A Trip to California (Part One)

The year is not completely clear to me, but I do remember the right moments. My father had passed away at the end of 1983, a few days before Christmas, and my mother went through this loss with a determination to live her life as fully as possible. We moved not too far from our old place into a larger home with a larger backyard, basement and more rooms. My own room was the smallest one and had obviously been used for a baby boy (the bottom half of the wall was wallpaper with Paddington Bears in different poses). I did not care about how childish the room was or looked; it was a new place and a new start for us. And there would be more.


In the summer of 1984, a close friend of my mother came to visit us. Jennifer had worked with her in a nursing home for many years before she was seriously injured in a car accident and confined to a wheelchair. I wonder now how she was able to make her way around our new home so easily (there were many levels separated with stairwells). She had a very advanced wheelchair with a motor and a lever to control her motion. Her husband, whose name I cannot remember, was a strong man who helped her when he could. They also had a nurse who bathed and fed her. Finally, they had a younger daughter. Nathalie was a nightmare for a slightly older boy who had a growing interest in girls but no way of approaching them beyond awkward gestures and silly comments.

They now lived in California, in a city called Ontario. It was in the desert, not too far from the heat and aridity of the famous Death Valley area. I did not think it strange at the time that we had guests with such divergent backgrounds: Jennifer was black and West Indian; her husband was a black American with a deep southern accent; the nurse was a white woman who sounded like someone from the Midwestern states; and Nathalie was pure California to me, or what I would think of that state (I had not yet seen the film “Valley Girl,” a 1983 release, but I could guess what it would be like). The fact that they were now in another Ontario was a pleasant symmetry that would stay in my mind as we returned to their place in the West.