Wind: Part One

 . . . like a tumbling tumbleweed!

Wherein We Prove That Wind and Little Kids Aren't A Good Mix . . .

The wind blows in Southern Alberta.

And I don't mean blows in the modern 'that really stinks' way.

Although it's true.

No, I mean blows in the old-fashioned 'wind is really strong' way.

Because it blows.

Hard.

From the West.

And constantly.

One never quite gets used to it.

Even when one is raised with it.

It's . . . irritating.

People try to cope.

They make jokes about it.

Like the farmer getting out of bed hours earlier than usual, telling his wife that he needs the extra time to drive to the next province because that's where his land has drifted to.

Or being able to tell how old a person is by the direction and angle of their leaning.

Wind is a part of living on the prairies.

You just do the best you can.

When my husby and I lived in our first home, a mobile one, we were careful to park it East to West, instead of North to South.

That gave our home a marginally better chance of not being rolled.

But our bedroom was in the West end of our trailer. Where the wind was the strongest.

All day, the trailer would buck in the wind.

And all night.

We never slept.

One time, the wind was so strong that Grant came home from work, put a hand under our little, built-on entryway, and lifted.

The little four by four room took off like a box kite.

Or Dorothy's house.

But there, all similarities end.

It didn't quite make it to Kansas.

And, though it might have taken out a gopher or two, there were no red slippers sticking out from beneath it when we found it later, about a mile away, happily sitting in the middle of the field.

Yes. The wind is strong.

Case in point . . .

I had been to town with my four kids, ages 6, 5, 2 and 0.

We pulled up to our little home.

I should point out, here, that our little home stood at the top of a small hill, clearly exposed to the prevailing breezes.

Which were . . . prevailing.

We got out of the car.

The older two boys made a bee-line for the house.

No sense in standing out in the open to be pummelled by God's natural sand-blaster.

I unbuckled my two-year-old, Duffy, and lifted him from the car, then turned and unclasped the baby's car seat.

Then I turned back and reached for Duffy's hand.

I missed.

He was eager to get to the house and was already following his two big brothers.

He got to the front of the car when a big gust of wind knocked him flat.

But it didn't stop with that.

Instead, it continued to blow, rolling him over and over, across the yard.

“Mommy!” he shrieked.

I didn't dare set the baby down for fear of the same thing happening to her, so I ran after him as fast as I could, still lugging the car seat.

It was like a scene out of a movie.

Little boy doing a tumbleweed impression while his mother, hampered by yet another child (with carrier), runs after him.

I'm sure I saw Charlie Chaplin do something similar.

I managed to catch my son.

Sometime before he reached Saskatchewan.

He was shaken up and dusty, but otherwise unharmed.

We grow them tough in the prairies.

Now we'll just have to work on growing them heavier.

Just Another Stringam Car Trip

Ready to go.
Pictured L to R: Anita, Blair, Dad, George, Jerry,
Missing: Mom, Chris, Diane and the potty.

Traffic has slowed to a crawl.

Not a usual thing for a small, hard-topped, two lane, secondary road twisting through the foothills of Southern Alberta.

We join the end of a line of cars.

"Huh. Weird," Dad says.

"What on earth could be causing this?" Mom asks, spitting on a Kleenex and cleaning the face of her youngest son. "Careful with that chocolate bar, son, you're getting it on your father."

"Can't see, yet," Dad says. "But the line will be straightening out soon and . . . ah!"

The line has done so.

Disclosing the culprit.

A house.

White clapboard.

Two storey.

Not something you see in the middle of the road every day.

Usually that's reserved for bungalows.

The house creeps along.

We creep along behind it, more cars joining us every minute or so.

Like the growing tail of some large, unwieldy, blockish monster.

"I wonder if he knows we're here," Mom says, pulling the potty out from under her seat. "You'll just have to go while we're moving, dear," she says. "We don't want to lose our place in line."

Right. Because we'll be left behind?

As the rest of the line of traffic moves off at 20 MPH.

"Mom! I hate going when the car is moving!"

"Well, try not to miss."

"How long till the turn?" she asks Dad.

"At this rate? About three days," Dad says.

We are heading to our relatives for dinner.

I'm beginning to hope that their food tastes 'just as good the second day'.

Mom opens her car door and dumps out the potty, then wipes it out with the spit Kleenex and stuffs it back under her seat.

She drops the tissue into her handy-dandy paper bag trash receptacle and glances around at her brood.

Four are scattered across the wide back seat.

Important note: Seatbelts and safety measures hadn't been invented yet.

Jerry and George are arguing over a car magazine.

Chris and Diane are reading. Diane is getting rather green around the gills.

Mom frowns. Might be a good time to distract Diane.

She glances out the window, hoping to spot some horses.

The only thing known to pull Diane from a book.

Blair is happily parked in the front seat between Mom and Dad, looking at the pictures in one of his brother's comic books.

And Anita is perched on Mom's lap, nose against the window.

"Mom! I wanna drink!" George has given up trying to wrench the magazine from his older brother and is now sitting with his arms cross on the back of the front seat.

"Okay. I just get one here . . ." Mom mimes taking a glass and turning on a tap.

"There you go!"

"Mom! A real drink!"

"There's plenty of water in the well!" Dad says.

"You can have some of mine!" Anita says, offering her bottle of cream soda.

George looks at the pale-pink liquid that started out a brilliant red.

"That's okay," he says. "I can wait."

"Mom? I'm car sick!" Diane has emerged from her book on her own.

Not a good sign.

Again the potty comes into play.

Diane now sits with it on her lap.

"How much further?" Chris has come up for air.

"A year or two," Dad says, leaning forward and peering through the front windshield.

"Let's play a game!" Mom says. "How about 20 questions?"

"Okay! I've got it," Jerry says.

"Animal, vegetable or mineral?"

"Animal."

"Alive or dead?"

"Alive."

The game is played to its usual conclusion.

Elvis.

And another round starts.

Blair and Anita have fallen asleep.

Mom rescues the offensive cream-soda bottle just before it tips over. She again opens her car door and discretely empties it out onto the road.

I imagine, for a moment what it must be like to follow our car at 20 MPH. Heads bobbing about. Car door opening periodically to expel various fluids.

"Oh, look!" Dad says. "The house is pulling over!"

Mom laughs. "Now that's not something you hear often," she says.

Mom always manages to keep her sense of humour.

It's a gift.

Slowly, the line of cars begins to pull out around the house.

Like a stream finding its way around a large, recently introduced stone.

Dad pulls up beside the house driver and gestures to Mom, who rolls down her window.

"Why don't you get a travel trailer, like everyone else?" Dad says, with a grin. "You'd find it immensely easier!"

"I'm so sorry!" the driver says. "Were you following me long?"

About four years, three months, twenty-one days, and thirteen hours, Dad thinks.

What he says is, "Oh, no. Not long!"

They wave to each other and we are off.

Just another family car trip.

Mark . . . and Doors

Mark, tricycle fiend. Or just fiend.

Mark was angry.

And no one could get angry like our little three-year-old.

Anyplace would be better than this one.

Grandma's was infinitely superior.

She never made him clean up his toys or eat his meals.

He was leaving.

He had his pyjamas and Kermit the Frog.

He was packed.

And out of here.

I sat, nursing the baby, and watched him walk down the hallway, one leg of his sleeper hanging out through the improperly closed zipper of his backpack.

My little independent man.

“I'm going, Mom!” he said loudly, without looking back.

His 'declaration of independence' continued as he moved along the hall . . .

“I'm going!”

“Here I go!”

“Yup. I'm going!”

“Going to Gramma's”

“You won't see me!”

Yup. Living with Gramma now!”

“Bye!”

By this point he had made it the entire length of the hall and was out of my sight.

There was a short pause and I could hear the sounds of movement and a tiny grunt.

Then, “Mom! Can you come and open the door?”

Yup. My independent little man.

Walking to his Grandmother's ten miles away.

If he could make it out of the house.

* * *

Mark was outside, riding his tricycle.

His favourite pastime.

He would navigate over the rough terrain surrounding our farmhouse with ease, little legs pumping happily.

I frequently went to the window to check on him.

But he was a safe driver.

He never went near the road, and would happily drive back and forth between the house and the root cellar/pumphouse.

Doing laps.

Totally safe.

Okay, so adventurous, he wasn't.

Or so I thought.

One afternoon, his grandfather drove in.

With the family travel trailer hitched to his truck.

I watched him wave at Mark.

Mark waved enthusiastically back.

Not only did Mark love his grandfather, but he loved that trailer.

It had the one door in the world he could open.

Whenever he was at Grandma's, it was his playground.

His grandfather parked beside the pumphouse and got out to do something.

I watched my son ride his tricycle towards the pumphouse.

And really didn't consider the trailer.

I went back to my laundry.

A short time later, the truck and trailer pulled out and disappeared towards town.

I went to the window to look for my boy.

And couldn't see him.

A feathering of alarm.

I quickly dashed out of the house.

He wasn't on his normal tricycle route.

I ran towards the pumphouse.

And found his trusty tricycle, laying on its side.

But no Mark.

I looked towards the settling cloud of dust that indicated the path of Grandpa's truck and trailer.

I knew where Mark had gone.

He had gotten into the trailer.

Would he stay there?

Or would he get scared and try to get out when the trailer was moving?

Okay, full blown panic.

Praying frantically, I ran for the phone.

“Mom! Has Dad come in with the trailer yet?”

“Not yet, Diane. Oh, wait, yes, here he is.”

“Could you please see if Mark is in the trailer?”

“What?!”

“Could you just look please?” I was crying by this time.

My little boy.

My little boy.

In a moment, she was back on the phone.

“Diane? He's safe! He's here! He was hiding under the table!”

Some prayers are well and truly answered.