It was a day I’d long dreaded. I knew it was coming, but I didn’t really think it would ever arrive.
I slowly made my way, room by room, through Mom’s old farmhouse, each one presenting me with a nostalgic slideshow of remembrances. Birthdays. Weddings. Christmastime blizzards, feeling all cozy inside. Racing up and down the narrow stairwell that led from the upstairs where the bedrooms and living room were, to the basement where we did most of our day-to-day living. The ancient Maytag washing machine, the kind with a manual wringer and buddha belly tub, that made a hypnotic swishing noise as it agitated the laundry. Steam billowed from the thing like a locomotive chugging uphill, filling the house with a soapy, Javex-tinged smell. Brother Bill in his bedroom (we each got our own once our much-older sister Joanne moved out) his nose always in a book; not the fun kind. Joanne (before she moved out) arguing with someone, could be anyone, ‘cause that’s just who she was (and still is). Watching TV late at night, hoping Mom wasn’t about to stomp in to declare it bedtime. Aside from mealtimes, I don’t remember my father being inside the house very much. He was an outside kind of guy, a farmer through and through.
Passing by the living room’s picture window I saw my friend, Errall, whipping around the yard on a John Deere garden tractor. She was supposedly mowing the lawn, but I wasn’t convinced she knew what she was doing. The grass was in desperate need of cutting and she’d volunteered. I think it had more to do with giving me time alone in the house than any real desire or ability to do yardwork of any kind.
My favourite memory of all was when Dad would pile us into the Fargo quarter-ton on a hot, sunny Sunday afternoon, and head off for a family picnic. The rattletrap truck would grumble and grump over dirt road paths created by hoofprints of plodding milk cows made twice-daily over decades of peregrinations, pasture to barn and back again. Our destination, about a mile or so (we didn’t use kilometres back then) from the farmstead, was a secluded, grassy meadow hidden between two groves of trees and next to a groundwater slough. The slough was home to tadpoles and leeches and other slimy creatures, endlessly fascinating to a curious young lad like me.
Mom would spread old blankets on the ground so we kids could lay on our backs and make pictures out of clouds. We drank high-calorie grape or orange Kool-Aid and fashioned daisy chains from sweetgrass stalks. Before we knew it, the makings of a feast would emerge from a collection of recycled ice cream and sour cream plastic containers: tuna and chicken salad sandwiches, chunks of Ukrainian sausage and hard-boiled eggs, seeded grapes, ripe peaches, and sweet strawberries. As a final treat, Mom would surprise us with homemade sugared donuts or cake slathered with sticky icing. After lunch, Dad hauled out baseball mitts and a ball black from age and farm living, and the five of us would play catch for what seemed like hours in the sun-dappled field of wild grasses next to the slough.
Only when the afternoon grew old was it time for the main event: the wiener roast. Dad and Bill would build a fire from dried-up sticks and lightning-cracked logs that Joanne and I had scrounged from the woods. Mom pre-buttered a dozen hot dog buns and mixed together the fresh-from-the-garden ingredients for her spectacular potato salad, which she’d kept cool by immersing them in the shaded waters of the slough in watertight Tupperware containers. The most important task was finding the perfect wiener roast sticks. The ash and birch switches needed to have enough heft to hold a wiener aloft above the fire without drooping, but be slender enough to impale the pale pink tubes of mmm-mmm goodness without splitting them apart.
While Dad enjoyed a Pilsner beer—also slough-cooled—we roasted his hotdog and ours. Mom poured the rest of us tall plastic glasses of frothy, homemade root beer, her mother’s recipe, and handed out paper plates—the only time she ever allowed their use—with healthy dollops of potato salad and a dill pickle already in place. And then, when the dogs were bursting at the seam and dripping their juices into the fire, we’d plop them into the waiting buns, squirt ketchup and relish and bright yellow mustard all over them and dine al fresco, prairie style, as an impossibly large sun dipped into a multi-hued horizon. It was absolutely, excruciatingly glorious. My memories of these picnics are so vivid you’d expect they were something we did all of the time. But years later, Joanne, ever the realist, burst my bubble, claiming they only happened a handful of times.
As I descended the well-worn carpeted steps to the farmhouse basement, I reflected on how food had been Mom’s love language. More often than not, you could find her in the downstairs kitchen, stirring and frying, chopping and peeling, boiling and sautéing, as if battalions of ravenous people were expected to show up at any moment. And when they did, she’d be ready. God forbid anyone leave her home hungry. She’d never forgive herself. I regarded the drop ceiling tiles above the stove and imagined them home to a cornucopia of delicious odours absorbed over decades of cooking and baking: aromatic butter, garlic and onions in a frying pan, perogies plumping as they bobbed in hot water, thick, rich soups and stews, savoury cream sauces, golden fried chicken cutlets, the sweet sugary notes of cinnamon buns, poppyseed cake, and Rice Krispie squares. Scenes of our family sitting around the simple wooden table flashed through my mind like a kaleidoscope. Five of us. Four of us. Three of us. Then only two. And finally, just Mom.
When Dad died, everyone—us kids, friends, neighbours, relatives—expected Mom to move off the farm. Perhaps into a small house in Howell, or even a condo in Saskatoon, or maybe in with Joanne or Bill and his brood of ready-to-be-spoiled children. Instead, she stayed where she was and, except for renting out the farmland, continued on as if nothing had changed. She grew a garden that could feed Prince Edward Island; kept chickens, a few pigs, a milk cow, and a dog and some cats; and maintained a house meant for a family, even though its residents had dwindled down to one.
My mother is as Ukrainian as a bowl of borscht, with a thick accent to match. Just shy of five feet tall and leaning toward stocky, she sports a tightly permed head of grey hair, horn-rimmed spectacles, and a face that can be sweet as pie or sour as… well, as sour cream. Mom goes to church. She gardens. She cooks to excess. To her, family is everything.
Of the three of us Quant kids, Bill is the most respectable. He’s organized, prepared, controlled, a solid kind of guy, even as a kid. His entire life had been planned out in his head before he was twelve. He knew what he wanted to do for a living (accounting), where he wanted to live (Winnipeg, a province over), who he wanted to marry (a beautiful blonde who’d choose to stay at home to raise their family), and how many kids they’d have (four). He envisioned the salary he’d make, the suits he’d wear, the cars he’d drive, the house he’d live in, the vacations he’d take, the church he’d attend, the sports he’d play, the fishing he’d do. Now that he had all of that, his new ambition was to secure a version of the same thing for each of his children. Whether they wanted it or not.
My sister, however, is a whole other story. If there’s a polar opposite of Bill, that would be Joanne. She thrives in disorganization, balks against structure and authority, enjoys defying expectations, and loves a last minute. I am somewhere in the middle.
My name is Russell Quant. I’m… ah, geez… fifty-four years old. When the heck did that happen? For the past twenty years or so I’ve run a private detective firm in the Canadian prairie city of Saskatoon in the province of Saskatchewan. A little over a dozen years ago I took on a partner, JP (short for Jean-Paul) Taine, and renamed the firm Quant & Taine. It was nepotism. I married JP a couple of years later. Which means this year is our tenth anniversary. I need to remember that.
When I first hung out my shingle, Saskatoon was a city of 215,000 people. Recent estimates have the metropolitan area sitting at over 280,000. The city has grown and things have changed, a lot, in a relatively short period of time. We’re more ethnically, culturally, and economically diverse than ever. The skyline changed forever with the long-awaited development of the River Landing cultural and entertainment hub, which includes the famed-architect-designed Remai Modern Art Museum and the Nutrien Tower, the province’s tallest office tower. World-class restaurants, arts and entertainment options abound.
To some, Saskatchewan will always be a fly-over province. But more than ever, young people stay in the province to live, pursue an expanding array of career options, and raise a family, and an ever-growing number of newbies and former runaways come here (or return) to do the same thing—despite a winter season that lasts longer than whatever it was that was going on in Game of Thrones.
With growth comes growing pains. Home prices have gone up. Economic disparity and our unhoused population have grown. The city’s downtown core suffers serious safety and appeal problems. Truth and reconciliation continues to struggle in the transition from promise to action. Crime statistics sway the wrong direction. That last bit, however, like it or not, keeps Quant & Taine in business.
Speaking of business: while JP was away on a case that took him to the west coast, I’d taken a couple of days off to attend to this dreaded day. I was doing a walk-through of Mom’s house. My goal was to figure out how to sort through more than fifty years of never throwing anything away except for potato peels and dust motes.
In her bedroom I found a stack of colourful hats with decorative netting and satin bows, and shoeboxes of high heels last worn in the sixties that would make any drag queen salivate. In Dad’s old office were two complete sets of Encyclopedia Britannica, every gas and power bill he’d ever grumbled over, an impressive collection of narrow ties and tie clips, armbands (which I think were meant to keep your shirt sleeves from riding down), and stacks of paper road maps that covered the entire western half of Canada.
Downstairs, the pantry and not one, not two, but three full-size freezers were jam-packed with enough preserves and frozen foods to feed the world during the next pandemic. Unlabeled boxes throughout the house revealed used clothing, Harlequin romance novels, old comic books (I’d have to get those assessed), enough second-use plastic containers to choke a small country’s eco-system, vintage and homemade Christmas decorations, tinsel and shiny plastic garlands, and an assortment of toys and board games. Mom likely thought she was saving those for grandkids. Alas, it was not to be. Joanne and I had no children, and Bill’s were raised in another province. Bad luck, really. You’d think out of three kids, you’d be guaranteed at least a couple of local grandbabies to spoil. I’d never thought about how this must have made her feel. Disappointed? Sad? Probably.
And then there were the photographs. Loads of them. Old black-and-whites, many of people I did not recognize, and some newer coloured ones, including faded polaroids. Some were kept in boxes once meant for Christmas cards or mail-order purchases. Did they not rate placement in a photo album? Or had she simply given up on organizing them? I found stacks of the albums in cupboards, under chiffoniers and beds, on closet floors. There were ring binders, self-adhesive, dry-mount, slip-in and scrapbook style. The thought of digitizing the entire collection gave me a headache. But how long would it take to cull through it to select the ones I wanted to keep? Could I bring myself to throw them out? Bill would say: toss them. Joanne would protest loudly, then take the next ten years cogitating over what to do with them, before “losing them” in one of her moves.
One thing Mom did not relegate to storage boxes was kitchen stuff. Every pot, pan, spoon, fork, bowl and plate, every salt and pepper shaker—why were there so many of them, and who bought shakers in the shape of lambs?—had its place, piled and stuffed into a cupboard, along with re-used plastic bags, tinfoil pie plates, and those paper cups used for baking cupcakes. Every dull, rusted knife, every used-it-once nutcracker, every threadbare dishtowel and chipped serving platter had a home. What there wasn’t, were recipe books. All Mom’s recipes either lived in her head or were handwritten on a shard of Kleenex box cardboard or scrap of foolscap.
As the day progressed, WTF moments were abundant, both the cringey and funny variety. A litterbox shoved under a shelf (the last housecat died five years ago). Sealed jars of water (not vodka, I checked). A bright red wig on a Styrofoam mannequin head in full makeup. A coffee tin full of pennies (I should probably get those assessed too). A Yamaha organ still in it’s box. A mystery container at the bottom of one of the freezers, labelled “Mary’s chicken 1979” (I am NOT opening that).
In need of a break, I settled into the recliner chair Mom favoured when watching “my shows,” AKA soap operas. From there I had an excellent view of Errall circling the yard on the lawn tractor like a drunken magpie. After enjoying a good chuckle, my eyes landed on a ceramic Christmas tree sitting atop the TV cabinet (even though it was early May). My mind flew back to the day, over twenty years ago, when Mom decided to stay with me over Christmas (a first) and shocked me with unexpected plans.
She pretty much knocked me out of my socks when she said in her thick Ukrainian accent, “I tink about leaving da farm.”
I was astounded. Dad had been gone for a while, but Mom’s health was good and, still in her early sixties, there was no reason to think she wouldn’t be able to go on living on the farm for many more years. Sure, my siblings and I worried about her being alone in a somewhat remote location, but we also accepted that she was an adult and capable of making her own choices in life. She’d told us she’d sooner risk being scared, sick, or lonely than be holed-up in some tiny apartment in a city, far from the familiar surroundings of her beloved farm. So to now hear her suggest otherwise was a shock.
I sat up straight and stared at her and her busily crocheting hands. “What are you saying?” I asked. “You’ve never talked about leaving the farm before. Did something happen? Are you feeling okay?”
“No, no, no, all goot,” she answered, as if she were discussing nothing more serious than whether the peas were ready for shelling. “But I tink about tings. Tings change. I’m old woman already.”
“That’s not true. You’re in your early sixties. You just need to slow down. Think about planting a smaller garden. Buy your veggies. Get rid of those chickens and that damn cow. Milk and eggs are cheap.”
“But de cream, Sonsyou, notting like goot, fresh, farm cream.” Sonsyou is what she most often called me.
“Well, you shouldn’t be using so much cream in everything anyway. It’s not good for you.” Where was this going? “Don’t you want to be on the farm anymore?”
“I do, ya, uh-huh,” she said. “But I could leeve for tventy more years.”
I nodded. She could. Maybe more. My grandmother had lived into her nineties. “Exactly. So why give up now?” I challenged her. Yes, it would be easier for me to keep an eye on her if she moved into the city, and certainly Bill and Joanne would be in favour. But I couldn’t help feeling sad about her giving up on a place and a way of life she clearly loved. “You have a lot of good years left on the farm. You don’t have to give it up.” Not yet.
She laid her handiwork on an aproned lap and took off her glasses to clean them with the partially completed doily she’d been working on. Aha, so that’s what they’re for! “But mebbe dat’s not vhat I vant to do vit tventy more years.”
This was as surprising to me if she’d told me I had wings (although she had mentioned on more than one occasion what an angel I was).
“When Dad died, Eva Demchuk tell me… you remember Eva? She bury two husbands, poor Eva. She tell me, don’t change anyting for one year. After den you decide. So dat’s vhy I deedn’t leave de farm. For years. And I vas happy. But I vonder vhedder time for change has come.”
“You’re going to sell the farm?” I asked, still shell-shocked.
“No, no, no,” she insisted. “Are you hungry, Sonsyou?”
Uh, what? I frowned.
“I sell notting. The farm is for all of you,” she said.
“Mom,” I said, “you know none of us are interested in becoming a farmer. You don’t have to save the land for us.”
“Your dzidzi came to dis country to claim land for de family, not for selling for money. After I’m gone, if you keeds vant to sell, vell, I leave dat up to you.”
My mother: fiendishly clever buck-passer and guilt-monger.
I wasn’t about to get into an argument about how the world had changed since Grandpa had come to Canada. The best tack was to stay rooted in current-day reality. “You have no other income, Mom. You need the land to support yourself. If you’re serious about moving off the farm, the money from selling the land would help you buy a new house or condo somewhere and supplement your pension income so you can… buy more doily stuff.”
“No house.”
What? What’s this? Then where would she go? She couldn’t realistically be thinking of a retirement home at her age. Would she move in with Bill? Joanne?
There was a third choice. A choice I had soundly ignored. Why? Because I thought she’d be more comfortable with Bill or Joanne. Or maybe… was it because I was more comfortable with that too? But why? It didn’t have to be that way. Was this internalized homophobia? Had I automatically downgraded my ability and appeal as a provider and companion for my mother just because I’m gay? Well, screw that. Moving in with me was a damn fine third choice. I had a perfectly good extra room above the garage. Perhaps she’d concluded the same thing. She wasn’t saying the words, but I was beginning to hear them loud and clear.
“Well, if you really are set on leaving the farm,” I started out, still unsure whether I was insane to suggest it, “you’ll move in here, then. We can fix up the room over the garage. It’ll be perfect.” The thought of providing my mother a new home felt very good.
“Ya, uh-huh,” she murmured, heavily concentrating on her work. “You hungry, Sonsyou?”
I beamed. “No, thanks, Mom.”
In the end, nothing came of that long ago discussion. She’d come to visit and stayed in the little room over the garage many times over the next twenty years, but when push came to shove, the time never felt right to her to leave the farm.
Then things changed. It was Errall who first noticed it. Oddly enough, despite their vast differences and often acting indifferent to one another (for years Mom called her Carol instead of Errall), the two women have come to form a sort of bond that defies description or rational explanation. They even spend time together without me. Who would want to do that? Not that I’m complaining.
At first it was little stuff. Mom deciding not to replace the final Sparky. Sparky is the name Mom gave 90% of the long list of housecats she has owned throughout her life. Getting recipes wrong for dishes she’d made millions of times, then blaming the stove or the weather or a neighbour who’d called at the wrong time and distracted her. Neglecting her housework. Allowing her prized flowerbeds to get overrun with weeds.
Errall began to float the idea of Alzheimer’s and/or dementia. I resisted the idea—what child wouldn’t?—until I couldn’t anymore.
My cellphone’s ringtone saved me from venturing further down that particular lane of memory. Anthony Gatt’s face popped up on the screen.
“Hi,” I answered as cheerily as I could manage.
“Russell,” he replied in a way that told me this wasn’t going to be a pleasant call. “I think we have a problem.”