Midnight Puppies

In the middle of the night, on my brothers’ bed, our dog gave birth to six puppies.

All these years later, my siblings and I remember the great event. It makes us laugh. It makes us miss the little “us”, the us we were before we knew we’d grow up.

Our dad woke us all to come and witness the marvel. My brothers, Chris and Joe, who slept in the same bed, and Mike, who slept in a single bed nearby, sat up straight, hushed, eyes wide. My little sister and I sat on the edge of the bed. Our dad gave a running commentary like a National Geographic broadcaster.

I don’t think any of us went back to sleep. There were puppies to watch and love. I don’t know what happened to all the blankets and sheets on that bed. When you’re 13 years old you don’t think about details in the midst of such a wondrous occurrence.

Our house in Toronto

The room where Penny had her puppies was at the front of the house. It was a big room with two windows that ran almost the width of the building. It was probably intended to be the “master bedroom”, but our parents must have thought it was more practical to give the space to three rambunctious boys.

Many years later, when our mother was dying and frightened and sad, and I was sitting with her in her hospital room, I wanted to take her mind off the machines and the reality of her situation. I asked her if she remembered the midnight puppies. She did, and it made her smile. Then I asked her to walk with me through our memory of that house. She nodded.

I started at the front door. I described the living room on the left, the dining room on the right, the stairs straight ahead, the hallway leading back behind the stairs to the kitchen. I walked through every corner of each room, talking about what was in it.

Our mum's favourite Picasso in the Living Room

I could see the carpets, the furniture, the curtains. The large Picasso that reminded her of me with Penny (before the puppies). The piano where I practiced every day and wrote many teenage love songs. The bookcases crammed with books. My mum said I could read anything in those bookcases, anything at all, and I did. She had favourite authors: Graham Greene, Herman Wouk, Evelyn Waugh, Nancy Mitford, Edna St. Vincent Millay ‒ oh, it was such a long list of favourites, and today they’re some of mine, too.

I wish I had recorded that conversation. We travelled through every part of the house, each containing many stories: some funny, some sad, some difficult, some ridiculous, some heartbreaking. I did most of the talking, but she corrected me or added a few anecdotes I had forgotten.

She’s gone now and so are those days, of course. The house is still there. My sister and her daughter and I drove past it a few years ago when we were on a road trip through Toronto. It looked the same; the front door was a different shade.

I looked up at the windows on the second floor. I remembered Penny and her puppies and the night we shared that amazing time. I could feel us ‒ who I was at that moment; who they were. I could hear their voices, their laughter. I could feel the softness of Penny’s fur, see the tiny wiggling creatures beneath her.

I remembered the rink our dad made for us in the backyard ‒ well, for my brothers, really. They were hockey players; I was a girly skater (bad) who needed to hang on to a cute boy in order to stay upright, so I went to the neighbourhood rink instead. Our dad spent many cold nights out there, freezing as he showered the rink with water from the hose, a labour of madness and love.

Grandma Hanson

I remember when our Norwegian grandmother came to visit. She’d sit, upright in stoic Nordic fashion, at the living room window on the left side of the big blue spruce in the front yard. She was perfectly dressed from head to toe, her exquisite needlepoint bag on her lap, gloves in hand, waiting for us all to go somewhere ‒ I forget where. It was always jumble and chaos to get all of us ready to go somewhere. Poor Grandma Hanson was a bit overwhelmed by us and I think a bit miffed.

She used to tell me she was grateful for her health. And I thought, huh? What do you mean? Doesn’t everyone have health? I mean, if you’re alive, you have health, right?

And here I am now, saying the same thing to my grandchildren. I’m so grateful for my health, I say. They dismiss it as obvious, as I once did.

It’s hard to know which stories my grandchildren will recall. I know they remember some things now ‒ not my stories but their own, the stories we have created together. They remember this house I have lived in for most of their lives, and probably every corner of it, the way I remember the house of my (Irish) grandmother. Some they remember in surprising detail.

Perhaps if I write my stories, the moments I remember with my parents and grandparents, my grandchildren will follow someday. I will be a model for them.

I have to walk through the rooms of my life. I have to tell those who come after me. It’s my link from my grandparents to me to my children to their children: a torch, a gift.

And we will live on.