thought, I’d be reminded of the woman I was. And perhaps this discovery would help me find the strength and faith I would need to face the uncertain future. This I saw in his eyes, the way some couples do, even before he said the words.
For minutes here, an hour there, Hamlin searched.
Over the course of nearly one year, he found the stories in old computers, ragged boxes, and en