Toronto: 1982-84

ongoing grief notes

In Autumn 1982, I was in my first year of university, learning that despite how well I did in high school, I wasn’t able to have high marks at Victoria College. I was majoring in French with a planned minor in Political Science. I got one C+ on my first essay in Poly Sci, and dropped it. I wasn’t used to getting low marks.

Ron was doing a work term at Control Data in Mississauga. When he originally asked me out, he had said he could get tickets to Second City, which was really exciting to me because it was something I’d never done before, but then that fell through and we ended up going out a few more times before the promised date to Second City. Ron slid down a fire pole. He was adventurous and I wasn’t. I wasn’t sure that I liked his adventurous nature, because I worried for him, but I admired it. The summer before we met, he had gone skydiving at Grand Bend. I thought this was very dangerous. He didn’t seem that impressed with skydiving, so I got the impression he wouldn’t want to do it again, which was a relief.

I remember we spent a lot of time at a bar on Avenue Road in the fall of 82 when a 10 ounce glass of wine was $5 and we played the video game Galaga. There was a man there who could play over 100 stages with one quarter. We always played a lot of pinball and video games together. Later we bought our own pinball game, Solar Ride. A few times we played board games with my brother such as Risk and Monopoly.

I was still living with my parents and that time was fraught for me. My father was a difficult man and I hadn’t yet gone to therapy to deal with childhood trauma caused by him. I buried all of that. It wasn’t something Ron knew or I even acknowledged to myself.

I remember Ron showing me a newspaper article about his receiving a Bronze in the World School Boy Wrestling championships in Sweden. He was very handsome. His fingers were all bandaged up, but he shrugged that off. Ron didn’t make a fuss about pain or hardship.

At Christmas 82, my brother surprised my parents and I with a trip to Florida. On the plane to Florida, the man in the seat across from me had a heart attack. My parents went to the second floor of the plane to smoke, leaving me alone. The man showed up on the beach the next day. He was fine, thankfully.

Florida was lovely, but I missed Ron and while I was gone he wrote me letters from Winnipeg where he described pining for me. One of my regrets about the end of our marriage in 2000 is how I fled, like I was leaving a burning building. I felt trapped and smothered at the time. I refused to accept all of his letters and the souvenirs of our time together as a couple. When he tried to give them to me, I put them out for the garbage. It was cruel and I was a different person then, but I am so grateful that he didn’t stop loving me. I can’t change how I was, the trauma from childhood that finally rose to the surface and wreaked havoc on my life and his.

I don’t remember if I went to Winnipeg that winter for the first time or if it was the year after, but at some point in 1982 or 1983, I had my first visit to his family. He missed his siblings greatly. We went to Manitoba every year for Christmas and for summer holidays.

I was unused to such closeness in a family. His house was a detached home on a lovely, tree-lined street. I grew up in townhouses and apartments. To me his family seemed wealthy. They had a parlour with a piano and his father’s art was on the walls. I didn’t know artists. I didn’t know professors except for my instructors at university. I was intimidated. Ron’s father came to Toronto and we met for the first time at the Royal York Hotel’s Library Lounge to drink Irish Coffees. I wanted wine, but Ron’s father insisted on the Irish Coffee. We went to see a play, Mousetrap. It all felt very grown up and sophisticated to me. His brother was in a band and on my first trip there, I went with the family to hear them perform. I was impressed. The whole family was amazing, friendly to me and seemed to have a good relationship compared to mine where my father and brother fought and my father was often drunk and could get violent, my mother exhausted from hard work in the factory.

I enjoyed playing video games with Ron’s family and eating the great food that was prepared, such as beef cooked in a pressure cooker. We went to the Forks, to a beloved local restaurant called Cousins and the Bridge Drive Inn. We went bowling in Transcona. In the winter it was colder than I had ever experienced. They had to scrape snow off the inside of the car windows.

There was a Christmas party at his aunt’s place that took place every year. There were a lot of relatives. All of my relatives were in England because my parents, brother and sister and I moved from England when I was 2 1/2. I was unused to the concept of relatives. Once in a while some relatives came from England but I was not close to them. I had a few friends in university, but mostly I had Ron, who I could rely on and who stopped me from feeling lonely.

I remember spending summers on the beach in Gimili, stopping along the highway for Goldeye, which was delicious. I remember the Icelandic Festival with its heavy metal and crowds. Wandering around Tergesen General Store. Playing in the water with his younger siblings during a storm.

Another regret I have is no longer being in contact with Ron's siblings. They became my siblings too. But when a couple divorces, this is what happens. I know some of my relatives were sad not to see Ron anymore after we split up.

[later update]: Ron used to take me to dinner theatre at Old Angelos in Toronto for New Year’s Eve. I had forgotten about that. We were very young, surrounded by a lot of what felt like old couples at the time, but it felt sophisticated and romantic to celebrate new year’s there. I recall dressing up, watching the theatre and eating pasta with Ron. Then making our way back to Mississauga on the subway after in the early morning. Good memories. I cherish them. After we divorced, Ron texted me on New Year’s Day to wish me a happy new year. He wasn’t great with dates, but he always remembered new years.

From January to April or May of 1983, Ron was in Waterloo to do the next four months of his engineering degree. I was struggling at U of T. He came to see me every weekend and sometimes I went to visit him in Waterloo.

At one point, he was staying with two roommates in an apartment by the highway. He ate only rice, trying to save money. He had no curtains on his bedroom windows, which made the room blindingly light. His clothes were all over the place. I made a little doodle of how to make a cozy room, and we put up bed sheets on his windows and made a box he could use as a dresser. I always helped Ron to bring order to his life and he added surprise and adventure to mine.

I hated my university classes and was doing very poorly. My original hope to do well enough so that I would be awarded a trip to Paris the next year as part of the French program was dashed. I think, looking back, that while I was in high school, imagining my life, I was planning on living in Paris. My marks were not high enough. The school bellcurved marks down because the classes were so crowded. I loved the people I met, but hated school. I was having increasing trouble with my father, who was starting to say things like I had to follow his rules or leave. I missed Ron a lot.

Our first time sharing a bed took place at the Strathcona Hotel, Easter weekend 1983, 41 years ago. I remember coming out of the hotel, the light so bright, we were both giddy and in love.

In the summer Ron had a place in Streetsville above the garage of someone’s house. We spent a lot of time there. We went to see movies and I rode on the back of his bike, sometimes falling asleep as he drove us home. I felt safe with Ron, safe for the first time in my life.

In second year, my struggles continued. I think it was in fall 1983 that Ron and I moved in together in a studio apartment on Old Dundas Street across the hall from the laundry room and down the street from a motorcycle gang hangout. I was in second year at U of T.

We had a shopping buggy and walked to a grocery store which was a far walk along busy streets. We were figuring out our life together. We rambled around on weekends, wandering near the Humber River, over railway bridges. Ron often came to meet me at U of T after school.

Ron commuted to work and often came home with stories of fellow commuters, like the guy who bought a lottery ticket every week so he could have good dreams. I remember Ron musing about that idea.

I woke up one night to Ron squeezing my stomach. He was dreaming about these jelly like monsters. He'd finally gotten hold of one. It was disturbing to wake up to but it was a dream we often laughed about together.

In winter 1984 he was back at Waterloo but came home on weekends. I loved having a place of our own and a door I could lock so that no one could come in. I rarely went to classes. I slept a lot.

The kitchen had a table that was attached to the wall. I had to sit on a phone booth to use it. My mother gave us ox tail soup to help us out, and creosote to clean with. We wandered the railway bridges and loved spending time with one another. We listened to Elvis Costello and the Monks on an 8-track tape player Ron received as an award when he won a high school science fair.

At the end of the weekend, he would return to Waterloo by bus. We went to the Eaton’s Centre and had dutch baby pancakes at a fast food place before taking him to the bus depot. It was a sad moment. We corresponded in the mail.

I went to visit Ron in Waterloo as much as I could when he wasn’t able to come to see me. We were in the campus centre one day and I cried in his arms. My marks were awful. Classes were crowded. I felt like all my plans for university had crumbled.

He suggested that I could switch universities and move in with him. It seemed impossible. His ability to have hope made him very optimistic. I wasn’t, but he convinced me that we could do it.

The summer before I worked at the factory where my mother worked, and it was a union shop, so I made good money for the time, and had some savings that helped with rent, living expenses etc. He contacted the Chair of the French Department and got me all the information. In May 1984, I moved to Waterloo, leaving Toronto behind for good.